HK trip: Mongkok and Maryknoll!

With no classes to teach (Monday was a holiday for the Cheung Yeung Festival and FSH is having reading week anyway), I hopped on the ferry Monday afternoon for an overnight trip to HK. I met up with Tatiana in Central and headed to her apartment in Wan Chai - she introduced me to the tram system, which is so easy and way cheaper than the MTR!

Tatiana had warned me beforehand about certain things, like how her apartment building is next to a fish/vegetable market, but I actually found the bustling streets rather homey, similar to the Costa area where I live in Macau. She graciously took me shoe-shopping around Johnston Street, where I picked up a solid pair of Reeboks, then for dinner we got noodles and "steamed milk," a deceptively plain-looking dessert that actually has a lot of subtle flavor and a wonderfully silky texture. Apparently the restaurant is a chain with two branches in Macau, so now I want to go find them =P

Moo...I mean, yum!

Early the next morning, I slipped out and headed up north into Kowloon, getting off at the Prince Edward MTR station and walking the rest of the way to Maryknoll Convent School, a very well-regarded all-girls institution that has been around for over 75 years. I had actually met Sister Rose Duchesne (the MCS principal when Mom a student there) back in August, and she had agreed to give me a tour of the school if I could come back on a weekday, as she was usually busy tutoring on weekends. I got there by 10 AM, so while I was sitting with Sister Rose in the convent parlor, we surprised Mom with a late-evening phone call! I wish I had been able to see Mom's face when she realized her former principal was on the phone, but it was pretty funny from my end too...yay for technology!

Anyway, even if I hadn't been there for the sake of family history, Maryknoll is quite an interesting place, and Sister Rose was an excellent tour guide. Having been there for over fifty years, she could tell me not just what each building and picturesque spot was, but also some interesting tidbits of history either from her own experience or that of other nuns. It was also super-cute to see the primary school students coming in from mid-morning recess, super-bubbly and full of energy, but with everything neatly in order, from their blue uniforms to their class lines. Obviously, the uniforms have probably changed since my mother's time, but I could still imagine her (and my aunt) walking the very same corridors. Some photos below:

Our Blessed Lady in the primary school inner courtyard

The hill going to the upper primary school, which my mom and aunt have often jokingly complained about, but it's nothing compared to the UM hill =P

Part of the original secondary school (there are two relatively new wings), with biology/chemistry labs on the far left

Sister Rose and me at the Maryknoll main entrance

After leaving Maryknoll, I knew I wanted to go flats-shopping on Fa Yuen Street, where I had found my original black pair, but along the way I couldn't resist stopping in the Yuen Po Bird Garden, where dozens of vendors and songbird enthusiasts gather to sell/compare specimens. As might be expected, it was a very noisy place!

The ASPCA would also probably have a fit about the cages that the birds were kept in, but hey, it's Hong Kong...people don't have much space! I have to admit, I was sorely tempted to get a bird because they were so darn cute, but my better judgment intervened =P

Aww, lovebirds ^-^

This macaw really liked his sunflower seeds

Don't worry, that's water in the bowl, not...something stronger

A cheeky little budgie

I did finally make it to Fa Yuen Street, and after going up and down several times, I did find several good pairs of flats before ferrying back home to Macau. Overall, a very successful trip!

Mini-NJGSS reunion: Lusofonia Festival

After a rather tedious day at UM proctoring the ACT and the EELC101 midterm exam, it was good to meet up in Senado with a very old friend: Tatiana, one of my suitemates from NJGSS back in 2004. She's spending a year in HK as part of the Princeton in Asia program, working for the Far East Economic Review until December, then switching to the Wall Street Journal. Since she speaks Cantonese, she had been touring some of the central Macau area with a Lonely Planet guidebook while I was at work, but for dinner we headed down to Old Taipa Village, where the Lusofonia Festival was in full swing.

