Russ: Week 8-10 (You say goodbye and I say hello)

Summing up this experience in one final blog entry will not be easy. I am certain that I will fail to deliver some of the best anecdotes from the trip and I will almost certainly forget to thank someone important. One of the main reasons that writing this is such a difficult undertaking is because, simply put, I do not want to leave. My experience here has been practically perfect and I have grown incredibly attached to these people and this lifestyle. I honestly wish I never had to say goodbye.

My ladies

First and foremost, I will miss the children. I never wanted to be a primary teacher and I felt like this was reaffirmed in my first few weeks here. My sense of humour and style of teaching has always felt better suited for high school and I didn't think I was capable of making the switch. Luckily for me, I was dead wrong. In the two months that I taught these children I rediscovered myself and my values. Something clicked in me and suddenly teaching these kids became the most important thing in my life. The process of seeing them go from complete confusion to total understanding, while applying any number of concepts I taught them was one of the most rewarding things I have ever experienced. It's not often, as teachers, we get to see so much marked improvement in such a short period of time, but I felt like each day I witnessed so many epiphanies that they became commonplace. As I embark on my teaching career, I have to seriously consider if I want the intellectually rewarding teaching that comes with secondary school or the pure fun that comes with primary. It'll be a very hard decision!

I became a father figure to my p.2 class. Any given lunch time or recess, I could always be seen with about a dozen little boys and girls hanging off my arms. This happened so often that it became a running joke between many of my colleagues and even the students ("Mr. Peddle has 10 girlfriends!"). While some in my place would find this irritating (and I sometimes found it fatiguing), it was one of my favourite parts of the whole experience. To feel that kind of unconditional love from children is something I want to feel my whole life. Arguably the best part about my relationship with those students is that they were able to separate that behaviour from how they were expected to act in the classroom. As soon as that bell rung, they went from being clingy little monsters to well-behaved angels. This delicate balance is something I hope to achieve in my future teaching situations as well.

Papa Peddle & 2A

My p.6 class, while a bit more mature than my p.2s, still showed me large amounts of affection and respect. The classroom environment was always fun, but productive and I got the sense that they appreciated English class for being a bit more humourous than their other classes. This was reflected in how genuinely happy they seemed to see me during any recess or lunch break. At that age, I didn't think they would grow as attached to me as my p.2s, but I was mistaken. At the final assembly, many of them cried about me leaving, even though they always seemed kind of reserved about showing that much emotion at school. They went on to create a facebook fan page about me and I still stay in contact with them through some new social networking accounts that I created just for them. Nothing will replace the feeling I got from teaching them though.

6E

I could spend days on here writing thank yous to everyone who made Hong Kong such an amazing experience, but I would only scratch the surface of my gratitude. Here are some of the most honourable mentions:

My supervisor and surrogate mother, Maureen. She balanced a fun-filled and supportive home-life with a professional and supportive work-life to perfection. I already miss her and her hearty laugh more than I can describe. Her husband Norm and their live-in maid, Mae, were also like family by the time we left. I hope our inside jokes never die. PURPLE!

One happy family...poor Mable, it's just the mud flaps!

Pat, the best cooperating teacher in the history of time. Funny, supportive, laid-back, dedicated, etc. There are a million positive adjectives to describe this woman and it would take way too long to list them all. She shared my sense of humour and we had similar teaching styles. I thought I would never find someone so easy to work with in all my life. I feel truly blessed to have had the chance to develop my teaching with her.

Two bright 6E students, me, and Pat at the final assembly

Amy, the glue that held together this whole experience. I have never met anyone more energetic or kind in all my life. She lives to please other people and not in that way that some people claim to. She literally cares about everyone else's well-being more than anything else in her life. She is a spark, there is literally no other word that comes close to describing her.

POH Chan Kwok Wai Primary School, its principal Mr. Li, and all of the staff. So accommodating, welcoming, and dedicated to maintaining an amazing working and learning environment. I hope someday to be in a situation that is even a tenth as collaborative and well-run as that school is.

Canadian Teachers, Cooperating Teachers, Supervisor, Principal

The other Canadian teachers, particularly my roommates Felix, Vanessa, and Val. They went from being casual acquaintances to siblings in just two months. They were there for me when I needed them most and, above all else, they were a laugh and half to work and party with. Too many inside jokes and good times to even measure!

