Barbeque with P4 English Camp

Today was a gongshow. I can't stress this enough. Not only were we going on a field trip with a challenging class, but the school had planned on having a barbeque with the kids while we were there - Oh, and the kids were to cook the food!!! I should have forecasted how the day would unfold when the teacher told us this morning that she was "very nervous". Uh oh.

We took a bus to the same convent that we took the Kindergarten class to (Villa de Santa Isabel). I was way off the mark, I understood that we were going to a beach. Once we got there, Hong & I split up into two smaller groups to take the students on a tour of the convent. Hong & I have only been there once & the tour wasn't in English.. so I'm not sure about her, but I was definitely making up things about the site. :) whoops! They did love going on top of the roof, which we didn't do with the Kindergarten students. You could see all of the mountains around you, a stable, a prison (!!), & even China from up there. We then returned to the main room downstairs to sing some songs. The teacher first sang Head & Shoulders with them, and then Hong & I taught them the Banana song with actions! They loved it! After some more songs, we went outside to play a couple of games while the other teachers started the barbeques (fire pits). We played evolution & wax museum. Even though they have never played these games before, they understood them quite well. Maybe it was due to Hong's & my superb drama skills! We then played a variation of London Bridges that I have never seen before. It looked like fun, but was also very dangerous!! So many kids got hurt. The game finally ended when one of the girls broke her glasses & was crying :( poor thing!

We thought that it was perfect timing anyways... but turns out it wasn't, & the fires weren't quite going yet. So, there were a lot of hungry, cranky students desperate to start eating! The plan... wait.. there wasn't really a plan & Hong & I tried last minute to figure out how to do this! 31- 9 year olds cooking meat with marshmallow sticks over a few coles?? Eek! I was scared. We decided to just give them hot dogs for the beginning & see how they did. The boys had a lot of waiting to do because there was only one fire working & the girls got to go first. Sorry boys! Because of this, they decided to entertain themselves by stomping on spiders & poking at the dead bird on the ground. Hm.. awesome.

When you look at the pictures of the bbq it looks quite peaceful. But those pictures are deceiving... that was right when they got their hot dogs & they were still patiently waiting for them to cook. Hell broke loose soon after. The teachers were trying to cook some other food for the kids but soon gave up & decided to let them cook because they just couldn't cook it all fast enough. I, much to my dismay, became the chicken wing teacher.. as all the kids came to me to ask them to stab their skewers with a couple of chicken wings. Which is fine... but there wasn't any soap anywhere in sight, only cold water to wash our hands. Hmm. As soon as the chicken & ribs became popular, Hong & I were checking kids' food left right & center, trying to avoid salmonella... but many of them were eating it without checking with us & it definitely wasn't cooked. Fleshy. yuck. So as we were occupied with being proactive against food poisoning, we had kids throwing chicken bones to the dogs over the fence, kids poking the dead bird, one kid choking on a sausage & then pewking part of it up, kids running around with sharp skewers in their hands, etc etc. It was craziness. Did that paint a sufficient picture in your head?

Before we knew it, it was time to head home. The teachers had invited us to stay at the school to cook some food as none of us actually got to eat anything, but Hong & I were absolutely exhausted, so we kindly declined.

We have a day off tomorrow, so I look forward to some R & R!

A Ma Temple & Maritimo Museum

We decided to take the trek to the A Ma temple today, which is the oldest temple in Macau, built during the Ming Dynasty (1488). It's one of the farthest points south on the Island of Macau, so we took a bus & arrived successfully :) It was beautiful there. We later found out in the museum that A Ma (/Matsu) was a goddess that brought safety to those at sea and fishermen, and even saved her father and her brother from a horrific storm. The temple is located on a hill, so there are many areas to climb up to and light incense for the various gods.