One of the entrance archways to the "Festa de Lusofonia"

For those of you who are wondering, "Lusophone" means Portuguese-speaking, similar to how Anglophone means English-speaking. (It took us a while to figure this out...yay for Wikipedia!) Lusophone countries don't just include Portugal and Brazil, but also many smaller places like Macau, East Timor, Cabo Verde, and other former Portuguese colonies. Thus, this festival was a celebration of all these countries' varying cultures, with food vendors, craft booths, and various performances.

Is this supposed to be a volcano?

It was a bit strange to see Asian people in Portuguese costumes, but then they also danced later!

Whirling around on stage

The Brasilian booth, which had this amazing chocolate mousse truffle thingy

After that, we tried to catch the Dragon's Treasure show at City of Dreams, but the last showtime had been changed to 10:30 PM instead of midnight, so we just missed it. Instead, we just chatted for a while over frozen margaritas at the Venetian, then walked around the canals (which Tatiana found highly amusing). It was good to catch up on news of other NJGSS-ers and realize that even though most of us haven't kept in touch since 2004 (or 2005 at best), there's still an underlying bond =)

Susan and Sam left for Vietnam at a ridiculously early time this morning (their plane was 7:50 AM), so I dropped Tatiana off at Lou Lim Ieoc garden with instructions on which bus would take her back to the ferry terminal once she was done exploring, then headed off to church/dance class. I'll see her again tomorrow night, when I head to HK for some shoe-shopping (my black flats fell apart and my sneakers have holes in the toes!) and maybe a surprise for Mom ;-)

Quick update: ELC fish tank

One thing I forgot to mention earlier: just before the English Festival, someone went out and got more fish for the ELC!

Melody, one of the GAs, with the new feng shui soaker-up-ers

They have since been transferred to the previously empty fish tank (in case you were wondering about the lack of filtration in the glass vase) and seem to be surviving pretty well so far =)

English Language Festival

我 知 道 我 很 久 沒 有 練 習 寫 中 文 了， 可 是 我 現 在 很 忙：這 星 期 我 們 要 凖 備 英 語 節 的 活 動， 也 要 幫 助 我 們 的 學 生凖 備 考 期 中 試。

Translation: I know I haven’t practiced writing Chinese in a while, but I’ve been very busy: this week we had to prepare all the English Festival activities, and we also had to help our students prepare for the midterm exam.

The main part of our job this week was not teaching classes as usual (although we did have to prepare our students for the midterm); instead, it was running the events at the English Festival, starting with an opening ceremony on Tuesday night and ending with the closing ceremony around 6 PM this evening. It was a pretty jam-packed few days of activities for students and teachers alike, ranging from lectures to board games to karaoke (in English, of course). We ETAs were in charge of organizing/running all the activities for students, sort of a practice run for next semester when we're supposed to organize the whole thing ourselves!

First up was the opening ceremony Tuesday night, with remarks by Glenn Shive (director of the HKAC) and a 'scholarly lecture' by Peter Skehan, an English professor from CUHK. He spoke about his/his students' research on task-based learning, e.g. if repetition helps fluency or accuracy, which was semi-interesting for us as teachers, but I couldn't help feeling bad for the many students in the room who probably had no idea what he was saying. Still, being proper Chinese students, they all clapped politely at the end, and then we went off for dinner at IFT, the Institute for Tourism Studies.

The IFT Educational Restaurant

The IFT is an interesting school because it specifically trains people to work in the hospitality industry: chefs, waiters, concierges, etc. The food at the educational restaurant was good (curry shrimp and rice for a main course, with this delicious rhubarb crumble for dessert), but the decor was also quite interesting, like this blue-lit wine storage room. Is the blue light supposed to help preserve the flavor or something?

Days 2 and 3 were super-busy for us, running all the student events. Austin screened a film he had made with friends in India (A Box With a View), plus we had Jeopardy and a UM Idol karaoke competition. Participation was overwhelmingly enthusiastic - we had 17 teams in Jeopardy and over 20 acts for karaoke!

The audience was also huge...