McGill university, Dr. Riches, Dr. Benson, Kate, Mela, etc. Basically everyone that made this experience possible. I will feel forever indebted to this school for giving me the chance of a lifetime. Not only did I have an amazing experience, but I will always look back on this time as being the starting point of my career. So many of my values and beliefs were shaped over the last couple of months and it seems like everything I do from now on will somehow be influenced by this experience. That kind of influence is hard to come by and I appreciated every second of it.

I will end by saying this: Hong Kong 2010 will be forever etched in my memory as one of the best experiences of my life. I would relive it a million times over if I could and I would not change a single aspect of it. If anyone ever gets an opportunity like this, don't think twice about taking it.

This might not be the end of the HK chapter in my life story...stay tuned...

Goodbye and thank you Hong Kong!!!

Ame: Ce n’est qu’un au revoir…

It is already over. I can’t even begin to explain how I feel. It has been such a wonderful experience and as much as I miss people back home, I don’t want to leave. The last week has been hard and emotionally demanding, but I have made the most out of it. While it was extremely sad (and I cried a lot!) to have to say goodbye to my students, I know that we will find a way to see each other again. What I want to talk about for my last blog entry is not directly related to teaching. However, it is all about the students.

My form 6 students out for dinner in Sha Tin

I have developed a very close relationship with my form 6 students. I think that the special circumstances of the stage allowed me to get closer to my students than I could ever have been back home. I went to Ocean Park with half of the class, I went out to lunch with a bunch of them, I went shopping during the Easter break with a few of them, etc. I know that in all of our classes we always say that we can be friendly with our students but not become their friends. Well, they ended up being my friends. They are all 17-18 years old and the fact that I will never ever be their teacher again gave me the chance to become their friend without losing control of my classroom. So, for my last day, I asked them to have dinner with me after school. No one had to come; if they felt like it they could come and if they didn’t want to it was fine. I knew that some of them would come, but I never expected that more than half of my class would show up! 

My Hong Kong Family

They brought me to a typically Chinese restaurant in Sha Tin. It looks a lot like a wedding reception: under a huge tent outside with a bunch of round tables and we order different plates that we all share. So we were (with Juanita and me) a total of 21 around the table. For the next few hours, we forgot that we were leaving each other soon, and we just laughed, enjoyed our meal and took a bunch of pictures. Everyone looked so happy and was having such a good time. It was, without the shadow of a doubt, the best night that I’ve had in Hong Kong. It felt like I was sitting with my family that I haven’t seen in a while and everyone was laughing and sharing memories of the good times we’ve spent together. After dinner, we went for typical Chinese dessert. Again, everyone was sitting around the table and having fun. I ended up sending everyone back home at midnight (they all assured me that they would not get in trouble!). 

Happy Bunch!

Now, what does all of that have to do with teaching? The next day, they gave me back my book that I had asked them to sign and leave a message if they felt like it. Almost all of them left me a message and they all thanked me for making English interesting by doing stuff outside of school with them. They also write that they will miss me because I was more than just a teacher to them. I can honestly say that I will miss all of them because they have been more than students to me. 

Val: The very last journal entry....

Okay, so this is my last journal entry and it really is a way for me to wrap things up and realize that in 2 days it’ll be over! I still cannot believe that in exactly two days I will be on a plane, going back to Canada! It has been such an amazing trip that it feels like it was just a dream! Before I say good bye to this country, let me just tell about my last week-end, because I had an awesome day with Russell! 

Everyone in the group went to the Big Buddha at one point during the trip except for Felix, Russ and me. Russ and I therefore decided to go this last Saturday together without knowing what to expect from the big Buddha. In fact, we thought it would only be a trip during which we would go on top of a mountain with a cable car and look at a big Buddha, say “Ah… okay!” and then come back, but we’ve been really surprised and we’ve had a wonderful day!


