Science Museum Trip

Yesterday I joined the K2's on a trip to the Hong Kong Science Museum in Tsim Sha Tsui. It's really not a bad museum at all! There are a lot of hands-on exhibitions and lots of different displays. At first when we arrived I just had to herd the kids around the electronics sections. I think they were a little young to understand anything but they got to try the exhibits.

We then met one of the staff from the museum and he gave the kids a talk about something or other... Was very boring for me. After a while I wandered off and amused myself trying out some of the other hands on stuff. Realised I do quite like science museums, I should find myself a kid so I can go again hehe.

After the boring talks the children got to play again- this time with bigger exhibits like bubble makers, a train wheel game, and a tip-toe game. Some more of the pictures are on flickr.

Primary School Trip

The other Monday (23rd) all the K2's got loaded onto a bus and taken to the Taoist Primary School for an open day kinda thing, so they can see what Primary School will be like. It wasn't particularly very interesting for me since everything was in cantonese and I never get told what's going on...

The K2's were first herded into a classroom with their parents, and the headteacher talked to them for aaaages. Then they got to walk around the corridors just as the other children were coming out for break. Such a bad idea- the big primary kids were just knocking over my poor tiny K2's! They looked so scared! After that they were taken to the IT room and got to have a go on the computers. Here's Hei Hei:

To finish off the day there were some musical performances by the primary children. One group played the handbells (very nice but a bit boring for Kindergarten kids) and then the other group sang the "Hey Mr Postman" song hehe.

Can you see that picture of Confuscious or whoever it is? It's so scary!

I have another trip today, this time to the science museum in Tsim Sha Tsui. This sounds a bit more interesting but no doubt we'll have to rush through everything so we can be back in time for lunch.

Oops!

Haven't written in ages! Everything is great here. Been doing a lot of salsa (4 times in 7 days! And I bought proper dancing shoes so I can finally dance with worrying about my shoes flying off or hurting after an hour.), did some work at a learning centre (earned half a month's wages in just one weekend), and been packing a box to ship back to England. Seriously can't believe I only have 2 weeks left here. 2 weeks!!! Can't even begin to describe how I feel about leaving.

This week at school I'm going to be giving the kids little parties in their english lessons. For their first lesson (they get 2 a week) they'll be decorating party hats, and then the fun and games will be in the second lesson. I've already done one lesson, with the worst behaved of my classes, and they coloured the hats beautifully! I'll be taking a lot of pictures of the party, and I want to get pictures of the whole class with me too.

Next week I'll be having a lot of farewell things. This Friday will be my last Plus group meeting. Next Thursday I'm having a meal with my colleagues Ms. Man, Ms. Wendy and Ms. Pat, Friday I'll be going out for Joel's birthday with all the gappers, Saturday will be my last salsa class, and Sunday will be my goodbye meal with Jo. Will also be fitting in a meal with Sam hopefully, and a last girls' (girl's?) group meeting too.

Gotta dash but will update again soon!

Phil Jupitus -- Category 3 Sighting pt 2

Phil Jupitus -- Category 2 Spiders and Category 3 pt 1

Phil Jupitus -- Category 1 Spiders

Australia

In 4 weeks time I will have landed in Perth!! I've just finished booking all my flights and I've only got to find somewhere to stay in Sydney.

My itinerary looks something like this:

• Monday 21st July- fly to Perth via Singapore
• Friday 25th July- fly to Melbourne
• Saturday 2nd August- fly to Sydney
• Sunday 10th August- fly to Brisbane
• Thursday 14th August- fly back to Perth via Sydney
• Wednesday 20th August- fly back to Hong Kong

Hmm... that's a lot of flying haha. My carbon footprint this year will be huuuuuuge! I was going to go by train to Sydney but it takes 11 hours or something, whereas the flight is only an hour and a half.

I'm planning on going skydiving (Melbourne) and scubadiving (Brisbane), salsa dancing (everywhere), wine tasting (Perth), the Neighbours tour (Melbroune) and rock climbing (Perth? Need to check that out...) as well as doing all the sightseeing. I'm so excited!!

A Pizza Hut

Here's one of my classes singing A Pizza Hut. You might want to turn the volume down unless you want to be deafened by my very out of tune singing!

It's a mystery!

I have a very strange rash on one of my arms which appeared this morning when I got to school. It starts on my hand and spreads all the way up my forearm, it looks like red dots but they're not raised and it's not itchy but the skins really sensitive. I have no idea what caused it but I'm a bit worried because it hasn't disappeared or lessened yet. Of course, reading up on strange diseases isn't helping at all! I'm relieved it's not hand, foot and mouth disease though. Any ideas? I'm going to the doctor's later to see what he says. The deputy Ms. Wong (not so helpfully) just put Mopiko bite cream on it which only made it burn! I'm my own medical mystery heehee.

