Tomorrow we are traveling to mainland China. There won't be internet access so I am not bringing my computer so don't expect another update until at least August 1st. I am actually very excited to be computerless in China... sometimes I feel like we all rely too much on facebook and such to be happy. It will be a nice break.
Today wrapped up the camp at LCK secondary. My class performed the story of Zaccheus and tied for first prize! I was so proud of them. Especially little Zaccheus who was officially the cutest little boy I have ever met. I want to take him home with me.
I will hopefully take lots of pictures in China so I will have lots to share with you when I get back. Keep the prayers coming, we will definitely need them!
I am Hong Kong people.
Today was a great Hong Kong day. After today I feel like if I wanted to, I could move to Hong Kong, teach English, and be happy here for a very long time. I feel like I would even have friends!
I was so nervous going into today because it would be our first time with a classroom full of kids all to ourself, meaning we were not paired up with each other or anything like that. We were given Bible stories to teach our middle school students with the end goal that they would act them out tomorrow at the end of the day. Given the way our drama teaching went last week, I was not looking forward to it. However, it went so well. Not flawless, still a little nerve-wracking, but all in all I am very pleased about how it went and I am actually looking forward to tomorrow. I even had kids volunteer for parts in the play!
After teaching, I went to lunch with the same group of high schoolers that took me out on the town a couple weeks ago. They are still awesome. They invited me and my friends to their volleyball game. It was so much fun! We watched them play a few games, then we went to eat dinner at this awesome restaurant that didn't have any English menus let alone employees that spoke English, so we had to drag one lady outside where there were pictures of food on the windows and point to what we wanted. I think it was my favorite meal I have had here with the exception of the buffet in mainland China. We went back to the volleyball games and played some pick up basketball and just hung out with some people. I legitimately feel like these students are becoming my friends and that I could hang out with them on a regular basis and be fine. It is so cool to have this group of students constant while we are here. We bounce around from school to school and from age group to age group and it feels like we are not able to make any sort of connection with any of the students because we are only working with them for such a short time, but then there are these high schoolers that we keep interacting with outside of school. I love it and I think I am going to miss them most when this is all over.
I was so nervous going into today because it would be our first time with a classroom full of kids all to ourself, meaning we were not paired up with each other or anything like that. We were given Bible stories to teach our middle school students with the end goal that they would act them out tomorrow at the end of the day. Given the way our drama teaching went last week, I was not looking forward to it. However, it went so well. Not flawless, still a little nerve-wracking, but all in all I am very pleased about how it went and I am actually looking forward to tomorrow. I even had kids volunteer for parts in the play!
After teaching, I went to lunch with the same group of high schoolers that took me out on the town a couple weeks ago. They are still awesome. They invited me and my friends to their volleyball game. It was so much fun! We watched them play a few games, then we went to eat dinner at this awesome restaurant that didn't have any English menus let alone employees that spoke English, so we had to drag one lady outside where there were pictures of food on the windows and point to what we wanted. I think it was my favorite meal I have had here with the exception of the buffet in mainland China. We went back to the volleyball games and played some pick up basketball and just hung out with some people. I legitimately feel like these students are becoming my friends and that I could hang out with them on a regular basis and be fine. It is so cool to have this group of students constant while we are here. We bounce around from school to school and from age group to age group and it feels like we are not able to make any sort of connection with any of the students because we are only working with them for such a short time, but then there are these high schoolers that we keep interacting with outside of school. I love it and I think I am going to miss them most when this is all over.
Long Week!!!
This last week was intensely busy! I finally have time to sit down and update you all about all we have done lately.
Mon/Tues
These were the GEOs last 2 days in Hong Kong so we helped out with a 2 day program right here at the primary school we are staying in. It is so nice to be able to wake up, roll out of bed, and walk down stairs and be right at our destination. I was in the music room teaching songs about David and Goliath. It was really fun. We were working with 3rd or 4th grade students which I think is my favorite age group that we've worked with thus far. I like them because they aren't afraid to talk to you for the most part and their English level is very impressive for their age which definitely says a lot about this particular primary school and its teachers and what an awesome job they are doing.
Monday night we got to travel into mainland China, just for fun. We went to a giant mall to practice our bartering skills. I think I did alright, I bought a watch for $80HK (about $10US) but she started out at $350HK and I got her down to 80 so I'd call that a success. I also bought a beautiful oil painting of downtown Hong Kong for $40HK (or $5US) and I can't remember what that painting started at, but it was higher than $150HK. I really enjoyed bartering. For dinner that night we went to a real Chinese buffet. It is my favorite meal I have eaten this trip. The buffet was never ending, I don't think I ever saw all the food. I just kept getting side tracked by the chocolate fountain.