After visiting the temple, we went over to the Maritimo Museum. There was lots to see! This museum had a lot of information about the history of Macau, of A Ma, and of the various holidays celebrated in Macau. You can look to my pictures for better explanations :)

After the museum we walked around to find a restaurant for lunch. All of the places were fairly expensive, and ended up going for the least expensive looking restaurant which happened to be a Japanese one. It was so tasty!! I just had a shrimp tempura meal that had miso soup (with lots of seaweed.. mm), rice, tempura shrimp, chinese pumpkin, and purple yam. My meal was fantastic! Hong had a sashimi type meal with raw salmon & squid on top of rice with salmon roe (but like a rice bowl, not individual pieces of sashimi), and some cooked octopus in a marinade (so good.. there are pictures of this). I will have to make it over there again!

On the way home, we went to the 'Red Market' which was right near the bus stop. This is the very large market where you get all of the meat, fish, seafood & also veggies & fruits. We stood and watched this lady at the fish station for quite a while. It was amazing. She had these very shallow pools of water on display with a lot of fish in them, so just enough water so that they fish remained alive, but not enough for them to move at all. Actually, that's a lie. They could move.. they were splashing all over the place & Hong, myself, & some other innocent bystanders got soaked. This lady has got to be one of the most efficient fish gutters I have ever seen. The customer has to take the fish out of the water pools, put it on the table, she takes it, weighs it, smacks it on the head with the flat side of her knife, guts it out, cleans it, takes the scales off & then presto, put in a plastic grocery bag & done. This literally took her 10 seconds. It was awesome! Further down there was a seafood stand, with the most delicious & freshest looking seafood I have ever seen. She had octopus, squid, scallops, shrimp, & various types of fish. I just may have to go back there! I'm not quite brave enough to walk around the rest of the market yet... my stomach was feeling weak just getting a glimpse of the chicken area. I think I'll wait a couple of months to go into that area. I'm sure it's really neat... but I'll wait a bit :)

Today is my dad's birthday so.. HAPPY BIRTHDAY POPS!! :D

Dim Sum

This morning we got a call from Miss Mou to meet some of the English club members for 'yam chaa'. Taking this word for word, we thought we were going to drink tea. Turns out we were going to the Hotel Sintra for Dim Sum. Good thing we didn't eat breakfast before we left.

When Hong & I left the appt it was slightly spitting so I decided to run back upstairs to change into pants. When we came back out it was still spitting slightly, made it a little farther from the house & then down pour!! We got pretty wet, no umbrella. The rain feels quite different, gritty almost, could also be because some of it was falling off of the buildings onto us. :)

We went to the 2nd & 3rd school to meet with Virginia, Helen, Karin, Benjamin & Patricia. Benjamin, Karin & Patricia are from the English club of their school, and wanted to go for Dim Sum to practice some of their English. They are both in Grade 11, were great kids & spoke English really well. We (/they because is was all in Chinese) ordered some food, and lots of it! We had a variety of dishes, we had steamed pork buns, steamed sticky rice wrapped in lotus flower leaves, squid with shrimp paste, chinese doughnut wrapped in some rice paper, a pad-thai looking dish, but wasn't pad thai, steamed egg yolk & bun (this was very tasty... really sweet). Helen covered the bill, so we told them that they have to let us take them out for Hot Pot next. I can't wait to try this, Hong really likes it and it sounds somewhat like the beef broth fondu that my family always did growing up.

After lunch, the girls (Karin & Patricia) walked us home and were curious to see our place. I think that they are quite wealthy. They both live in sky rises in Taipa, but Patricia has an appt here in Macau with her sister & nanny as her parents are Tour Guides and are quite often away traveling. They were very sweet, saying how they loved our appt, but we could tell that it wasn't what they were used to, I don't think they had ever been in these types of appts. I think ours is quite nice, I wonder what their homes look like? They stayed for a while and told us about different areas in Macau to see & how to get there. I wasn't sure about the situation as in Canada, you would never have a student at your house. But I guess this is different as we aren't their teachers.

I've posted a couple of pictures from Dim Sum, we didn't take many.

Today is Valentine's Day. Apparently, the people here are beginning to celebrate it, becoming more popular every year. This year the students were told to give our chocolates, as they last longer than flowers, so we had a few students giving us chocolates at the school. Abbie had sent three envelopes with me, one to open on Valentine's Day, one for Easter & the other for my Birthday. So I opened the Valentine's Day first thing this morning! In it were some pictures (which was perfect, I need some pictures to decorate), & some chocolates. Mmmm Yummy!