Our karaoke winner, who rapped Eminem's "8 Mile"

Overall, the English Festival could be counted a clear success, despite a few logistical glitches like trying to handle the hundreds of students with their "E+ cards" trying to get stamps for participation points. Next semester will be interesting because we have to plan the whole thing, but I think we've had a good practice run already!

A little slice of Americana...kind of.

Austin's college friend Pete was back in Macau (coming from the Philippines and before heading to Thailand) tonight (Monday), so after a massive group dinner at "Pekng Dumplng," we decided to try the bowling alley near the Camoes Garden. As we were walking from Senado up several semi-sketchy alleyways toward Camoes, we encountered this super-friendly kitten, who promptly ran all around/on our feet.

Watching for new people

I've had a chipmunk on my feet before, but this is the first kitten =P

Batting Brian's umbrella

We finally got to the bowling alley and ended up making an East/Midwest (Susan, Mari, Pete, and me) vs. West (Brian, Austin, and Sam) game. The alley wasn't in the best shape - several of the balls had deep scratches that made it impossible for them to roll properly, for example - but we had fun anyway. I'm not even sure who won (the scores were erased immediately after the game ended), but then again, who cares?

After bowling, we still felt rather energetic...luckily, there was an arcade next door! (There was also an ice-skating rink, but the ice looked kind of dirty and none of us are good at skating, so it would seem.) Some of the games you could find in any boardwalk arcade or Chuck-e-Cheese in America, but others were...uniquely Asian =P

Racing each other (and the clock)

Shooting hoops

Pete and Susan trying to figure out the drumming game...
unfortunately, none of us read Japanese!

Between all of us, we got about 75 tickets, but the girl at the prize counter was nice and gave us this little orange elephant stuffy with blue ears, hanging from a keyring, which was supposed to be 80 tickets. It's hanging in our office now - I've unofficially named it Tangerine because it's a really bright orange!

After some classic vanilla soft-serve at McDonalds, it was time to head home...tomorrow's agenda: teach class, hopefully get some grading done, then opening ceremony of the English Festival!

Yalie mini-reunion #1

Carrie Nguyen ES'09 stopped by Macau on her way from Vietnam back to the States, so Emily and I took her out to yum cha and walked around quite a lot of Macau: Grand Lisboa, Senado, etc. Even though I've been to those places before, we always find something new to gawk/laugh at.

The first time I was in the Grand Lisboa, it was at night, and I was looking for another place altogether, so I didn’t really take a good look around. When we come home at night and see it from the bus window, the sparkling lights look absolutely garish, but I still have to admire the coordination of all the bulbs, even with changing colors. I got a similar feeling inside the lobby – it was so over-the-top, but you can’t help marveling at the ostentatious displays of wealth.

A massive, glittery chandelier

A multi-ton jade sculpture

A similarly elaborate gold sculpture

Even the bathrooms were draped with crystal strings

Senado felt much more like authentic Macau, especially with the weekend Lion Dance performance at the steps of St. Paul’s Ruins. It was pretty warm out that afternoon, so it must have been boiling for the performers inside the costumes. However, they still managed to seem as if they were having fun too, going around the audience to let all the kids (and many of the adults) pet the lion heads and take photos.

Lion dancing

So soft and fuzzy!

Hi kid.

Of course, no trip to Senado is complete without stopping by Lemoncello for gelato…I tried some new flavors (grapefruit peach and kiwi), both of which were quite yummy. Outside, though, we (literally) ran into some clowns…turns out they were advertising a new snack shop or something.

No, the police were not coming to arrest them.

After that, Emily took Carrie to see Zaia at the Venetian while I ran a few errands, then we met back up for dinner at a Portuguese restaurant near MPI. Amy and Holly came along too, so we had a lot of fun critiquing the Miss Macau pageant (the restaurant was broadcasting it) over some very yummy fried rice, mussels, and other dishes. I went home while the rest of the girls went for post-dinner foot massages, but then we reunited for some walking around the casino area, namely MGM and the Wynn.