I Wanna Love You

If you look in the sidebar to the right you should be able to hear a track that's been in my head all week. It's a cover of Akon's I Wanna Love You by Pablo Bachata ft. M. Sosa. It's a bachata song and it's my fave to dance to.

I've been dancing twice this week already- I went to my regular class at the Cosmopolitan Hotel on Saturday and then on Tuesday I went to a class at Sugar in Lan Kwai Fong. The class at Sugar was run by the same guy who does mine but he did it at a much faster pace, and there were a lot more complicated moves to learn. Oh- and Javid the DJ put me on the guest list so I didn't have to pay...yay! I had a LOT of fun, and Javid reckons I've really improved. There were a lot of more experienced dancers who turned up for the party after the lesson at Sugar. One guy was just too good for me! It was a fast song anyway but he did everything really quickly and he was doing a lot of moves I'd never done before. There were a few times and we got out arms tangled which made us laugh. I taught Edmund a bachata (to the track above actually)... and I say taught but it's pretty easy to pick up. Left, right, left, kick...right, left, right, kick.

Not really been doing much else this week. It was the flea market a church on Sunday, and I think we raised about £1000! I should be going to salsa again on Saturday if my budget allows. I'm down to $800 now :( I'm going to cover for Jules in a couple of weeks at his learning centre. They pay him $2000 for 8 hours!! Such easy money!

Love Your Neighbour

It's been a wet week. Last weekend was apparently the wettest since 1972... or so a friend of a friend says. I haven't been so lucky with the weather here- it reached 40 degress Celcius in the summer (admittedly, before I arrived but it was still hot when I got here!), we had the longest and coldest winter, and then we had 3 days solid of black rain.

On Saturday at the Asiaworld Expo arena there was a Love Your Neighbour Celebration event. The band from my church, the Vine, were playing and they asked us all to help out in whatever way they needed us too. I thought I'd go along with Anthony, who works at Crossroads, and some of his colleagues because he was driving there. The expo arena is right next to the airport on Lantau Island and none of us realised that the bridge to the airport was closed because of the black rain. We get stuck in a biiig traffic jam for ages until we could turn off and park at the MTR station in Tsing Yi.

We get the train to the arena and although we're late everything was good. My job was to usher people in and try and get them to fill the rows of seats. It started really late because all the coaches busing people in got caught in the traffic jams. There was some grea worship- with songs both in English and chinese because it was mostly local and mainland chinese people there. Reinhard Bonke gave a great talk, which was interpreted hilariously by some guy on stage with him. Loads and loads of people became Christians which is fantastic. Here is a video of Reinhard Bonke in Africa with hundreds of thousands of people all coming to hear him, it's amazing!

We get the train back to Tsing Yi and Anthony starts driving us back. It was really, really late and poor Anthony got a bit confused and instead of following the signs for Tuen Mun, he follows the sings for the airport which means we're driving back the way we've just come on the MTR! And of course there's no way to turn around. So it takes us an hour to get to the airport to turn around and get back to Tsing Yi so we can finally take the right turning for Tuen Mun! By the time I get back (after taking a taxi from the Gold Coast) it's 2:00am.

Sunday evening after church some of us went out for a meal for Julian's birthday- Jo, Joel, Julian, Dorothy, and 2 other of Julian's friends plus me. We found a nice indian restaurant in Causeway Bay which wasn't too expensive. (My budget is extremely tight this month) We were going to go karaokeing after and we drove to this place but it was really expensive. Jo and me called it a night and the others decided to go and do karaoke in Yuen Long.

Monday was a bank holiday "day after the dragon boat racing holiday" or something like that. They're very literal with their translations sometimes! I didn't see any of the racing because it's in places like Stanley a million miles away. Anyway I spent Monday sorting out all the donations our plus group has received for the flea market next weekend. We've got some really good stuff! We've got a brand new designer brief case worth over £200, brand cosmetics and perfumes still wrapped in plastic, a swarovski necklace worth £75, a Louis Vuitton wallet worth over £200... and then there's all the junk people just needed an excuse to get rid of. Me and Paulina had the lucky job of sorting through all the clothes we'd been given. It took fooorrreeevvver. But we did it! I'm really looking forward to the flea market (...or jumble sale...) on Sunday! We're trying to raise $1'000'000 for Care for Children.

Yesterday I went to the travel agents with Cat and got my ticket home booked! It's been such a pain trying to get the school to do it. They kept telling me Jo's school were doing it, then they told me I had to be on the same flight, then that our flights had to cost the same, then I could only fly within my contract period, until finally I emailed Patrick and they agreed I could have the flight when I needed it. Thank you. I'm flying HK-Heathrow-Manchester on the 22nd August, landing on the 23rd. That's 14 hours worth of flights!