Wed-Fri
This was our first real challenge. Without the GEOs we had to come up with all our lesson plans and everything on our own. I miss our 3 GEOs so much! Each of these 3 days we had to commute over to a secondary school on Hong Kong island (an hour and a half commute both ways) and we ran a camp for middle school students to get them excited about attending that particular school. The camp was on the fruits of the spirit, but I'm pretty sure we were the ones getting to really understand the meaning of the fruits, especially PATIENCE and SELF CONTROL. Wednesday was such a frustrating and discouraging day because we showed up with our detailed lesson plans and positive mental attitudes only to find out that there was a communication block and just about everything we had planned wouldn't work. I was leading the drama room, along with Luke, and I think we really had to adapt and be okay with throwing out our well-planned out lessons and just being flexible. Wednesday night was definitely a low point but we bounced back and the rest of the week was great. It was still very challenging because we were dealing with middle schoolers with an extremely low English level, who were very shy, and didn't really seem to want anything to do with us, but I think overall we did our best and hopefully the school saw a boost in their enrollment.
This weekend is going to be awesomely relaxing because we have nothing at all to do (except some planning). We will just be hanging out and enjoying some nice rain from the TYPHOON! Don't worry it's not a real typhoon anymore.
As promised, here are some pictures!
Mon/Tues
These were the GEOs last 2 days in Hong Kong so we helped out with a 2 day program right here at the primary school we are staying in. It is so nice to be able to wake up, roll out of bed, and walk down stairs and be right at our destination. I was in the music room teaching songs about David and Goliath. It was really fun. We were working with 3rd or 4th grade students which I think is my favorite age group that we've worked with thus far. I like them because they aren't afraid to talk to you for the most part and their English level is very impressive for their age which definitely says a lot about this particular primary school and its teachers and what an awesome job they are doing.
Monday night we got to travel into mainland China, just for fun. We went to a giant mall to practice our bartering skills. I think I did alright, I bought a watch for $80HK (about $10US) but she started out at $350HK and I got her down to 80 so I'd call that a success. I also bought a beautiful oil painting of downtown Hong Kong for $40HK (or $5US) and I can't remember what that painting started at, but it was higher than $150HK. I really enjoyed bartering. For dinner that night we went to a real Chinese buffet. It is my favorite meal I have eaten this trip. The buffet was never ending, I don't think I ever saw all the food. I just kept getting side tracked by the chocolate fountain.
Wed-Fri
This was our first real challenge. Without the GEOs we had to come up with all our lesson plans and everything on our own. I miss our 3 GEOs so much! Each of these 3 days we had to commute over to a secondary school on Hong Kong island (an hour and a half commute both ways) and we ran a camp for middle school students to get them excited about attending that particular school. The camp was on the fruits of the spirit, but I'm pretty sure we were the ones getting to really understand the meaning of the fruits, especially PATIENCE and SELF CONTROL. Wednesday was such a frustrating and discouraging day because we showed up with our detailed lesson plans and positive mental attitudes only to find out that there was a communication block and just about everything we had planned wouldn't work. I was leading the drama room, along with Luke, and I think we really had to adapt and be okay with throwing out our well-planned out lessons and just being flexible. Wednesday night was definitely a low point but we bounced back and the rest of the week was great. It was still very challenging because we were dealing with middle schoolers with an extremely low English level, who were very shy, and didn't really seem to want anything to do with us, but I think overall we did our best and hopefully the school saw a boost in their enrollment.
This weekend is going to be awesomely relaxing because we have nothing at all to do (except some planning). We will just be hanging out and enjoying some nice rain from the TYPHOON! Don't worry it's not a real typhoon anymore.
As promised, here are some pictures!
Many many tours!
