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Published: July 21st 2012
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Lak kwai Fong was exactly as expected; full of girls taking advantage of the free drinks and full of even more guys trying to take advantage of the girls! I was looking out for our TA’s as I’ve heard that it’s easy to go overboard when the drinks are free! Despite my initial reservations, I actually had a really good evening, we all stuck together (safety in number and all that) and managed to save each other from the futile attempts of the numerous “Jimmy Neutrons”’ (chinese guys with the most ridiculous hairstyle who seemed to be making an attempt on every girl in the room.) I decided that since it was highly unlikely I’d see any of these Jimmy Neutrons it was time to test out ‘the face’ and I was quite impressed that it actually works pretty well! After teaching the others the contact lens and the golfer dance moves we rolled into a taxi (minus one of our group who had decide to continue her Hong Kong hotel tour) and, unable to get teaching out of our systems, we sang “we’re all going to school tomorrow” to the tune of we’re going to the zoo – I think
it made the driver get us home faster at least!!
Friday morning was spent practising our plays and doing other activities with our class. I was so chuffed with them when they had all remembered to bring their props, we even had one girl who had brought his own witch hat and one mum had sent in four transformers badges that she had drawn out for us. We practised the play in the classroom and even added another dance and we then had a dress rehearsal in the hall, which went well except for Optimus Prime forgetting his lines. I sat him down and asked him if he was having difficulty understanding to which he replied; “I haven’t learnt them because there is no point, nobody is coming to watch me.”
We then played quiet games in the classroom until lunch, after a tipsy conversation the previous evening, I decided that we would play games based on Jimmy Neutron: we had a couple of rounds of “Jimmy Neutron (Simon) says…” we had “sleeping Jimmy Neutron (lions)” and “Jimmy, Jimmy, Neutron” (duck, duck goose.)
In the afternoon it was time to watch
the plays, but first we had to contend with the parents – utter chaos! The Asian obsession with taking photos meant that the twenty minutes we had spent sitting the children down quietly was completely wasted. Each parent wanted a photo of their little darling’s which inevitably just made the children all start talking again. We finally settled the parents down and were greeted by a sea of video cameras. Some of the parents’ phones went off during the performance but instead of rejecting the call, they would answer their phones and have a full conversation at normal volume and they all sat chatting throughout the performances. Despite the annoying parents, the plays were all relatively successful and watching six year olds dancing to “you’ve got a friend in me” was absolutely adorable.
I was surprisingly upset to leave the school, even if it was an awful venue. I felt like I’d become so much closer to the kids over the week and that they finally respected me. The two boys that I’d initially thought were going to be troublemakers had actually been the most involved over the week and some of the girls who had refused to say much at the beginning had really come out of their shells. One of the parents came over to me and looked me square in the eye and said, “thank you, thank you so much. I finally hear English in my house, she would never do this before.” Then after a pause, “thank you forever.” I could have cried (I didn’t.)
One of my last memories of Tadpoles (the school) , look A boy came over to me and said “Miss Abi I have a present for you.” I was talking to another girl from my class at the time so I just put my hand out gratefully and carried on my conversation. When I finally looked at my gift, I realised it was a peanut. Francis came over and asked me if I’d seen one of his props and I just snapped at him, “can’t answer questions, kid just gave me a peanut.” Threw the offending snack in the bin and ran through the crowd of parents like a mad woman to the toilets where I washed my hands like someone with OCD! I actually found the situation highly amusing until we were sat filling in our feedback forms and I noticed that my thumb had started to blister. I’ll put the tears down to tiredness (I’m really annoyed with myself that I let the rest of my group see me upset over something so stupid.) I think I was just worried because I’d taken my antihistamines like a good little atopic child and washed my hands and yet still had a slight reaction, so fingers crossed I don’t eat one!
For photos and videos of our time at tadpoles: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Tadpoles-Early-Learning/126949824056562
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