Possibly the craziest part of the night: midnight fountain show at the Wynn! I’ve watched the show at other times before, but they’re all different, with varying songs and therefore varying water patterns. This one was especially elaborate, perhaps because it’s the last one for the night:



After that, we went to one of the bars in ZAPE intending just to get a drink and hang out. Emily and Tom left earlier because they had to get up for debate in the morning, but Sam, Carrie and I stayed there talking until almost 3 AM! We briefly stopped by Cubic, but the club was charging $100 MOP cover, so we didn't feel it was worthwhile. All in all, though, it was a fun night =)

Unexpected lessons

Today, I was trying to teach my class some methods of descriptive writing, like using different verbs/adjectives, describing all their senses, etc. One thing I taught them was how to construct similes:

"... as __adjective__ as __ noun__ ..."

They caught on to the idea pretty quickly, so I just put up some adjectives on the board and asked them for nouns to fill in the second blank. We went through big, small, sweet, and then the last one I thought of was "stinky." I first had to explain that stinky meant something that smells bad, and then a couple girls said "rubbish" and "garbage," which are perfectly fine answers. One boy, however, looking up words on his cell phone's electronic dictionary, came up with "excrement." Trying to keep a straight face, I wrote it on the board and the following dialogue ensued:

Me: "_____, would you like to explain this word to to the class?"

Student: "Huh? Um...it is when you go to the washroom, and you have eaten something bad, and this is what comes out."

Class: *bursts into laughter*

Whatever works to get the point across...they will now never forget similes =P

Do you have what it takes?!

Another batch of visitors this weekend: the first round was 7 HK ETAs (Jessica M, Mai Choua, Laura, Sarah, Allison, Jesse, Layton) and Allison's boyfriend Charlie. Brian, Mari, and I met up with them at the ferry terminal but they wanted to do different things, so I ended up going with Jesse/Layton/Allison/Charlie to the Macau Tower while the rest went to lunch in Senado.

Why would we go to the Macau Tower, one might ask? Why else, of course, but to go bungee jumping! As the website proudly proclaims, the Macau Tower boasts the highest bungee jump in the world at 233 meters. The Hackett company also offers several other adrenaline-pumping options, such as walking around the top of the Tower, or even climbing the mast. I was wearing a dress, so clearly I wasn't about to go, but the four of them opted for the deluxe bungee jump package, which includes photos and a DVD of your jump. An interesting psychological point: you have to buy the tickets at the base of the tower, and they're non-refundable, so you mentally commit even before you get to the top =P

While at the base, we paused to take a couple photos of the many model Macau Towers around:

Lego Tower (next to the Toys 'R Us entrance)

A larger model one level down
"Oh great, we have to carry a spear and have our feet on fire?"

The elevator ride up was slightly disconcerting, even for me. They run on the outside of the Tower so you can get glimpses of the surrounding area, showing just how high you're going...

Fifty-something stories up and counting...

When we finally got to the observation deck, the view was kind of hazy, but still pretty awesome:

Macau (easy to spot the Grand Lisboa)

Taipa (the NW corner)

The jumpers, however, had other things on their mind. This teddy bear (one of several hanging around the deck), was not exactly inspiring =P

Whee!

After filling out the usual waivers and such, they all got harnessed up and ready to jump: first Jesse, then Allison, then Charlie, then Layton. The guy actually offered to let me put on a harness and go out to the balcony for free, but I elected to stay safely inside and just photograph from there =P

In the (indoor) waiting area
L->R Charlie, Allison, Jesse, Layton

Jesse had a mildly frightening moment even before getting outside - one of the more senior staff suddenly pulled him out of the waiting area saying, "You have the wrong harness on." That fixed, they got outside, had their feet Velcro-ed together, and all successfully made the jump. What amused me most were the other non-jumping tourists on the observation deck who would all collectively gasp anytime someone jumped...obviously, after seeing all four of my friends jump (and a few people before that), I was a bit jaded.