I spent all day Thursday touring around Hong Kong with my group of secondary students. It was awesome! Such a long day, but so much fun. I hope they didn't think I was too lame because by the end of the day I was totally beat and I think they could have kept going on for hours... I left around 8:30am and didn't get back until 10pm. During that time I got to see a little bit about each part of Hong Kong. We went to the island (where the city is) and shopped a bit and wandered around the city until lunch. We ate lunch at this place in what seemed like an sketchy alley, but my group assured me that the food was famous. So I ordered something without actually fully knowing what it was, and they brought me something that closely resembled Ramen. but really really good and authentic Ramen. The lady didn't speak English, but she brought me chopsticks and a fork and when I took the chopsticks and not the fork she was very impressed. She kept coming back and patting me on the back for using my chopsticks so well, and apparently told my students that I was very smart. It was exciting! I feel like it was my initiation into the Proficient Chopstick Users Worldwide club. We should get shirts. After lunch we went over to Kowloon to the Space museum, which was entertaining to say the least, and then we watched an IMAX movie about the Grand Canyon. I thought it was hilarious that they took me to watch a Grand Canyon movie while in Hong Kong, and they kept apologizing because they thought it was very boring, but I thought it was pretty cool. I even spotted some Wilderness River Adventure boats!! I got to see the beautiful harbor that you see in every picture of Hong Kong ever. I promise I'll post pictures up soon, I just haven't had a chance to hook up my camera in a while. But rest assured my next post will be mostly photos!
Yesterday we also got to go sight-seeing, this time we were taken out by Ken and it was just team USA. I saw a lot of the same stuff, but this time we had a private bus so it was much less walking. The best part was going up to The Peak and seeing the city at night. It was completely gorgeous.
Yesterday we also got to go sight-seeing, this time we were taken out by Ken and it was just team USA. I saw a lot of the same stuff, but this time we had a private bus so it was much less walking. The best part was going up to The Peak and seeing the city at night. It was completely gorgeous.
it takes different strokes to move the world
I had an amazing day today. Singing and jumping and being overly enthusiastic in front of 600 middle school Chinese students was incredible. Some might even say life changing. I am so exhausted now but also incredibly energized. On the way home from the YMCA camp that we were working at I took a private bus with the rest of Team USA back to our home. On the way home at a stop light, the bus pulled up next to a truck with 2 little boys in the back seat. The younger of the two boys was staring out the window and he caught my eye. Seeing that I was American he started enthusiastically waving and hitting his brother to get his attention so that he could see the bus full of Americans too. We stick out like a sore thumb and everybody notices us. At the camp the braver of the kids cannot wait to get a chance to talk with us because we speak the language that they so desperately need to learn in order to be considered successful in this culture. It is such a weird feeling, especially since we have done nothing to attract their attention- we are just DIFFERENT. It got me thinking. What if we stuck out like at home like we stick out here? Not because we look different or speak a different language or anything physical at all, but simply because we ARE different. What if people noticed us in the United States for our love for each other and our love for Jesus? Isn't that the best evangelism there is?
Fourth of July!
It was quite different celebrating the fourth of July in Hong Kong since, you know, no one celebrates it here... but we woke up (some of us earlier than others) and went to a church service held entirely in Cantonese!! It was so cool! The service followed the same order of service of most Lutheran churches back in the states so we were able to follow along fairly well, plus we had a translator, whom I couldn't hear/understand very well. During the sermon we took the children out to teach them a Bible story in English and sing songs. They were so cute! We mostly just watched as the GEOs taught, but starting next Sunday it will all be on us to lead it entirely since the GEOs are going home for the summer.
After church we ventured over to a giant shopping mall mostly just to get a feel for using the mass transit. Apparently it is a huge mistake to go to any sort of public area on the weekends because that is when EVERYONE goes. It was so crowded, but we found out that it wasn't nearly as bad as usual. I thought it was the most crowded place I'd ever been... but then again I hate crowds. Highlight of the day: the bubble tea. I got mango green flavored (in honor of Meagan, of course) and it had chunks of mango at the bottom. SO much better than Lollicup or Bento! After we got home we began our Independence Day celebration with Pizza Hut! Except even that wasn't too terribly American since one of the pizzas had octopus on it. Needless to say, I didn't eat it. Then the GEOs came over to give us a briefing on teaching ESL and using the mass transit. For those of you who have never visited Hong Kong before, their public transportation system is absolutely incredible, but also absurdly intimidating. To get to many places in HK you have to take 2 or 3 different types, like train, light rail, bus, or cab. It's all very cheap (even the cabs) and you just scan your octopus card to get on. It's super efficient but very confusing. I now have at least 3 different maps and I have been studying so I'm sure I'll pick it up quickly.
