Preparing for the First Day of School

Hey, we've been off for two and a half months! It's hard to go from doing nothing to lesson planning. Our apartment got really clean last semester because we found that a great way to procrastinate was to clean. I was further challenged yesterday cause it was stormy and threatening rain all afternoon.

I am happy to report that we've both made it to our computers to start preparing. Unfortunately, there's a lot of files to be organized first and then there's the perfect music to play in the background and then there's this blog to write...

Laziness is...

“Deep summer is when laziness finds respectability.” – Sam Keen

Since our return from Hong Kong, we have done very little and only move when absolutely necessary. We stay up late. I sleep in. Don catches up on documentaries. When I get up, we watch more tv from the Internet. Periodically, I get hooked on a series and watch it for hours on end. It’s a great way to watch tv really, no waiting for the next week or the Fall season.

We’ve been on vacation since the middle of June. This has been our routine except for the few days we traveled. We had great plans. We would travel lots. We would prep for next semester. I wanted to study Mandarin from the books, cds and flashcards I have. But then laziness took over.

Traveling by ourselves turned out to be a lot more than we had bargained for. Then there was the money issue. Teaching English is not a lucrative career choice.

The hot days here make it uncomfortable to go outside much so we wait till evenings. It leaves us very unmotivated. That’s our excuse and we’re sticking to it.

It’s also been very quiet in our building. Rob, Don and I are the only teachers in the building over the summer. All the others have either left for good or will return for the next semester. Mr. Hou, the caretaker, is the only other person in this 5 floor, 20 unit building. For the two weeks we were gone, Rob pretty well had the place to himself. We had talked about playing some kind of drinking / bowling game in the empty hallways but then the laziness set in.

Luckily school starts again on August 28^th. I still don’t know if I have classes on that day yet. They’ll tell me next week. Don already knows his schedule and will have a busy day on Thursday, his busiest of the week. We’re looking forward to getting back to teaching and reminding the students what English sounds like. It’s highly unlikely that the majority of them practiced at all during the summer.

Our contract here is up at the end of January and what we do next is up for discussion. I’ve got to get back to the couch now. J xoxo

p.s. If anyone out there has any suggestions on what we should do next, we're open to your advice.

June's Photos

My video on Day 1 in HK.






Some of my other photos from Nanjing and HK:

http://www.new.facebook.com/album.php?aid=35804&l=c89ba&id=571108357

http://www.new.facebook.com/album.php?aid=35810&l=eac53&id=571108357

Don's Photos

Here are some links to Don's photos on Facebook for those of you who aren't on that yet:

Don’s Photos from Hong Kong

http://www.new.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2006586&l=5b777&id=1013962974

Don’s Photos from Nanjing

http://www.new.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2006585&l=69255&id=1013962974

Don’s Photos from Qingdao

http://www.new.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2006584&l=c2204&id=1013962974

Don’s Photos from BBQ

http://www.new.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2006583&l=a34f0&id=1013962974

Don’s Photos of Flowers.

http://www.new.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2004351&l=3057b&id=1013962974

Hong Kong - Day 6

We had hoped to go to Macau but there were threats of heavy rain and thunderstorms. So we spent our last day wandering to a cool neighbourhood on the HK side called SoHo, took the Mid-Levels Escalator, a covered escalator that takes you 800m up the hill comfortably. It’s the longest in the world. As we made our way back, I wanted to find the Golden Bauhinia statue. We had to cut through the HK Convention and Exhibition Centre to find it. After we finally found the statue, we couldn’t figure out how to get back to the metro station. At the suggestion of the security guard I asked, we boarded a shuttle bus. So we got on the next one and soon found ourselves surrounded by people who had just attended the baby products expo with their arms filled with goodies. Don and I pretended to fit in. THAT was hilarious.

Ironically, in one of the most connected cities we’ve been to, we had trouble getting on the Internet. Since everyone had their own computers, Cyber places were hard to find.

We even got a bonus of watching the opening ceremonies of the Olympics with English coverage. It meant though that we didn’t get much sleep since we had to leave for the airport very early the next day.

Final Thoughts on HK

We loved it! Everything about it was better than we could have expected, even in the rain and humidity. We made our way around the city easily and enjoyed the places we visited. I got lots of practice speaking Cantonese. There were western toilets. Yippee! People queued up for buses. We weren’t pushed or shoved much. There was little to no spitting loudly. Crossing the street was not an adventure. The food was amazing! We won’t bore you with the play by play but know that we ate well and we were very very happy!

Hong Kong - Day 5

I got to call my parents. The hostel sold cheap long distance cards so I talked to my parents and chatted for awhile before heading out. For $7 Cdn, I could talk to them for 200 minutes!

We went to go see the Big Buddha. Because of the storm the day before and the possibility that the water was still stormy, we opted to take the subway / train to Lantau Island. We took a local bus that gave us the best tour yet for next to nothing. The route up was winding with lots of incredibly narrow roads with 2 way traffic and switchbacks. The terrain on the island was lush and natural, with homes dotted here and there. A huge difference from the skyscrapers in HK.

The Tian Tan Buddha statue is the world’s largest outdoor seated bronze Buddha statue. We climbed the 260 steps to the top and took in the serenity up there. With the occasional mist rolling by, it was just the right ambience.

On our way back though, I had to check out the outlet mall that was at the subway station. It felt sort of wrong to go from the Buddha to outlet mall shopping but I had to take advantage. I had to laugh at lunch. The food court was filled with different types of good Chinese food. It was funny cause in Canada, there’s always that one or two Chinese food option and here the whole court was Chinese :)

Hong Kong - Day 4

We woke up to a quiet downtown. Earlier, there had been heavy rain and winds but that had died down. We were puzzled by the lack of people and buses on the street. When we walked out around 11 a.m., the stores were closed. We wandered to a nearby mall and found out that there was a typhoon signal no.8 hoisted. Serious stuff. Apparently while we slept, there had been some wind damage and now people were being asked to stay indoors for protection.

So what do the tourists do? I was at the largest mall in HK with over 700 stores but couldn’t shop! This is the busiest closed mall I’ve ever seen. We managed to find food cause the restaurants didn’t close and enjoyed a couple of dry hours in a Starbucks near our hostel thanks to a nice lady at the 7 Eleven.

We found out later that winds of 227 km had been recorded at the monastery we were planning on visiting that day.