1 month in!

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Hi everyone,

Well tomorrow I will have been here for a month, I can't believe it! In some ways it feels like it's been the longest month of my life but then when I think that 1 tenth of my time here is gone already it feels like it's going to go really quickly! They told us when we arrived 'To put it bluntly, august is horrible, don't judge the year by August' so it feels really good to have made it through that first month without having a nervous breakdown! To much has really happened to properly recap so i'm going to have to do it briefly and then start from now!

Orientation was very overwhelming, we were in a school in the new territories and we had instructions from the project managers in the morning and then co-taught lessons with kids who had come for a summer camp in the afternoon. I was so scared when I realised I had to teach on the first day, but the kids were lovely and it all went smoothly. In my school I am with a girl called Maeve, who's really lovely. And luckily we really like teaching together (we've jokingly dubbed ourselves the dream team!). In the school there's basically us and 2 NET teachers working really closely together. NET's are basically the better qualified, much better paid, versions of us. They are hired by the government to be native speaking english teachers and rich school can afford to hire them to lure in parents. It does feel a bit like you're the token white people to make the school look good, but that's a very cynical way of looking at it! I teach P1, P3, P4 and P5. It's basically the same as our year system but with P instead of year, so P1's are the 5 year old babies which will be fun! It's nice to have a variety of years to teach as well. I teach P1 and P3 with the NET's and p4 and 5 with Maeve, and then there's always a local teacher in there as well to be in charge of discipline, there's more teachers than pupils! So I've had my first 2 days at school, they went well but it's quite overwhelming because 2 weeks of training isn't very much so i'm a bit panicked that i'm not up to it but everyone feels like that i'm sure it's normal starting a new job! We got spoilt this week as well because on our first day the NET's took us for lunch and paid and then they took us out for drinks after work on friday in soho (i'm a proper expat now!) and paid for them to! Don't feel bad though because NET's get paid loads and they get a housing allowance from the government.

So that's school, aside from school as i'm sure you can imagine I have spent my weekend exploring Hong Kong's nightlife with everyone. Basically there's this place called red bar, which is on top the ifc mall (the ifc is the building that was in batman) right in the middle of central, looking across the water to kowloon. Now there's some fancy bars up there but there is also a seating area that's technically public space, so it's perfectly legal to sit there with warm beers we've lugged from 7/11 (the best shop in the world) and have a few drinks there. It's lovely because our flats are so small you couldn't really meet there so everyone just gathers at red bar and then we head into town. In my days off so far i've spent a lot of time just sorting out all the boring flat stuff like internet, but last monday we went on a junk boat trip (the scene of the swim for the beer that dads been telling everyone about!) It was such a good day, just doing nothing but swimming and lounging around, and i'm going to the beach this afternoon so hopefully it will be repeated! I'm starting to settle in now and although i'm homesick, if I was at home I would probably be driving mum mad and working in tescos so I just remind myself of that if I get down!

I should probably try and describe Hong Kong, but I don't really know where to start. It's insane. Honestly probably the best city I've ever been to. It's been a month and the skyline still amazes me, there's just mountains, skyscrapers and water everywhere you look! I don't feel like i've properly explored yet but that can start now. Uncle graham asked about the food and I have sampled quite a lot of stuff, my favourite was hotpot. Basically at a hotpot restaurant you get 2 big bowls of like soupy stuff on a hotplate in the middle of the table and then you order stuff to put in it, like dumplings, fish balls (still not sure about them, they taste like fishy rubber) beef, pork and veg. So you put it in the soup and it cooks and then you fish out what you want and put it in your bowl and then you have bowl of chilli sauce and soya sauce and chillis and spring onions and garlic and stuff and add what you want to your bowl, so it's like making your own soup. I loved it, but obviously I was sooo messy, there was food everywhere it looked like a chimps tea party! I have also been eating a lot of 7/11 sandwiches thanks to time constraints but lots of dumplings and noodles have also been consumed! I'll have to be careful or I will be rolling home at christmas! I'm already daydreaming about my christmas dinner so I think it's safe to say i'm missing food from home but there's loads of places in central where you can get english food so I can satisfy my cravings before december!

There's loads more to tell, but the beach is calling me now, so i'll leave it there and update soon!
Love to everyone xxx

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