Obviously it requires a day off!... Thursday was the School swimming gala ...and obviously this requires the day off the next day?! I like the system here...any kind of school event results in a day off! Brill. So the swimming gala involved me getting an extra early bus...something I was willing to do for a day off! I wore my new school t-shirt - supporting the red team. I sat with the red 'cheering team' in the stands. In typical Hong Kong style, it was very well organised....The opening ceremony saw the flag ambassadors marching (in the blue shoe covers you wear at swimming pools!) and raising the flag...then we all stood for the national anthem...then the school song, and then the opening prayer....Then the races could begin! A lot of the time I was clapping ... read more

Time for another update of life in HK… Quite a lot has been going on in the last week actually. I had my first Chinese festival - the mid-autumn festival, on Tuesday, which is a nice festival - celebrating the moon basically! There is an ancient Chinese tale about the festival, and it is celebrated in October, when there is a full moon. We went to Victoria Park on HK Island to see all the festivities and there were loads of lanterns around, and lots of families and children with lanterns. There were some stages set up in the park with Chinese shows on as well. In the grounds of the park, hundreds of families were sat round with candles, having dinner - it was really nice to see, and the moon was really bright. In ... read more

Ley Ho! After dancing into the early hours in Lan Kwai Fong on Friday night, I made it to a Chinese Culture day at the Poly University in Hung Hom. It was an excellent day which began with a Cantonese lesson. It’s a really hard language to learn because there is no way of just ‘picking it up’ I can’t read the symbols, and even if I could I wouldn’t know how to pronounce them! The only way to learn is to have someone say the word, and memorise how it is pronounced. I have to write down a random combination of letters that represents how it sounds to me! Ley Ho is ‘hello’ but it is never written like that obviously! So…. “orn giu Jennifer, orn gum nin yee sup yat sou, orn lei tsi ... read more

I thought it had been a while since my last entry, and glancing back at my diary…I’ve been quite busy! Things just haven’t stopped here! So here’s a rundown on the events of the last ten days or so! I have been to a Korean BBQ with two friends from uni and another girl. This was pretty cool, where you sit round a table with a flame/grill in the middle, and you collect raw meats/fish/vegetables, and rice/soup, and you chat away whilst you cook whatever you fancy eating next, and it is a set price for 2hours, a good deal I thought, and it was fun. I have found a good swimming pool in Kowloon park, which is a lovely place, and there is an outdoor pool for sunny days. We had a girly night at ... read more

Hi all - time for another update from life in HK…. Since I last wrote, I have finished training. I was teaching P5 and P6 in the last few days. No more noteworthy random English names, but they were nice kids, and I was impressed by their English. We also had a P1 English funfair, with games for them to play in English, and they were great fun. At the end of training, I now know lots of very random songs with actions, and warm up games which I’m sure will come in handy at recess! And we all actually quite like being silly with them anyway….some have already been sung/shouted in bars! We finished training on Wednesday, so we all went out in Wan Chai, and then in Central to celebrate! On Friday (31/8) I ... read more