First, it was sunny and we could even see the blue sky, which was a first for us in Hong Kong! And then we got to the site and immediately went for a Subway sandwich. (I had been craving for Subway sandwiches for about 2 months! So I had about 18 inches of sandwiches in total during the day! … a lot of catching up! ) Then, we went to a wonderful outlet mall, did some shopping an went for a real coffee, trying to escape from the instant coffee for a moment and discovered that the coffee shop was serving gelato… it was paradise! Coffee and chocolate chips gelato and dark chocolate.. I’ve had goosebumps for about an hour!

We then decided to finally leave for the big Buddha and because it was sunny, the view was incredible, the ocean with the mountains and the sun, it was magical! And then the Buddha was HUGE! Still it wasn’t just about the big Buddha, the village at the bottom is really cute and I truly enjoyed my time being there, just taking it easy, site seeing and enjoying every single moment of it!

After my last 6-inch sandwich, we came back home, but got stuck in traffic in the taxi for a good half hour, but that gave us plenty of time to laugh at some people singing in cars and to discuss with the taxi driver who told us that the traffic jam was due to a bomb that exploded in Sai Kung (our destination)! I was kind of shocked for a few seconds until I realised that he meant that a water pipe exploded causing some damages! Hahaha!  We had a good laugh! 

 

The big buddha...

 

At the top of the big buddha

 

Yes... well I've been stuck like this for a while after! :P

Briefly, I’ve had a great day and I think that it was due to the way Russ and I like to visit, not rushing and taking the time to just relax and enjoy the time where we are instead of trying to rush and see everything in a short period of time.

 

In the cable car

 

The incredible view from the cable car!

And now, I’m starting my last day of teaching, which makes me quite sad, but still as I was saying before, I will not have any regrets coming back home because I’ve had a great time at school, at home and everywhere else! In fact, we’ve done so many things that it would take me about a year to write about everything we’ve done and all the fun we had, laughing every night at dinner time.

 

Yes... it always ended up like this every night! :)

I’ll remember my trip as having a great time, laughing half of the time, singing during the other half and bonding with what I would called my new and second family! I will miss these people when coming back home and I really hope we’ll stay in touch! I’m glad we’ve stayed so close to each other, and here I’m talking about high school AND primary people, it felt like nothing was impossible! Thank you my friends! 

Here are some good times that I will remember for a long time! :)

 

Great people! :)

 

Wow! :)

 

The very first night on Hong Kong island! :)

 

what a great group! :)

 

The girls! :)

À bientôt! :)

Val : second to last week-end

Our second to last week-end has been simply amazing!

Before this week-end started though, something really funny and nice happened at school, as it was quite cold outside, a parent at the school decided to make us scarves and arrived one day with them. It was really nice of her, but it was also really funny as they are really big scarves… and really colourful! See the picture… it’s worth a million words :)

 

After that Friday, at home we had what seemed to me like a real family dinner for our supervisor’s husband’s birthday, with wine, a great meal and a cake! J (It’s funny how here every simple event is really comforting, things such as eating a cake!) I really felt I was having a family dinner, which means that I will really miss them when I come back home.

The day after this incredible meal, the eight of us decided to go out in Lan Kwai Fong which is an amazing place that I will for sure miss. We had a really great night dancing on great music played by a live band. I wish we had such a place in Montreal, we can stay in the streets, walk up and down the street to listen to different types of music as the bars leave their windows open and put the volume really high. Also, just being there resulted in meeting people from around the world, even English teachers. 

 

Just before we left! :)

Plus, you would never believe what we had right after.... aaaaaaaaa POUTINE! in HONG KONG! :) It was simply amazing! :) WE had it in a Canadian restaurant called cul-de-sac! How funny is that?!

  

yes my mouth is full of poutine because I couldn't stop eating! :P

All of this to say that I’ve never been in such a great place before and I will definitely miss this place when I leave because no matter where we are in Hong Kong, we always either discover something incredibly magical, funny or simple meet amazing people!

Val : Easter Holiday

This has probably been the most exciting Easter holiday I’ve had so far in my life considering that first, it lasted for ten days and second we got to visit fabulous places in Hong Kong and its surrounding areas. During the first Friday, the head of the English department’s sister brought us all over the North area of Hong Kong (The New Territories and Sai Kung) and even though I was anticipating it, I truly enjoyed myself! In fact, the first time she brought us visiting, we had been to so many different places that by the end of the day, we were exhausted and this obviously made us anticipate this upcoming Friday. Truth is that I have had a great time with her on that particular Friday! 