5, 4, 3, 2, 1...

Layton spotted me while getting his feet Velcro-ed

After they got to the bottom, all four came back up to meet me, get their bags back, and review their photos/videos. They all got certificates showing they had made the jump, which they can now show off with pride =P As scary as it sounds, the process is actually quite safe - dozens of people do the jump every day, and as far as I know, they haven't had any accidents. Besides the bungee cord, there are also multiple guide wires, so it's not possible for a gust of wind to blow jumpers into the Tower or out into the water. Obviously, if there was a typhoon warning, they'd shut down the whole operation. I still doubt that I'll ever do it myself, but it's nice to know that others have survived.

The rest of the day was quiet by comparison, but still a lot of fun. We stopped for lunch at Dumpling Town (it's so sad that they haven't found a decent dumpling place in HK, because they're all the way out in Tai Po) and walked around Senado a bit, then met up with the others at Venetian to catch the 6:00 Zaia show (yay for a 200 MOP discount!). I couldn't take any photos of Cirque de Soleil, but the acts were incredible even though the storyline was tissue paper-thin. All my YAGS buddies definitely would have appreciated the fire juggling: staffs, poi, jump ropes, and more ;-)

After a late dinner in the Venetian food court (first decent Mexican food I've had in Macau!) and singing Happy Birthday to Emily (over a chocolate Starbucks donut =P), most of the HK folks hopped on the convenient Venetian shuttle bus to the ferry terminal, with just Jess M staying overnight. From the fun we all had, though, we know they'll be back for more!

It's the little things that matter...

Some recent minor but semi-amusing accomplishments:

1) Opening the seal on my bottle of sesame oil, which was similar to a beer bottle...with just a fork. Where's Nick and his bottle-opener sandals when I need him/them? =P

2) Saving four guys from being locked into their apartment (the lock was broken, so they handed me the key and we managed to get it open with them pulling it open from the inside as I turned the key.

3) Finding a store that actually sells packages of chicken breast meat, not just whole chickens or chicken wings/feet/heads. It's frozen, but it works.

4) Buying a pomelo for 6 MOP (about $0.75 US) instead of the usual 20+ MOP ($2.50+ US)

5) Finding the Fortress and Park 'n Shop superstores in Taipa...and realizing just how small Taipa really is (they're just around the corner from the BNU where we opened our accounts)

6) Writing a thank-you note in Mandarin for the super-helpful security guard downstairs, to go with the mooncakes we gave him =P

7) Talking to four different people at HSBC to reset my credit card so I could purchase TigerAir tickets to Singapore for Halloween weekend...took about half an hour, but I finally got through!

8) Finding a potential place to take Chinese dance classes, but no one was there last weekend (public holidays) so I'll have to go back this week to actually talk to someone about signing up.

9) Helping some Filipino guys on the bus back from Hac Sa improve their pronunciation of numbers in Cantonese (they overheard Susan and me teaching Holly), then learning "salamat" (thank you in Tagalog)

10) Cutting open a pomegranate without slicing through more than 10 kernels...twice =D

中 秋 節 快 樂!

In case you can't read the title of this post, it says "Happy Mid-Autumn Festival" in Chinese...I wanted to see how Blogger would handle Chinese in post titles =P

Anyway, as you might have guessed, yesterday was the Mid-Autumn Festival, which falls on the night of the Harvest Full Moon on the lunar calendar. I went exploring to take more photos of the various decorations around Macau, then at night a bunch of us brought mooncakes and other snacks to Hac Sa beach, which is also a very Macanese tradition for this holiday. There isn't much more to say, so I'll just post some of the better photos here (more on Facebook, as usual).

Massive pink bunny at Tap Seac square

At night --> more creepy, less cute

Big lantern in Lou Lim Ioc garden

Tableau at Sintra Square

*flips the ON switch*

Our mooncakes and other snacks

Lots of people and lanterns at Hac Sa

Time to sleep now...back to work tomorrow!