Today we started our "work". We went to a Lutheran secondary school in the area to meet our new group of form 6 (equivalent to US 12th grade) students. My team got divided up so we are each in a different group with about 8 Chinese students, the goal being that they would get to talk to us and practice their English because in order to go to a university they must be fluent in English, Cantonese, and Mandarine. My students were awesome. They were so interested in American culture and they loved Michael Jackson. Thursday they are taking me out to some place in Hong Kong for one of their school summer projects. I'm not entirely sure where we are going, they kept telling me it was a secret, although I'm pretty sure they just didn't know how to explain it to me in English. After my team and I all met with our separate teams we wanted to go to lunch (yum cha) so I invited my team to come with us because we weren't familiar with the area or the restaurants. They took us to their favorite Indian restaurant. It was good! I'd never had Indian food before but I liked it! I even tried some of Adam's ox tongue curry, which was absolutely repulsive. Now we are all just hanging out in the common room and we're going to a very fancy restaurant for dinner tonight (the same one we ate at for lunch on the first day) and I'm pretty excited because that place has the most delicious traditional Chinese food ever.
Sunday school
The church
My group!
After church we ventured over to a giant shopping mall mostly just to get a feel for using the mass transit. Apparently it is a huge mistake to go to any sort of public area on the weekends because that is when EVERYONE goes. It was so crowded, but we found out that it wasn't nearly as bad as usual. I thought it was the most crowded place I'd ever been... but then again I hate crowds. Highlight of the day: the bubble tea. I got mango green flavored (in honor of Meagan, of course) and it had chunks of mango at the bottom. SO much better than Lollicup or Bento! After we got home we began our Independence Day celebration with Pizza Hut! Except even that wasn't too terribly American since one of the pizzas had octopus on it. Needless to say, I didn't eat it. Then the GEOs came over to give us a briefing on teaching ESL and using the mass transit. For those of you who have never visited Hong Kong before, their public transportation system is absolutely incredible, but also absurdly intimidating. To get to many places in HK you have to take 2 or 3 different types, like train, light rail, bus, or cab. It's all very cheap (even the cabs) and you just scan your octopus card to get on. It's super efficient but very confusing. I now have at least 3 different maps and I have been studying so I'm sure I'll pick it up quickly.
Today we started our "work". We went to a Lutheran secondary school in the area to meet our new group of form 6 (equivalent to US 12th grade) students. My team got divided up so we are each in a different group with about 8 Chinese students, the goal being that they would get to talk to us and practice their English because in order to go to a university they must be fluent in English, Cantonese, and Mandarine. My students were awesome. They were so interested in American culture and they loved Michael Jackson. Thursday they are taking me out to some place in Hong Kong for one of their school summer projects. I'm not entirely sure where we are going, they kept telling me it was a secret, although I'm pretty sure they just didn't know how to explain it to me in English. After my team and I all met with our separate teams we wanted to go to lunch (yum cha) so I invited my team to come with us because we weren't familiar with the area or the restaurants. They took us to their favorite Indian restaurant. It was good! I'd never had Indian food before but I liked it! I even tried some of Adam's ox tongue curry, which was absolutely repulsive. Now we are all just hanging out in the common room and we're going to a very fancy restaurant for dinner tonight (the same one we ate at for lunch on the first day) and I'm pretty excited because that place has the most delicious traditional Chinese food ever.
Sunday school
The church
My group!
Day 1
First of all let me say that I am completely wiped, so if this post isn't entirely cohesive let's all just agree to chalk it up to jet lag.
This place is incredible. We have been completely submerged in a totally different culture. There's really no easing into it, it's just boom. Culture. We ventured over to the marketplace right across the street from our school and I'm not exaggerating when I say that I did not see a single other white person in the entire place other than our group. We are not by any means in a touristy part of Hong Kong. And the whole "most people speak English in Hong Kong" thing is a blatant lie. They don't. At least not where we are. They do however love interacting with westerners. I feel like a celebrity because children point and yell and stare at us. It's so cute. The GEO missionaries who have been showing us around say that knowing how to speak English is such an asset as far as going to college or getting a job that people will do anything to talk to you or to get you to talk to their kids because they think that if we speak English to them it will rub off or something. I've never been anywhere with such a huge language barrier, but so far no huge problems. Signs clearly state how much everything is, so purchasing things are simple enough. I guess I'll just get used to having to gesture a lot to get people to understand.
So far the food has been great! I am being as adventurous as I can. The great thing about it is when a Chinese person takes you to a meal, they don't expect you to order anything for yourself. Meals are all family style and the host (or the person that invited you to attend the meal) makes all the ordering decisions. This is great because 1. I can't read the menus and 2. I am a horrible orderer. I suffer from post-order regret syndrome. For lunch we went to a very formal traditional Chinese restaurant and got all your traditional Chinese foods, all delicious of course. Dinner was a bit more interesting... we got hot pot. Which is essentially boiling flavored water that you dump raw meat into and then fish it out and eat it. Some stuff was good and some foods were just bizarre. I did try everything though. Except oysters because I hate oysters. Dinner was especially funny because we were on our own without the help of our Chinese hosts. Everyone was staring at us because we were being very entertaining. Especially when they brought out the raw shrimp that still had all its legs, tail, and head including the eyes and whiskers. I just watch Camden, the 8 year old son of Roper and Rachel, and if he tries it and likes it then I know it's safe to try it too. That kid will try ANYTHING.