We went to the Wishing Tree which was a little cheesy but quite interesting! Believe it or not, I have paid about 3 dollars to write a wish on a piece o paper, attach it to an orange and throw it in a plastic tree! It took me about twenty times before the orange could finally stay in the tree but it was worth it! I had fun, we laughed a lot at my lack of throwing oranges skills!

 

attempt # 100 000 002

We have also seen different beautiful places near the Ocean and near China where many people would go to different temples, it was very nice and peaceful.

On the other hand, we ended up the day by going to the Monkey Mountain which wasn’t peaceful at all, but oh so funny! Actually, it was pretty scary! Have you ever tried being surrounded by about a hundred monkeys that want to eat everything and are ready to jump on a car to get what they want? It is pretty scary and funny! People would give them anything such as Tic Tacs or blue chewing gum and the monkeys would eat it! Crazy monkeys! 

 

Monkey eating blue chewing gum... :)

Briefly, we had a great day and it was a nice way to start the holiday!

Ame: Big victory!

I have a student in form 6 who told me he hasn't handed in his homework in English since form 3. I do not know if it's true or not but I know that it's always hard to get anything from him. To get his first paper that I asked him to write I had to run after him for nearly 3 weeks, give him detention and make him sign a contract. I wasn't expecting much for his other papers.

This morning, there was a knock on our office door. My student, all smiles, proudly handing in his paper! Sure, it's 3 weeks late again. But, I didn't have to ask him about it, not even once! And the look on his face, so proud of himself for surprising me like that! And I was so proud of him too!

This is the kind of little things that make it all worthwhile. It made my day, my week, my whole stage even!

Ame: Easter break!

In Canada, Easter break would mean 4 days off, without seeing the students (and probably not thinking about them either). However, here it meant 10 days off with tons of things to do, including seeing the students. We had asked if it was ok to go out for lunch with the students, so they could talk to us in English in a less formal setting. Since my students are 17-18 years old, I told some of them that if they wanted to do something during the break, they could email me. So, on Monday, we went out for lunch with 2 of my students. They brought us to a Korean BBQ Buffet. It was amazing! There was a grill in the middle of the table where we could cook whichever food we chose from the buffet. It was delicious.

Korean BBQ Buffet

Then, they took us shopping, just about everywhere in Mong Kok. We even had supper with them too, at a really good noodle place and we went shopping some more. It was really nice to be able to talk with the students about normal things instead of Uniform Tests and school, and also to see them in "regular" clothes! It was a really nice day and I think that everyone appreciated it.

Ocean Park with the students!

Then, on Wednesday, Juanita and I were bringing 22 students to Ocean Park. Unfortunately, it rained all day and we were really cold but we still had a lot of fun! Juanita left with her 5 form 4 students (and 2 of mine) and I left with my 15 form 6 students. Again, it was really nice to spend some time doing "normal" things with the students. We saw pandas, jellyfish, sharks, sea lions, dolphins, etc. We went into some of the rides. Funny thing, the students were all terrified to go in the rides! I made two of my students come with me in The Abyss (which is like the Orbite at LaRonde). They screamed the whole time and wanted to kill me for making them do this. I couldn't help but laugh the whole time. It was nice to see some overly confident ("I'm too cool for this") students be a bit more vulnerable. The students were really happy to spend some time with us outside of the school and be able to ask us a bunch of questions about us. I think it helped create a bond with them and it made them more willing to communicate in English. I wish we had time to do something like that again before we leave, but sadly, I don't think it will be possible.

Cute panda

Before going in The Abyss

Russ: Weeks 6-7 (Easter Break)

As if it wasn't lovely enough that we get flown to Hong Kong, provided with food and shelter, and given the opportunity to teach amazing children in a fantastic school, but we were also given two weeks of vacation in the middle of the field experience for Easter break. Honestly, I am beyond blessed to be here. Just when it seems like this experience couldn't get any better, it always does anyway. Of course, monkeys do tend to make everything better, but I'll get to that in a minute...

