Daily Sights Round 2

I am getting ready to head home for the summer, so I am gonna post a few more of my "daily life" shots from around my neighbourhood before I head back to regularity of the homeland!

Morgan, Sara and I ordered a set of these off of Chinese EBay, it even has spikes down the back

A street vendor who set up shop on his bicycle

Donkey carts selling fruit

My street

The main outdoor shopping street, dubbed "Robson" by Canadian staff

No Longer a First Year Teacher

Although I am not on a plane home yet, I am done my first year teaching (and my first year in China!).  It was an incredible year, even though it was an incredibly challenging year.  In my first year as a teacher I taught three blocks of grade 12 boys their most important class for all of high school - English 12.  Here at Maple Leaf it is made even more important by the fact that most of them have only been speaking English for three years.  I was blessed to have a pretty sweet group of boys, who over the past ten months got very used to my teaching personality and were willing guinea pigs to my learning process.  

Here were my goals from this semester:

1.  Plan my assessments better
2.  Keep up with marking
3.  Start with grammar and work up
4.  Be less of a grump when my kids act like typical teenagers

Reflection:

1.  I made a definite improvement, but still have an incredibly long way to go in this department.  I am really looking forward to the chance to teach English 12 again next year - and have waaaaay more direction in my planning and prep towards my ultimate end goals.  

2.  Super awesome!  I even had three points this semester in which I had marked every thing in my possession!  I think improvement here does relate to a slight improvement in planning.  I spaced out my assessments better and organized myself better.

3.  I instituted "Grammar Extravaganza Wednesday" for the entire semester.  Each Wednesday we would do a short lecture and then a mass of exercises, with a quiz on the content the following Wednesday.  I hope to improve this next year, but it was a good start.

4.  Improving.  It really helped this semester to have one fun class (drama) where I was able to see my kids as kids.  I get bogged down worrying about their marks and their upcoming exam, so it was a benefit to me to be able to see the kids relaxed and actually enjoying school.  It was also much easier to downplay my stress levels this semester as I was more settled into a routine (both to life in China and life as a teacher).  

Next year I want to continue to work on assessment, improve classroom routines, and find a more efficient way to communicate with my students outside of class time.  Hopefully next year I can set up a Moodle account or a wiki for my students to grab resources, easily email me, and cut down on the need to track down a thousand handouts and papers that students are missing.  I also get to teach a block of International Relations next year - which I am ridiculously excited about!  

I feel like my first year teaching was a success, but I am glad to have it behind me!  Bring on the next one!

Check out my students on their last day!

A Block English 12 (class of 22)

Drama 10 

Drama 10

Drama 10 (all 19 of them together)

Flag ceremony

D Block English 12 (20 students)

Lined up for flag

A Touch of Ceremony at Maple Leaf

If there is one thing that China does better than Canada it is grand events.  At Maple Leaf we often have ceremonies that we are encouraged (read forced) to attend.  For the most part I sit back and enjoy a laugh, tinged with a slight cringe at the cost.  This year we even had a New Year's Gala furnished with prom dresses, choreographed dance numbers and Chinese opera.  Unfortunately I didn't get any photos of the awe inspiring event.  However, the past few ceremonies have been successfully documented!

Some of the students opening the Olympics

One of the latest events was sports day.  You may imagine that I mean a student centred track meet, but actually I am talking about a STAFF sports day.  Now although I am a fan of sports, I was a bit disappointed to be made to come in on a Saturday.  Yes, a Saturday.  Nonetheless, it ended up being an enjoyable day in the sun.

Maple Leaf has many schools in the Dalian area, and each school sent their delegates to the high school to compete.  We are, by far, the largest of the Maple Leaf schools and led the meet with both participants from our Chinese and Canadian staff.

Our school strutting their stuff

Everyone was encouraged to sign up for events, and so I signed up for the team 100m relay race.  However, before we got into the sports we were treated to an opening ceremony.  Each school had a group of marchers who began the ceremony by walking around the track, and then into formation.  Our participants even had to practice the week before!  They got matching pants!  The colours for the high school were yellow for the girls and white for the boys.  I must say we looked just lovely.

