Travel Life

First night here, guess what the date is, September 27th. I changed my booking for that day because I didn't realize I would be here on this night, lesson learned. Don't book when half asleep or you will end up haggling for a hotel room that only needs bars to be considered a replica of the Alcatraz prison cells. I got here. We found the MTR and Octopus Cards, 200 HDK later (won't last me this trip, I have hotels all over Hong Kong), Kyle and I split ways, I found Nathan Road...I might as well have gone looking for a needle in a hay stack, the hotels are crammed onto floors of "Mansions" which is a fancy word for huge apartment building changed into dormitories. On the way there, it seemed it was not hard to get a free beer, or three. It wasn't hard to make friends either, a lot of brown people from Canada, met a tailor who suited up Russell Peters as well! Ya small world! So, needless to say, I made friends with some guys who were pretty nice, wanted me to hi...

This first trip takes place in Hong Kong. I am going to Hong Kong. Backpacking with a fellow teacher, thanks for letting me tag along brother. I'm nervous but everyone is convinced it will be so good and a fun experience. I'm pretty much travelling alone once we get there. Luckily I took notes on important things to know and how to say things in Cantonese. I booked 6 different hotels in Hong Kong, 3 different areas, 1 of which is close to my travel buddy as well as a fellow teacher who is meeting with us once we get there. We are all Maple Leaf International School teachers, my travel buddy and I have never been to Hong Kong, but the other teacher has been, lived there for awhile. He knows the ropes and would be glad to show us around.  We were supposed to stay the night at his place here in Dalian the night before before the flight but it was cutting the time too close to the end of work, he was flying out that night and was going to let us stay there to save time and money. P...

Spent in kaifaqu, buzzed we cabbed back to her place...oh sorry let me get you up to speed. So Friday was fun, wasn't quite what I thought it was going to be, thought we were going all out Thunder Bay style (for those of you who are unfamiliar, means loud music, bright lights, dancing and 5 am pizza service) well I was dressed in regular Thunder Bay party attire :p white jeans, plaid shirt, cowboy boots and Spiderman mask/glasses <3 we got on the train, had a couple ice cold sodas, then got off the train (ya rebel rebel :p ) then ventures through the neons and store fronts to a place located across the street of the busy square which was called "Mr.Beer". Beside it was a food eatery/bakery called euro-bake, amazing pizza I must say!!! It was embarassing that I thought we were all going to get our crazy on and decompress when I realized our admin staff was present...holy embarassing, I been embarrassed as spiderman for different reasons before but not like this, they st...

Omg! Sorry I totally forgot to tell you about the amazing weekend I had and how amazing the people I met were! I always should tell you that drinking here is not as cheap as people say it is....ugh So we started Saturday...sorry back track, Friday we got together, took some pictures, had...ice cold sodas..and wandered into kaifaqu, bigger city outside of the city centre, I live in jinshitan. We went to a place called mr.beer and ordered food from a bakery next door, got pizza! Yummm this place was called euro bake. People had a hoot when I wore my spiderman mask from the ever so lovely Kaitlin Lovegrove! :p uhhhh it was. Little hard and embarassing to explain to my Adminstrative team who was also at this get together lol but it was all good, I met some Dutch buisnessmen as well, we had good laughs! German beers are probably almost as common, if not more common than Chinese beers here...the only American beers are Heineken, Budweiser, and corona...funny how technically two of those are ...

They come and go, this first week is a lot of moving around for them, trying make sure they are in the right classes and right streams, some are in classes they have already passed, so much non sense, it's no wonder this first week is using provided lesson plans that essentially revolve around diagnostics and ice breakers...some of these grade 10's can't spell their name properly...this is going to be interesting. Some of them are high functioning English students, others are low floor, trying to practice "differentiated" instruction lol shoot me...I strongly dislike jargon, but it is what it is. Wish I could kind of just teach my own material! Also wish they had us create a unit plan and send it in for inspection before applying! Like ugh so unprepared, probably the worst teacher here... Am I cut out for this? Carm

The students are wonderful. My first day was a gongshow and it started with an event that has never happened befor at the school which even confused a lot of the veterans :p no one knew where to go or what we were doing for the timetable lol Reminded me of a couple situations at lakeshore catholic when the teachers had to completely reset the timetable :p talk about free first day out of class lol what a situation, then I was not completely prepared nor were my students :p I don't think anything could have prepared me for the amount of nervousness I had when my students approached me with awe...frikin short y-low lol y-low is English phonetic   spelling of round-eye lol I was dressed to the nine! Tie and all, was pretty excited and nervous, also felt a little nerdy because we had permission to dress down a bit but I wanted to make myself professional and successful to my students and administration instead of that super young and unconventional English teacher that just talks for d...

Well the initial smell of the place here...ugh less than attractive...I'm not in a centre really, it's like living in downtown dunnville, and ya not much here :p the scenery is gorgeous but at the same time there is much obstructions and interference.  Canada is much missed not just by myself but certainly by some of the other new teachers. I know for me, I miss my family, the animals, my friends, linds, and everyone else who made life exactly what I wanted. From what I noticed here, canada offers the most beautiful range of scenery, and a relatively clean and put together city centre usually. The graffiti kind of tales away from the vast prestige of the city now when I think about it and listen to how people compare and talk about travel experiences. It's crazy how much changes after spending sometime away from home and living in an area that you need to interact more so with your surroundings than you do elsewhere, in canada you can mindlessly wander down the street, here...