So many angry monkeys!

Surprisingly, this break has provided a learning opportunity that was lacking from other field experiences. Most teaching internships take place over a few weeks and usually don't coincide with major breaks for holidays. I imagine the powers that be plan the duration of these things to get in the most teaching possible over the shortest amount of time, to avoid conflict with our regular McGill classes. Regardless, this trip is nothing if not unique, so we ended up with almost two weeks of vacation to see the sights and experience Hong Kong and surrounding areas without the distraction of teaching. An important pedagogical lesson that arose from this fact was how to prepare students for such a big break and how to ease them back into the routine afterward.

Easter break started on a Wednesday, so you can imagine that the students had already sent their attention spans on vacation as of Monday. Monday and Tuesday proved to be a very difficult balancing act! On one hand, I had to work hard to really drive home and solidify some important concepts to a point where the students would still remember them after the break. On the other hand, I had to avoid starting new units and topics that would be too hard to get through to them while their brains were in vacation mode. This proved to be challenging when I ran out of material for one unit and couldn't justify starting a new one on the day before the vacation. I opted instead to just give an overall review of previous units, but that ended up being fun and actually useful at the same time. Preparing students for a break was not something I thought about in previous field experiences, so it was interesting to experience it first hand and recognize the importance of it.

Coming back from the break was an even more interesting experience. For one thing, they did an insane amount of homework over the break. Like, I mean some of them might have spent the entire break doing homework and I wouldn't be surprised. That's one major difference between Hong Kong and Canada. You give students that much homework before Easter break back home and I guarantee you it comes back empty or poorly done. A "break", by definition, is supposed to give students a chance to forget about school and let their brains recharge. Such is not the case here! Although, I must admit, I was thankful that they stayed sharp over the break, because the first day back felt almost like we hadn't left. I expected them to forget everything I had taught them (my p.6s were in the middle of a unit when we left), but they just picked up like the previous lesson was only the day before. These kids are robots, I swear!

The (Original) Wishing Tree. Obviously no one wished that it could stand on it's own.

As for my break, it was certainly not filled with homework. "Productive" is about the absolute last word I would use to describe myself during that time. Some days were spent completely in bed, relaxing, talking to people back home and watching movies. Notable trips included Monkey Mountain (exactly what it sounds like...a mountain covered with hundreds of ugly/angry monkeys), The Wishing Tree, a few more temples/markets, and Macau (the Chinese version of Las Vegas). Macau was the most interesting, as it is littered with hotels, casinos, and blinding neon lights. There are moments when you can just look at Wynn and the MGM Grand and imagine that you really are on the other side of the world. Other nights in Hong Kong were spent exploring nice restaurants and the nightlife. Honestly, I think Hong Kong is food heaven. I've really expanded my palette since coming here, while miraculously losing over 20lbs in the process. I have no idea how!

Viva Macau!

Anyways, back to the grind for a couple more weeks, then we face the reality that we have to leave this dream world. I don't know how I feel about that yet. I'm sure I'll get to that in my next (and possibly final) post.

Ame: Lion Dance

This is our second day off for Easter. Juanita and I are sitting in the living room, planning, correcting and doing assignments. Then we hear drums and cymbals. We look out the window to see that there is a parade in the street right next to our apartment. So we hurry outside and catch up with the parade that has stopped in front of a temple. There are lions dancing, surrounded by people. I try to take pictures, but there's a lot of people in front of me. So, one of the man takes me in front of everyone so I can take pictures (he literally pushed other people so I could have a spot in front). Then, the parade got moving again and we followed it. Another man explained to Juanita that this was a celebration for Hunam's (unsure about the spelling here) birthday and that following the parade will bring us good luck and prosperity. The parade made a final stop at a market, where people gave us candy for good health, made us burn incense for luck and gave us a read egg to eat for luck also. They explained everything to us, pushed other people so we could take pictures and do the rituals and even made Juanita try the lion costume. People here are just so nice and so eager to share about their culture, it's fascinating. It is so nice to feel so welcomed here! This was really a great experience!

