First Day of School

So the first day of school came and went. It is a completely new schedule for me to get used to. All my specials are in the morning, which I've been used to having specials in the afternoon and using the morning time for academics. My classroom is on the third floor. I have 22 students. 14 boys, 8 girls, and 5 special ed. students with IEPs. This is a new year of teaching for me and I will learn alot with the students. I've never had so much freedom with lesson planning and unit planning and choosing when to teach what subjects. In some ways this is nice, but at the beginning my head is spinning with trying to figure out how to fit in all the subjects with the certain amount of minutes I am supposed to be teaching them. LA is 675 minutes every 6 days. That is alot of Language Arts. The school is on a 6 day schedule too instead of a 5 day schedule. This has my head spinning, too. The students are sweet and today they will be presenting their ME bags, which was their first homework assignment.

Week Of Teacher Meetings

This was my first week of meetings and training. Tina, one of the Mandarin teachers, stayed with me while she was looking for an apartment. I knew Tina from Dongguan, China. At the end of the week, they took new teachers out for an amazing seafood dinner. You can see some pictures of the interesting animals we ate. I had scampi for the first time. It was delicious. The strangest animal was a horseshoe crab. It looked like some animal from the dinosaur days.

The 50th Floor!

So my apartment in Hong Kong is on the 50th floor in a complex called Skytower. It is right next to the old HK airport and very close to Kowloon City. Kowloon City is a unique city, full of Thai, Indian, and Vietnamese restaurants. Great place to get food. I'm about a 5 minute walk to my new school's main campus in To Kwa Wan and a 10 minute minibus ride to the new campus in Shek Kip Mei where I'll be teaching. So far I love being up this high. It is an amazing view. I get to see the sunset over the water and mountains and city. Watching rain fall from this height is very beautiful. The other day I saw a rainbow that was full of promise and hope.

Skytower is considered a luxury apartment place. They have a clubhouse with a swimming pool, exercise equipment, a spa, racket ball, a dance hall. It is very nice and I've been enjoying swimming in the pool and sitting in the massage chairs.:)

The City Church

God is so amazing how He provides. The second day I am in HK, there are internet people ready to set up internet in my apartment. I got an amazing deal and they connected me right away. In China it would have taken sometimes a month even after having paid for internet for it to be connected and for it to start working. Well since I had internet I was able to browse for churches in HK online. Someone had mentioned the City Church. I found one called that with a website located at the YWCA close to where I live in To Kwa Wan. So I went and it was full of South Africans and a few Aussies and Britts. The worship was really free and had me laughing, because people were so free they were dancing. I've included a link to a video you can watch of the worship. You'll see me for a brief moment. Start it 10 minutes into it and watch for about 6 minutes and tell me if it makes you smile.

http://www.ccihk.com/en/media/video/live-video

Moved to HK

So it's been a couple months since I blogged. I've moved to Hong Kong. Technically HK is still China as China owns it, but there is more freedom and this is what I needed at this time. I love China, but needed a break from the suttle oppression of Big Brother. So how is HK freer? Here are a few ways.

1) Freedom on the internet to access Facebook, Blogspot, and Youtube among others.

2) The government is leftover Brittish parliament, a form of democracy.

3) People are allowed to protest the government even Communism openly on the streets.

4) People are allowed religious freedom. There are churches and shrines everywhere unlike mainland.

What are some differences I have noticed?

1) HK is a big bustling city much like NY or London. It has a feeling of a being the London of Asia or as another friend put it NY with a never ending China town.

2) Everything is much smaller and more compact than mainland.

3) People are smaller than mainlanders.

4) More noticable skin problems. I have seen some strange looking moles with several inches of hair growing on people.

5) The elderly and disabled are everywhere. On mainland I didn't see too many elderly. I mostly saw soo many babies.

6) Cantonese food is very different from Chinese food.

7) You can get fined for many different things. There are more structured rules than mainland. I wonder if that is leftover from the Brittish rule?

8) Cars drive on the opposite side of the road. Mainland is like the US when it comes to driving on the right side rather than the left.

So I'm hoping to blog more about my life in HK.