Some rather strange mascots...

Getting ready to start the relay race

The day was long and hot, but actually it was fairly fun.  I cheered on some badminton, dodgeball and some pretty ridiculous three legged races and skipping relays.  The high school came out on top, and we were honoured with a flag at the closing ceremony!  I even won a prize for our team win for the relay race!   I bet you wish your staff had an annual olympics!

Too fast for a photo!

The most recent event at Maple Leaf was graduation.  For the most part it was a pretty typical event, with a few China touches.  For one, the boys all waked in holding glowing hearts.  It was super cute.  There are about 1000 grads from our school each year - so the event has to be quickened a bit to make it fast enough.  The students were brought on stage by homeroom to receive their diplomas, quickly photographed and then let back down to their seats.  There were a few speeches, but all in all it went fairly quickly and it was pretty heartwarming to watch the boys grad.

The boy's side and their glowing hearts

When we arrived there were corsages on every chair and at the end of the ceremony the students handed out flowers to all the teachers, which was really quite lovely.  I enjoyed the chance to see my students with their parents, and to meet a few of them.  Most of the parents do not speak English, but they were thrilled to see the people who had spent so much time with the kids over the past few years.  I was lucky to be able to see my first group of students graduating as a first year teacher.  I was so proud and excited to see them in their gowns!

Receiving their diplomas

One group of my students posing for their photo

Springtime in Hong Kong

I seem to have completely forgotten to blog about my spring trip to Hong Kong, so now it is time for some backwards blogging!  For the last holiday of the year, we get a week off for labour day.  I chose to take off to Hong Kong with Sara and Will (and along the way we met up with Sarah, Thomas, Asia and Charlie!)  It was a great crew to spend a week with and Hong Kong is an amazing place to travel.  The downside was that I got the flu right at the start of the week - and never really got my energy (or my voice) back all week.  I am sure my disgusting croaky voice was annoying to my travel mates, but my lack of energy really was discouraging for me.  Although I have had so many opportunities to travel this year, I really want to make sure I make the most of every chance I get.  It was a bit hard to do that when all I felt like doing was curling up for a nap!  At any rate, despite the slower pace, I still loved Hong Kong and would go back in a second.

* Note on photos *

* There are not very many, as I was not feeling well.  Moreover, Hong Kong is hot and sweaty and humid - therefore pictures are not exceptionally flattering to our all Canadian travelling crew, unused to dealing with our hair in such a climate. *

Shaped trees at Disneyland

From Dalian it takes an entire day to fly to Hong Kong, so we did not arrive until fairly late on Sunday evening.  Unfortunately, when we arrived our hostel had given away our reservation.  This was INCREDIBLY frustrating, as they would not help us find another place, we had paid a deposit, and Hong Kong is notoriously bad for accommodation availability.  It had been hard enough to book this hostel (well in advance) and so we were frustrated, exhausted, and discouraged.  (As a side note, reservations and advanced payments mean very little in China and this situation has occurred multiple times in my travels this year.  All that matters is being at their door).  At around 12:30 we finally found a disgusting hotel to stay in and went to bed right away.

* Note on Hostel*

* The employee who "lost" our reservation was later let go.  In part to Will's persistance, and in part to his calling us "losers" as we left the building.  Apparently we were not the first with such an issue.  *

 

A touch of Canada in "It's a Small World"

The next day we found a new hostel, and then headed up to Victoria Peak.  It is the largest mountain in Hong Kong and it has a tram that goes all the way to the top.  Unfortunately it was a bit foggy when we were up there, but it was still a pretty impressive look-out point.  This is where my sickness hit me, so I spent most of the time on the mountain top sitting on the ground in front of the gift shop fighting off sickness.  It was lovely.  After returning to our hostel, I slept for the rest of the day.