Lion dance

Juan and I with a dancer

Juan in the lion head

Ame: English Week

The Easter break is finally here! Even though the week was only 4 days, it was one of the longest and busiest week we've had so far. We had all of our classes to prepare, finish correcting a lot of stuff to hand back before the break because when they come back they have their Uniform Tests to do, Maureen was coming to evaluate us and we had to prepare and run a bunch of activities for English Week. Even though it was a lot of work, we had a lot of fun and I think that English Week was definitely a success!

High school teachers on the roof, getting ready for English Week activities

When we first found out that we had to prepare activities for English Week and that it was the week right before the break we wanted to do something fun throughout the week and end it with a bunch of activities all day long on the last day. However, it seems that getting teachers to agree to not give lessons during a whole day is not an easy task here. We wanted to do an "Amazing Race" style day, with a bunch of different activities that the students would need to complete in order to get a clue for the final task. I had this image of what we used to do at my high school at the end of the year: "les olympiades". This was to imitate the Olympics, so the whole school was divided into teams with the names of countries and we would have Olympic style tasks to do (races, disk throwing, jumping, etc.). This was always a fun day at my high school because we didn't have classes, the sec. 3 could interact with the sec. 5, everyone would really get into it and wear the colours of their country and all. At the end of the day, everyone would have made new friends, everyone would go back home with sunburns (sometimes in the shape of your country's flag) but happy. Developing new friendships and building team spirit were the goal of the day and it was always a success. I thought we could tried to do the same thing here. While it wasn't completely a success, it did not completely fail either. We finally ended up doing activities after class, on the rooftop. The students could choose between 4 different activities to do (Pictionnary, Scattergories, Riddles or a "In my suitcase I bring..." type of activity). They had difficulties staying in their teams and they were rushed a lot (Mr. Tong only gave them 10 minutes to try to do all 4 activities), but they seem to enjoy it a lot. We also had English Ambassadors (students from form 4 and 6) to help us who were rewarded with bags of candy. They were also very happy because I don't think that they usually received rewards for helping out as it is part what they must do all the time.

Juanita explaining the riddles

Mr. Tong wasn't too enthusiastic about the idea at first, especially about doing the activities on the roofs and having them running around and everything. But I think that in the end he was very happy with the result. He also asked us to prepare other activities that will also take place on the roof for when we get back. Maybe they will end up continuing the tradition next year!

Ame: Easter's coming!

Ok, so as the blog organizer, I totally failed at writing this thing. Teaching, planning, correcting, extra-curricular activities and visiting have taken up all of my time in the past weeks. I also prefer writing in my own journal when I'm on the train, on the way to or from school. Anyways, I thought this blog would be to write about my culture shock, how I miss home, how teaching is so different and so hard, and so on, but so far, none of this has happened! The only thing missing here is people from home and life would be perfect!

Last time I wrote here, I was still observing. I have been teaching ever since then. I much prefer teaching than observing. My first impressions from the observation week have turned out to be really accurate. The hardest part is teaching my form 1s because I only see them 1 hour per week. Their regular teacher is not helping me either. She talks with them in Cantonese and laughs at their jokes while I'm trying to teach. One time she was even reading the newspaper in the middle of the class while I was trying my hardest to get their attention. I have tried tips and strategies from Mr. Howden but it didn't really work. Why would they listen to me when their teacher doesn't even seem to respect me? They are still nice kids though, always very happy to see me. They are not very good in English so I have to put pictures for just about everything because they don't understand half of what they read. That took some adjustments, and I'm still adjusting, but I think that this morning worked well (I showed them a bunch of videos to explain new vocabulary words).

My form 4s works really well, but I find it to be the most boring of my three groups. That is because I need to follow the book and we did a lot of grammar lately because they had a uniform quiz on grammar and reading comprehension. The things that they learn are so not useful and their tests are crazy. They need to find the information from 4 or 5 different sources to build a text and they need to word it almost exactly like the sample result. There is also a huge difference in their level of English within the same classroom even though they are supposed to be at the same level. This makes things a bit harder too. I try as much as I can to give them a lot of visual support (this helps them a lot) and to incorporate some games or use fun topics in their writing assignments. I find that my CT babies them a bit too much though. She keeps giving them almost all the answers before they have even started. For their text, she gave them the beginning of all the paragraphs and they only had to complete the sentences and add a few things. I wonder what they will do in their uniform test when they have to do everything by themselves!