Ooooh I should tell you about the movies I saw on Friday. Me and Jo went to go and see Narnia 2 or Prince Caspian (whatever it's called) and it is fantastic/amazing/incredible etc... it's really very good! You should all go and see it! After Narnia we went straight in to Sex and the City with Mandy and her friend. Not quite the same as Narnia haha... still pretty good. There's some bits that are just really frustrating (why aren't you looking for your phone?!!, just read your emails!) or just really awful ("Samantha we think you look great even if you are fat but are you happy?" ...read: you can't be fat and happy...)! Oh and the black girl is just such a racial stereotype. Apart from that it was OK!

7 weeks and counting!

It's nearly the end of the year! Nearly time to go to Australia! Everything is winding down now at school, or I am anyway. The K3's will be "graduating" at the end of the month and we get a 4 day weekend. Each year the school organise holidays for the staff- it was Taiwan, Thailand, and China. Except the Taiwan one got canclled so they've arranged for a 2 day trip to Disney with a stay in the hotel. I put my name down for the Disney trip because it's free. The Thailand trip would have cost me a couple of thousand dollars because you only get a $1500 voucher and you pay the rest. The china trip is free too but the visa to get in the China would have cost me $800! That's double what I paid before! So 2 days in Disneyland... I hope I don't have to stay with the other teachers all the time otherwise I'll be so bored.

Haven't been doing a great deal lately. Last weekend I went to salsa as normal at the Nooch bar, but the regular instructor was away and there were only 3 of us in the lesson. There was this other guy there who was a really good dancer and he took me to the Jubilee bar, near Lan Kwai Fong. Omg I saw soo many amazing dancers there! It was a bit intimidating at first, but i had a few dances and was fine. When you dance with the good people they don't mind telling you where you're going wrong- I spent one dance just doing the basic back and forward step because I couldn't get it right. Or the guy didn't think I could. I met Joel and Dan later on in LKF and we went to a few bars and clubs.

On Sunday Lauren and Marty arranged a junk boat trip. Lauren won the raffle at the Canadian Chamber of Commerce ball for the trip so she invited all the Vine people who helped out- me, Jo, and Lynette- as well as her brother and sister-in-law, Anthony and Esther from the Beijing mission trip, and Gabrielle, Skip and Kathryn. We all had a really good time. The driver (sailor?) took us to a small cove thing Lamma Island. We got to jump in and swim to the beach, where we explored the little rock pools and looked for pretty shells. The water was really clean and warm. I've put the pictures up on flickr now. Baby Zara came along (Lauren and Marty's little one) and Anthony took this adorable picture of us:

We all brought along some food so we had a feast on board, and the weather was fantastic. A great day methinks!

I don't got no bellybutton :(

I love Veggietales!!

Crybaby

I've made another kid cry today...seems to be happening a lot lately! I have a Naughty Chair at the front of the class with me and it's mostly just a threat- the children hate being made to sit there. The first time I made a boy cry was because he was turning around repeatedly and playing with toys on a shelf behind him, I told him to pay attention like 10 times, and when he didn't I told him to sit in the Naughty Chair. But he wouldn't move. I told him quite a few times and I was getting really, really annoyed. Still wouldn't go and sit there. So I made him stand up and put his chair next to the Naughty Chair and told him to choose which one. And then he cried... haha. I did feel really guilty after.

Today I was finishing the lesson by doing the hokey cokey. Instead of running into the middle, that would be a nightmare, we all put our hands in the middle together and then lift them up again. It's much more fun that it sounds! We were doing that anyway and one boy, G, (who is such a spoilt brat, so naughty and manipulative) decided to slap my hand. Ooo he was in trouble then! I told him that was not a good thing to do and that he had to go and sit in the Naughty Chair for hitting me. Of course, he just stood there and refused to budge. I told him again, and then the class teacher saw and she told him... so he went and sat down and then burst into tears. Bless him. I just found it funny though- he knew he shouldn't have hit me. After we finished the song I asked him to say sorry " sowwy mi junny" and told him he could go and sit back in his seat. But he said no. So he sat there while we sang another song, still crying.

Oh, I think my star pupil in that class is interpreting what I'm saying to some of the slower children. I was explaining to 2 children how to race some "dragon boats" (toilet roll tubes on string- decorated like dragon boats of course) and they weren't really understanding, and I was showing them how to hold the string tight, and I realised that M was telling them how to do it in cantonese. And I've seen him do it before when I ask a question they don't understand... Now that I've noticed I bet he's been doing it for a while. Hmm...

Just becoming a little obsessed...