Flora Gardens with P3

We went to the Flora Gardens today with Primary 3's English Camp. I was somewhat nervous about this one as this class is very loud, talkative, and crazy! But overall, it was a fantastic day & there weren't any real hiccups.

I had group A which consisted of Benny, Kevin, Joyce, Ally, and Kelly. They were a great bunch & so cute! We did a tour of the gardens first, which I knew wasn't going to take very long (it's no Calgary zoo.. :) so we played some games in between. I got them to play 'stella stella ola' but with 'row row row your boat', they loved it! We also played 'evolution' which is a variation of rock paper scissors, & we played lots of the animal game throughout. You call out an animal name as you're walking & they have to imitate that animal. I hope this helped them remember the english words! After the tour was finished, we all got together as a class to sing their outdoor song. It was a song that is a part of their English instruction pack, it was cute, they all knew it. We played a version of hot potato with the song, but they didn't like that very much. I had something backfire on me during this activity. There was this one boy who kept throwing the ball at kids or holding the ball & not passing it on. So I took him out of the group & said that he had to sit & watch for 2 minutes & then would be able to re-join. This completely back fired on me because when it came time for him to re-join the group, he refused. Which is not what usually happens. Sooo.. that tactic doesn't work very well when they don't speak the language, and can't get the information they need to make a good choice about going back to the group. Darn! I will have to try something else.

After our singing, we went to the restaurant for lunch. We all had rice, eggs, sliced ham, & a porkchop. The porkchop didn't taste anything like pork, it had quite a funny taste actually. But I ate it anyways.. I was so hungry. The kids were absolutely starving! There were these two boys that had demolished their meal before I was done half of mine.

We did a sketching activity after lunch & my group just loved this part. We stayed at this one enclosure for about an hour & a half while they drew everything in detail & coloured it all in. They were so focused. They wanted to go sketch the turtles, so I took them there to do that, but they only had a few minutes there before we had to meet up with the rest of the class. With the whole class, we tried to do some sharing of our sketches. The kids were tired & the boys were chatty. It didn't work very well. That's ok... they got some English words in for the day.

After the field trip, Hong & I met with Miss Mou (Virginia) to discuss our schedule. For the next couple of weeks, we will just be floating around the various classrooms to watch & participate. (I'm sure we'll be planning some things, I just don't know what yet). For the first week of March we will have it off for our 'reading break'. Yeah! I'm hoping to go somewhere during that time, travel a bit. Once the second week of March hits, I will be teaching Mon-Thurs & will have Fri, Sat & Sun off. They may ask us to do some saturday activities, but hopefully it's not every week. It would be very nice to have 3 days off in a row to go travel!! :)

After our meeting, the three of us went to that killer noodle place for some tao fu fa (the tofu dessert.. mmmm), and soup! Hong & I ordered it ourselves with the new words we learned :) We were so proud. The waitress knew what we were saying!

Well, I think that is all for now. I need to throw my ipod on & do some reading. I can't ever focus without music in my room... the dog upstairs barks ALLLL the time!

First school day, Flora Gardens & Villa de Santa Isabel

Whoops! Took me a while to get my blog back. I couldn't read anything because it was all in Chinese! yikes!

Yesterday (Tuesday) was our first official day at the school with the kids. Since our actual program doesn't start until March (English portion), we are just going around to the various classrooms and meeting all of the students. Yesterday we made a quick introduction with the whole school & were supposed to do a whole school activity but thank goodness we didn't, it would have been chaotic! We then met with P3 to do an activity for 1/2 an hour. There are about 35 kids in this class. We took them down to the gym area to play a name game & some other games. The name game didn't really work. It took about 5 minutes to get them in a circle because the girls didn't want to be next to the boys and vice versa... a lot of 'eww' I'm assuming but in Chinese of course. This class is quite shy, so the voices were whispers in an outdoor gymnasium. It didn't really work as planned. But then again, what does? We then decided to do a ball tossing name game. That went even worse as the kids couldn't remember who they had thrown the ball to & proceeded to chuck it at each other rather than an under hand throw, which I demonstrated my but off to try to communicate this message. After that, we tried freeze tag, as we thought that would be easy. It was crazy. Students were running out of the boundaries in between all of the table tennis tables, were screaming their heads off, pushing each other, etc. This is going to be a great challenge, they do not understand a single word we say & don't seem to notice that we are talking? I was so tired after this class!