My form 6s are the best. They are so good even though they don't think they are. I have conversations with some of them for hours after class. I went out for lunch with some of them, which was really fun. I am also bringing half of the class to Ocean Park with me during the Easter break! I would've taken all of them but we could only bring so many... I like this class a lot because I can do almost what I want with them. We have watched a bunch of movies with discussion questions and writing and speaking assignments. I have also tried something that I found at SPEAQ, and it worked pretty well. Today, I have just started a project with them on teen drug use in Hong Kong. It seemed to interest them a lot. The only thing that bothered me is that I wanted them to do a movie over a couple of classes but my CT told me that they would do it during the Easter break. I didn't want to give them any homework because they already have so many, and I wanted this to be fun. I was really disappointed with that. Anyways, I hope they still enjoy it. This is my favourite class and I will miss them so much when it will be time to leave! I have created a bond with a lot of them, as I talk to them a lot outside of class. I can't wait to go to Ocean Park with them! It will be only me and Juanita (and Mr. Tong) with 22 students (5 of her form 4s, 2 of mine and 15 of my form 6s). It will be great!

So far, I like my experience a lot. I wouldn't mind staying a bit longer and I'm sure it will be hard when the time to say goodbye will come. It is funny to say, but when we came back from Mainland China this weekend, I surprised myself when I said "Ah! Finally home!" because now, Hong Kong really feels like home (with a few people missing, of course!)

Russ: Weeks 3-5 (Getting in the Swing)

Well, it didn't take long for me to fail at writing in this thing every Sunday. The drop-off in output was partially due to an illness and my need to deal with a personal issue back home, but the dust is starting to settle on that and I'm regaining my excitement for being here. It's simply hard to ignore that I'm living the opportunity of a lifetime and I can't waste a single second not enjoying it to the fullest extent of my ability.

A temporary cold led to me wearing this for a few days.

For the last 3 weeks, I have been teaching my grade 6 and grade 2 classes with something resembling regularity. I've missed some periods due to them having exams or me having to take part in other activities (like Easter Fun Days, where we performed in a drama, danced, led workshops, etc.), but I have definitely stepped up the level of responsibility from the observation period I talked about in my last post.

I simply love to teach these students. Their dedication to learning, coupled with the level of love and respect they show me on a daily basis has made teaching them an absolute pleasure. They are so inquisitive and have so many interesting questions to ask me every day. I've struck a balance with them where I have their respect and attention while I'm teaching them, but then I can go to the playground at lunchtime and play basketball with the older ones or have the little ones climb all over me.

Our school's principal, our supervisor, and all the Canadian primary teachers during Easter Fun Days

They are so in awe over us for being so different from what they're used to. The students at our school, in particular, have spent a large portion of their lives within the confines of their small area of the city. For most of them, we might be the only western people they've ever seen. More specifically, I'm probably the biggest and most bearded person that they have ever encountered. The interesting thing is that while most adults I encounter seem to stare at me and look uncomfortable, the majority of the children just latch right on and want to know everything about me. I wish sometimes that adults could treat meeting people from distant cultures with the same wonderment and excitement that these children do.

Teaching here is completely different from back home. We follow a pretty set routine and schedule of pre-determined units and lessons here, without much variance. The students are very set in their routines and it's often more conducive to learning to adapt to their regimen, rather than attempting to reinvent the wheel. It's nice to insert some Canadian flavour in every once in awhile, but I feel like this experience is helping me become much more flexible in my teaching and I think I'll be a lot better for it. It helps that the other teachers and support staff are so completely helpful. I can't imagine a better group of people to work with.

The crowd on the way to mainland China for massages!

Sightseeing hasn't been as intense as it was in our first couple of weeks, but we have still seen our fair share of interesting things. We wandered around the city center with the grand-niece of our benefactor, visited some more markets, ate at several exotic restaurants, and even took a day-trip into mainland China to experience a real-deal massage for next to nothing (2 hours for approximately $25 Canadian). The adventures are likely to pick up again shortly, as we are about to embark on a week and a half of vacation!

More fun to come soon!