Ok here are some pictures (there are a few more on Facebook):
HOME
Beach
Lunch
Shrimp before being boiled.
This place is incredible. We have been completely submerged in a totally different culture. There's really no easing into it, it's just boom. Culture. We ventured over to the marketplace right across the street from our school and I'm not exaggerating when I say that I did not see a single other white person in the entire place other than our group. We are not by any means in a touristy part of Hong Kong. And the whole "most people speak English in Hong Kong" thing is a blatant lie. They don't. At least not where we are. They do however love interacting with westerners. I feel like a celebrity because children point and yell and stare at us. It's so cute. The GEO missionaries who have been showing us around say that knowing how to speak English is such an asset as far as going to college or getting a job that people will do anything to talk to you or to get you to talk to their kids because they think that if we speak English to them it will rub off or something. I've never been anywhere with such a huge language barrier, but so far no huge problems. Signs clearly state how much everything is, so purchasing things are simple enough. I guess I'll just get used to having to gesture a lot to get people to understand.
So far the food has been great! I am being as adventurous as I can. The great thing about it is when a Chinese person takes you to a meal, they don't expect you to order anything for yourself. Meals are all family style and the host (or the person that invited you to attend the meal) makes all the ordering decisions. This is great because 1. I can't read the menus and 2. I am a horrible orderer. I suffer from post-order regret syndrome. For lunch we went to a very formal traditional Chinese restaurant and got all your traditional Chinese foods, all delicious of course. Dinner was a bit more interesting... we got hot pot. Which is essentially boiling flavored water that you dump raw meat into and then fish it out and eat it. Some stuff was good and some foods were just bizarre. I did try everything though. Except oysters because I hate oysters. Dinner was especially funny because we were on our own without the help of our Chinese hosts. Everyone was staring at us because we were being very entertaining. Especially when they brought out the raw shrimp that still had all its legs, tail, and head including the eyes and whiskers. I just watch Camden, the 8 year old son of Roper and Rachel, and if he tries it and likes it then I know it's safe to try it too. That kid will try ANYTHING.
Ok here are some pictures (there are a few more on Facebook):
HOME
Beach
Lunch
Shrimp before being boiled.
I made it!
Well we got in to Hong Kong last night around 8:30 (the time difference from home is 12 hours so pretty easy calculation) after the longest day and then some of traveling ever. I got up at 6am on Thursday and went to bed at 11pm on Friday. Ok yes I lost 12 hours in there but still it was painful. The flight to Newark was uneventful, and I was so excited to see NYC because I didn't realize that the Newark airport was literally right across the river from New York. Rebecca and I met up with another boy from our team, Luke and we got lunch and waited for our plane. The flight to Hong Kong was also uneventful but also one of the weirdest experiences ever. We flew over the north pole so the entire flight the sun was bright and shining. Except people were not thrilled when I opened the window shade to look outside because the plane was very dark and they were blinded by the light. So after the 3rd withering stare I received, I stopped trying to peek. I watched quite a few movies: Valentine's Day, Alice in Wonderland, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban and part of Wall-E until I FINALLY fell asleep. We landed in Hong Kong just after the sun had gone down. The city was absolutely stunning to see from the sky. It's huge!!! and then there are random hill/mountains in the middle of huge sky rises. It's so funny. We then proceded through immigration and customs and then met our greeting party.
The school that we are staying in is very large, although as of now I've really only seen the second floor, but no worries there will be pictures to come. I woke up this morning around 5am and was wide awake... stupid time zones. Apparently our agenda today is pretty open: we have a meeting at 8am and then the rest of the day to explore and get accustomed. I hope to take lots of pictures and I'll have them up here sometime soon!
The school that we are staying in is very large, although as of now I've really only seen the second floor, but no worries there will be pictures to come. I woke up this morning around 5am and was wide awake... stupid time zones. Apparently our agenda today is pretty open: we have a meeting at 8am and then the rest of the day to explore and get accustomed. I hope to take lots of pictures and I'll have them up here sometime soon!
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