Fulbright retreat fall 2009

This weekend I went to the Fulbright retreat, which was generously organized and funded by the Hong-Kong America Center. Susan, Amy, Holly, and I got up suuuper-early Saturday morning to catch the 7:00 AM Turbojet, where we hopped around the MTR and finally made our way to the Peninsula Hotel to meet the HKAC shuttle to the Kadoorie Institute Shek Kong Centre, way out in the New Territories. While on the bus, we met a few new faces: Lindy (a HKIE graduate who had interned at the HKAC last summer), Jarlene (a Penn State senior interning at the US Consulate in Guangzhou), and Mari and Brian (two Grinnell graduates who are teaching at MUST as part of the Grinnell Corps).

About an hour later, we arrived at KI and promptly jumped into the program, with a welcome from Glenn Shive (the HKAC director) and a talk from Edmund Ko on the transition to the new 3-4-4- secondary/tertiary education system in Hong Kong. After a delicious lunch (I especially remember the huge mussels, well-seasoned beefsteak, and chicken curry), there were more talks about general education (What does "liberal arts" actually mean?) and the challenges of revamping tertiary curricula in HK toward a more American-style education.

The gate of the Kadoorie Institute

The more interesting part of the afternoon was "opening the circle" for small-group discussions, with all sorts of different topics proposed by the various participants, so nothing felt like it was forced. One of the main rules was the "Law of two feet" - go where you want to go, leave if you want to leave (and join another group). Thus, no one should complain about being stuck somewhere they don't want to be =P

The accompanying poster

Dinner was quite an elaborate DIY affair: there were some pre-prepped foods, but most of the cooking (aka grilling over fire pits) was up to us. It was rather smoky but a lot of fun, nibbling on everything from purple yams and skewers of vegetables to grilled pork chops and meat/fishballs. Dessert was fresh-cut watermelon and a variety of moon cakes, the newfangled "Snowy" ones as well as some really good, traditional white lotus paste ones. The rest of the evening was left open - some people went to sleep early while others stayed up to chat. A bunch of us ETAs ended up playing Bananagrams, a game rather like speed-Scrabble, not going to bed until past midnight =P

Breakfast the next morning was a rather interesting mix of Western and Asian food: I had some scrambled eggs with mushrooms and a muffin, but also a small man tou and some cooked veggies. Another interesting addition was cherry tomatoes - they seem to treat it as a fruit rather than a vegetable, so there was just a big bowl of them next to the apples and bananas. Probably the best part: pomelo juice!

My breakfast - everyone keeps commenting on how my plates always look colorful!

The morning's agenda was a few more open circle discussions, then we "closed the circle" by talking about what we'd learned, whether it was favorite restaurants in HK or ideas for getting our students to participate more in class. It's nice to know there are lots of people who also want to travel, take cooking lessons, and do other cool stuff this year =)

After another yummy buffet lunch and a quick change into casual clothes, we took two buses down the road to the Kadoorie Farm, which is no longer just a farm but a huge botanical garden and nature preserve. Because the hills that make up the farm are extremely steep, we mostly traveled on the buses, getting off at various points to walk around and take (lots of) photos. Selected shots are below - the full set is available here via Facebook.

Map of Kadoorie Farm

Not sure what you're supposed to try to do with this plant...

The Kadoorie Brothers' memorial pavilion

A cheerfully burbling waterfall (of which there were many)

Statue of Kwun Yum

These leaves were HUGE!

The final part of the retreat was dinner at the Wesley Hotel Garden Restaurant in Wan Chai, hosted by the US Consulate. My table was definitely the "youngest" one, with all three of the HK research grant recipients (Neil, Reggie, and Brian) and most of us ETAs. Dinner was banquet-style, with courses coming out in rapid succession so that we were all stuffed by the end of the night. Some of the dishes were meh (the abalone was super-chewy), but others (like the lobster noodles) were absolutely scrumptious. With such rich food, I was very glad to finish off with more fresh fruit: melon, watermelon, and dragonfruit (the pink/white thing with black seeds):

More cherry tomatoes too!

Dinner ended fairly late (around 9 PM), so by the time I got to the ferry terminal, I had to wait for the 10 PM Turbojet, so I didn't get home until nearly midnight. All in all, a very fun but quite exhausting weekend...now time to sleep and get ready to teach again tomorrow!