Blackout

In general, I've been quite impressed with electricity, Internet and audio-visual resources at TVU. They have Wi-Fi (although it's never worked when I've tried to lug my laptop) and projectors, and even cameras (we are going to have some teachers make a little documentary for International Women`s Day). However, ever so often, we have a day of power outtages...like today! Luckily, it's just TVU Campus 1, so Internet is working fine at Campus 2 where I live. I am working, or trying to, from home today, although mostly my "work" for today involves going shopping for supplies for our gender equality game on Sunday.

Really, I don`t know what I would have done without my daily Internet (email, Facebook, blogs) fix. How do the other students, the ones doing an internship in the remote parts of Ghana, Malawi and Nepal, deal with what I imagine is very poor and sporadic Internet connections? At home in Canada, I don't mind spending a few days without checking emails, but when you're in another country it seems so much more important to keep in touch with friends and family.

In other news, the English club has been delayed...again. It's mostly because of red tape!! Apparently we did not get approval from the Finances office (why do we need financial support for an English club, you ask? good question. I have no idea.) so cannot proceed until things are cleared up. It's a shame because I was all ready to go yesterday (had even made photocopies and had my PowerPoint presentation double- and triple-checked by my three colleagues), and about an hour and a half before my first meeting with students was supposed to start, I was informed that we had to cancel the meeting. Ah well, there's not much I can do (and complaining doesn't do much) but wait. Instead, I had an ice cream cone and a chat with one of the English students...very sweet girl. We had an interesting conversation on beauty...here in Vietnam, you are considered beautiful if you have white skin.