Travel & first day!

What a long journey it's been to get here! Flew from Calgary to Vancouver & then hopped on a plane direct to Hong Kong. I think I watched 4 movies & a handful of tv shows, it was very long :)

Once we arrived in Hong Kong, Hong (my roomate) & I found the desk to buy a ferry ticket to Macau. It was about 7pm at the time and our ferry didn't leave until 10pm. We were told that we could roam the shops & different restaurants in the mean time. But these places were no where to be found! So instead we hung out on some chairs near by that everyone seemed to be hanging out at & waited. Of course as soon as we went through ferry security, we realized where all of the shops were hiding! Darn! The ferry ride from Hong Kong to Macau is about 45 min & is a choppy, nauseating experience. I hope to go on it during the day time soon to visit Andrew Rizkalla (a friend from high school living in Hong Kong). Maybe it will make me less sick in the day time!! It was really neat though to drive into Macau, seeing all of the lights from the casinos that line the waterfront.

We collected our bags once in Macau (not going to lie, was a little worried they wouldn't show up... they made a long journey & a couple of transfers to get to Macau. However, they have a very efficient system for the travel & I was happy because I didn't have to carry my bags!) Immigration is quite laxed. You go up to a window with an immigration officer, they stamp your passport, you get your bags, no questions asked.

Helen & Virginia (our school liaisons) met us at the exit of the ferry terminal. Two very sweet ladies. Helen is actually from Calgary but lives here with her husband, John who is a professor at the University of Calgary. We had to get into two separate cabs because their trunks are unbelievably small & jammed packed with car cleaning supplies. Their cars were very clean indeed. The cabbie strapped my biggest bag into the trunk, half hanging out, we got in the back & headed on our way. For future reference M & D if you're reading, the cab from the airport to my place was about $31 MOP, a bit more because he got lost. but works out to be about $5 CDN.

I haven't quite got myself oriented yet as to where our appt is with reference to everything else, but I do know that where we live is very separate from the touristy, casino areas. The contrast is quite extreme from the tourist spots to where most locals live, but still very nice. Once we got to our place, we dragged our luggage up the flights of stairs (& probably woke everyone up in the entire complex), unpacked, watched a little tv (there are a couple of English channels!!), and then tried to go to bed. I initially thought that the appt was really quiet, but soon learned the truth. Noise travels like crazy in this complex & especially in the hallways. You can constantly hear conversations in the hallways or the dog barking upstairs. I think I forgot my earplugs, so I need to go & get some soon. Needless to say, we didn't sleep very well & I think I only got about 2 hrs of sleep that night.

The next day, Helen & Virginia came to get ourselves & Stephen (he's from Calgary but is currently completing his BSc at Lethbridge University). We walked around our area a bit, while Helen & Virginia pointed out various spots. We eventually made it to the school that we will be teaching at, although I have no idea how to get there. The area is very nice, filled with 500 yr old Portuguese buildings, & cobblestone roads & sidewalks. Our school is attached to a Catholic school, and attached to them on the other side is an Old age home. Helen said that these churches are responsible for taking care of both the young & old. At this point, I am unsure as to whether or not this is true of all of the campuses (there are a total of 6 I believe), but we are to visit a couple of more on Monday, so I will see then.

Once at the school, Hong & I met with all of the primary English teachers & dove right on into what we will be doing. I will be with Primary 1 (basically grade 1), and their teacher is Ann Woo, handling the reading comprehension side of things (starting in March). I have a textbook and am expected to follow the structure of it while adding in different activities here & there. Hong will basically be doing the same thing but with Grade 2. We also were thrown into a whirlwind of activities that they want us to do throughout the month of February. It begins with an intro of ourselves Monday morning, prayers in English & a whole school activity. Not sure what we will do for that. The school is quite small, most classes are only 15 students, grade 5 being the largest with over 35 students. Some of the things that we will be doing in February are storytelling with the various groups, English camps with grade 3 & 4, and the school's English festival/parade to showcase all of their progress in English thus far. In addition to learning English, the students also have Mandarin & Portuguese classes focussing on the same areas, Reading Comprehension, listening, speaking & writing. Amazing! We will most likely be working 4 times a week, 3 hours per day, & hopefully on the same schedule.

After our meeting with the Primary teachers, we went to one of the casinos for a New Year's brunch. It was somewhat like the Christmas parties that work would put on for you, but after the Chinese New Year. All of the schools of CDSJ are invited. There were various speeches from the deans, principals, financial gurus, & etc. All of which we did not understand. :) Our VP called us up onto the stage to introduce ourselves, quite embarrassing. Before I start working with the students, I need to work on slowing down my speech. We've been told that we speak too fast & the kids will not understand most of our words. After the speeches, we all received lucky red envelopes (& with money inside!), and went off to the buffet. Our table was the first to go, I think they just wanted to enjoy watching our confusion over the food! I had some steamed fish (so tasty), noodles, fried rice, steamed veggies and sushi. Dessert was delicious. I had some strawberry shortcake type thing & a gelly dessert (which was much tastier than jell-o).

After lunch, myself, Hong & Stephen needed to get passport sized photos done for a Macau visa. The first place we went to was closed so we wandered our way back to the appt and found another shop. We also had to get different adaptors for our computers. Mine kept throwing sparks at me when I tried to plug it in, but it ended up just being a sketchy plug in the end, not my computer. We then came home & passed out! We had planned on going out for dinner with Stephen & some friends, Hong answered the door when he came by & I didn't even know anyone came to the door I was so dead to the world! Being up for 3 days just isn't fun. It is now 4:20 am, so I think I will try and get some more sleep before the day begins (dogs barking, scooters motoring, construction banging & all :)