After P4, we met with P3, learned from our mistakes & tried some different activities. We even played Simon Says & copycat. This class was much more manageable, only 15 students. We will be going with this class to the Flora Gardens on Friday for a full day field trip.

We met with Helen, her husband & their two (of 6) children & Virginia for lunch at the 2nd & 3rd campus. We went to some 'club', I couldn't quite understand what it was, but it was for a buffet. Food was great. It was fried fish, plain rice, and a portuguese rice dish. There were lots of yummy desserts, so I filled up on those ;)

We met with Oscar (the P3 teacher) to go on a tour of the Flora Gardens so that we know what to expect on Friday. We didn't know until we got there that we will be having our own groups for most of the day & we will be giving them a tour of the zoo/gardens all in English. Ha! I really hope that we'll be ok... I won't know how to call them, or tell them what not to do, etc. eek! I've posted some pictures of the area, it's quite nice. There are some animals in there as well, some cranes, ducks, peacocks, leaf monkeys, bears (they call them black bears, I haven't seen them yet, but they're probably Sloth Bears like the ones we have at the Calgary zoo), and parrots. The enclosures are quite different - all concrete with metal bars and a food dish. While we were walking through the gardens, Oscar was telling us some things about the place & we didn't know it at the time, but what he was saying was word for word from the brochure that he gave us. He had memorized the entire thing! It was adorable! You could tell that he was always checking in to see if he had said a word correct or said the right thing. These teachers are very eager to learn English, or learn in general. It's great to see.

For dinner Hong & I went downstairs to the Burmese restaurant, relying on the pictures to point to. We then went to the market to buy some fruit & some things that we needed around the apartment. I like the market, it's so much fun & so much to see!

Today (Wednesday) we went with the Kindergarten class to the Villa de Santa Isabel, a convent in Coloane. It was our first time off of the peninsula of Macau & onto the surrounding islands. Coloane is quite different from Macau, lots of green space & actual houses, not many apartment buildings. The convent was beautiful. We played games with the kids, sang songs, ate a snack, read a story & made a craft. I've posted pictures. We played what time is it mr. wolf & they just LOVED it! They were even saying their numbers in English & getting really into the game. It was so cute. These little guys are quite smart. When we were eating lunch they could tell me the names of most things on our table in English.. without hesitation. ex. Orange juice, bread, ham, cheese, plate, cup, etc. The story that we read was only available in Cantonese, so the Kindergarten teacher tried to translate it for us, but we ended up just making up the story based on the pictures. I think it went well either way... we had them entertained for a little while!

Hong & I went to the market again after school to buy some food for dinner. We made a tofu & rice dish with water crest & broccoli, it was tasty! I love the tofu here, it is so fresh & smooth.

Tomorrow is our day off, so I plan to catch up on homework!! It's about time, I'm being a slacker.

Tourist walk

This morning Hong & I were up bright & early & very hungry. Since we don't really know where to eat quite yet Stephen came with us & we went to an E.S.Kimo cafe, which are restaurants that typically have english menus. It was quite tasty, although my meal was somewhat bland tasting, yet still good.

After that we did a quite extensive tour of some of the city. We went to the market right near us, the Lou Lim leoc Garden, Mount Fortress, the Ruins of St. Paul, the heritage center (very touristy, expensive spot where we bought much over priced drinks). I liked the Lou Lim leoc gardens the best. This garden is actually on my walk to school, and is quite a peaceful spot. We stopped at this one pond to look at the fish & this man was trying to tell us what happened to one of the fish that I was pointing out. Not sure how long this little guy is going to last for as his eye was falling right off!

The biggest success of the day for me (aside from the gelato that we bought) was that I finally found a pharmacy that sells ear plugs!! YEAH:) I look forward to a peaceful sleep this evening.

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 :)