Church ruins in Macau

On Tuesday we took the ferry to Macau.  Macau used to be a Portuguese colony, so the architecture is very different from mainland China.  It really did look a lot like Europe.  We spent the day meandering through some ruins, and exploring the expansive casino buildings.  Each casino had an enormous mall attached (Each with its own Louis Vuitton and Prada store.  How can one tiny island support so many Louis Vuitton stores??).  Macau's main tourist draw is gambling, but that wasn't really our scene.  Instead we tried to go to every free show and use any free offered convenience at each.  Macau is a lovely island, so it was enjoyable to just walk around.  We saw a fountain show, a laser show, and a light show and ate some pretty delicious food.  My favourite building in Macau was the Venetian.  The inside was made up like Venice, and even had a river with boats.

View from the fortress

Sarah, Thomas, Will and I at the fortress

On Wednesday we headed back to Hong Kong, but mostly spent the day just wandering.  We found a lovely park and a free museum.  In the evening we went to a delicious dumpling restaurant and went to the famous Hong Kong races.  It was quite the affair to see.  The area is a huge and there was about 10 races.  We enjoyed race food and checking out the horses.  

One of the strange shows in Macau, "The Tree of Life"

The Venetian

On Thursday we all went to Disneyland!  I know, I know, it isn't the most cultural experience.  I simply do not care.  It was awesome.  I even packed my Tinkerbell shirt for the occasion.  It is definitely a smaller version than the Disney of California, but it was still very well run and a ton of fun.  It was a great taste of my childhood and our family trips to Disneyland.  Since the park is so small we managed to go on every single ride and see every show in just one day.  We stayed right until the park closed with fireworks!  I thoroughly enjoyed it, though it certainly did not have enough roller coasters!

The horses just move too fast for my camera...

Proof for how hot and sweaty we were the entire time in Hong Kong

Recognize this?  Mini Disney!

For my last day in Hong Kong, we loaded up on Dim Sum for breakfast and then went to Lamai Island.  Lamai is a short ferry ride away, and is known for nice beaches, hiking, and vegetarian cuisine.  We did a hike around the island, and then ended with a scrumptious meal.  It was ridiculously hot, but had beautiful scenery.   I wish I had brought my bathing suit along that day - because I was definitely ready to jump in by the end of the hike!  

Toy Story land was the newest addition

To infinity, and beyond! (totally worth waiting in line for)

The next morning we had to head back to Dalian.  It was a really enjoyable vacation, though I did not get to see everything that I wanted.  If I was to go back I would make another trip to one of the surrounding islands to check out the beaches or the dolphins, I would have gone to the Hong Kong history museum, and probably just would have done some more general exploring.  Unfortunately, I was really not up to it this trip.  However, it was still a great break from work and a fun time with some pretty cool people!

Mickey and Minnie ice cream!

Lamai Island

Taking a break from the heat on Lamai!

Being an Accidental Drama Teacher

I am not qualified to teach drama.  I was always much too scared as a child to participate in drama related activities.  Yet, somehow, I am teaching drama this semester.


I once took a drama class.  It was for a week at summer camp.  Sunnybrae taught me all I know about drama and I have been using those skills all semester to frantically try and teach my boys about the 'art of performance.'  What I have learned is: they like silly games as much as I do, and any chance they have to dance or pretend to be girls is cherished.


In this assignment they had to do a lip dub to an English song, with a co-ordinated dance number.  Behold the magic they created.  (All the performances were pretty epic, but for the sake of my slow internet connection I had to choose one).

Although this one is a bit light on the coordinated moves, it is heavy on hilarity.  The stars of this video are David, lead male vocals, Bieber, lead female vocals, Tim, drummer extraordinaire, and Martin, as the serious piano player.  I will admit though, my favourite role here is Enrico the camera man.  Enrico has a hard time pronouncing his own name (so most people call him Enrdrico), but his camera skills are pretty awesome.  

Sorry for the choppy feed, but I hope you enjoy it as much as I did!