Fulbright film stars?

Last week when we first got down to thinking about how to plan a prom in 2 weeks, we worried about generating enough publicity to encourage students to come, especially since it was the end of the semester when many of them have exams (especially our own EELC102 students, who had an exam the next day). We batted around the idea of a video that could be shown on the TV screens around campus, but didn’t start writing or anything, first deciding to concentrate on a poster and asking the other ELC teachers to tell their classes.

Last Monday/Tuesday, however, we got serious. In a late-night flurry of inspiration, Sam/Susan/I hammered out an outline involving a couple getting ready for prom…but how could we make it funny? Throw in a fairy godmother…err, god-uncle, some McDonalds, a rockin’ soundtrack, and ta-da! For your watching pleasure, I present the promotional video for City Lights:

Seriously, making this thing will probably be one of my most hysterical memories from this year as an ETA. From Tom threatening to stuff a French fry up Austin’s nose to Sam’s fluttery eyelashes, it took us twice as long to film only because we were laughing so hard half the time. This video will also probably live on in infamy at the ELC…Janice (one of the teachers) wants to use it as a “perfect example of gestural communication” for her 200-level classes in years to come!

English Festival redux!

This past week, all of us ETAs were running around for 72 hours straight (more or less) for the ELC’s Spring 2010 English Festival. For an idea of the jam-packed schedule, click the link above.

As in the fall, the festival’s purpose is to promote English learning as meaningful for students’ futures, and possibly even fun at times. The meaningful part was provided by a series of presentations ranging from “Traveling in English” and “Using English in the Workplace” (bringing in speakers from international corporations such as Disney and Boeing), while we ETAs provided most of the fun through activities such as Jeopardy!, a UM Amazing Race, Games Corner, and UM Idol Talent Show.

Opening ceremony ribbon-cutting

Traveling in English panel (thanks to GAs Tom/Karen and Tom's roommate Willem!)

Mock debate on "Women need men like fish need bicycles."

Joseph presenting on his experience as an exchange student at SIU Carbondale

Austin and Rex (one of the other ELC teachers) with students at Games Corner

Teams fighting to ring the bell first in Jeopardy!

UM Amazing Race was one of the new things we tried, partially inspired by our own Amazing Race during orientation week. We were mostly nice: the students didn’t have to go around Taipa and Macau, just around campus, but they had to complete various tasks at each stop, and some of these were harder than others. For example, unscrambling some words isn’t so difficult, but carrying a team member piggy-back…uphill…

Task: Identify flags of 7 countries at the World Expo and take a photo with Haibao =P

Task: Carry a team member up the hill from the sports center

Aiyaaa...falling down!

Secret task at the end: Say the English alphabet backwards!

UM Idol was also expanded slightly to encourage more participation – students could do things other than singing English karaoke songs (although many of them chose that anyway). However, some groups got more creative, e.g. a dramatic reading of “The Boy Who Cried Wolf” and an English dub of a Chinese drama (with soundtrack!)

The Boy Who Cried Wolf (with super-cute folders!)

Annie and Adam dubbing "The Flirtatious Scholar"

PSP (Peer Support Program) - these guys can always be counted on to give a good show

Overall, it was fun but exhausting, so I’m glad it’s done. One event left…UM Prom in two weeks!

Macao Science Center field trip

This morning, we took a group of UM students to the Macao Science Center, a sleek semi-cone designed by I.M. Pei, jutting out into the Macau-Taipa strait near Fisherman’s Wharf.
The planetarium dome

The main building (still under semi-construction)

Susan and I got there a little early, so while we were waiting, we saw several busloads of younger students coming for their own field trips. We couldn’t help but smile at the youngest ones: girls had plaid jumpers (with pockets) and the boys had little bow ties!
So cute!

We first went to see a 3-D planetarium show entitled “Dawn of the Space Age,” which was quite technically impressive: the theater is dome-shaped so the 3-D images really popped out, plus the seats vibrated during every rocket launch, so I guess it’s what some places might consider a “4-D” experience. The narration was mainly broadcast in Cantonese, but we tried to get the students to use the headsets that provide the (original) English narration…not sure how successful we were, because it was too dark inside to see if they were using them!

After a group photo in the atrium, we all split up to go wandering around the main exhibition space. The main building is kind of like the Guggenheim Museum in New York: a huge spiral with halls around the outside, so it was easy to just walk up the ramp and poke our heads into whatever looked interesting. I should note here that the exhibits are primarily aimed toward the 10-and-under set, but we still found many things of interest/amusement. Central display in the atrium

This young man got very good at tossing the balls into the whirlpool

Chibi-Newton!

Susan and Austin playing a jumping game (they tied)

A robot that would scurry away from antennae touches (but move forward if the back one touched the wall)

One of the halls I found most interesting was tucked away on the ground floor behind the rocket in the middle of the atrium: an exhibit on ancient Chinese technology. It included classics like a dragon/frog seismograph and printing blocks, but also some things I hadn’t seen before like an odometer, bamboo paper-making, and a multi-jar clepsydra (aka water clock).
Dragon rocket (inspiration for Mulan?)

A rather clunky odometer (used only for keeping track of how far the emperor traveled on his tours around the country)

The multi-level water clock (design circa 1316)

We finished the trip with lunch at the “Café I Kuong Chiu Fok II,” a little noodle shop on the corner of the NAPE area. Clearest sign of a good restaurant: you see lots of locals eating there. The fare here was simple: rice or regular noodles with a variety of toppings such as beef tendon, meatballs, curry chicken, or even intestine. Medium-bowls are 16 MOP, large ones are 21 MOP, and you can add pepper/chili flakes to suit your own level of spiciness. Simple, but filling =)

Mixing east and west: a tour of the MUST hospital

Yesterday afternoon, Susan and I went to tour the hospital at the Macau University of Science and Technology (MUST), where Brian and Mari teach English. While Macau doesn’t have a proper medical school, the hospital is associated with MUST’s Chinese medicine program, but it also offers Western medical treatments. We were invited by Dr. Morgan, the director of the Hope Clinic in Macau, who has also graciously allowed us to shadow a few times.

The first stop (and perhaps place of greatest interest) was the Chinese pharmacy, located right on the ground floor next to the Western one. While the room was gleamingly hygienic and scientific-looking, the contents of the drawers were straight out of an apothecary's shop.

Some of the rarer ingredients: snakeskin and centipedes

Dried lizards o_O

One of the interesting things about the pharmacy is that they try to make things more convenient for patients by pre-boiling the prescribed ingredients to make packets of dark, syrupy concentrate that the patients then take by the spoonful. From a prescription, the ingredients are tossed together on to a clean cheesecloth (this process seemed rather haphazard, involving handfuls rather than a graduated cylinder or electronic balance). The bundle is placed in a bag in a big metal urn with holes like a sieve, and the top is covered with more cheesecloth. In another room (that really smells like an apothecary's shop), the urns are placed inside glass containers which are filled with water. The whole outfit is then boiled for 1-3 hours to distill (presumably) the essences of the ingredients, which are decanted into jars or bags that are given to the patient. Scorpion soup, anyone?

Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble...

We continued the tour upstairs where there is a traditional Chinese medical clinic that offers treatments such as acupuncture, cupping, moxibustion, etc. Again, the rooms had interesting juxtapositions: standard-issue hospital beds and a nice window view, but instead of a model skeleton in the corner, there was a small model on the desk showing the various chi lines and nodes. The stainless steel trays and individually-sealed packets followed standard hygienic protocol, but the trays held rows of glass domes and the packets had super-fine acupuncture needles of varying lengths.

For those who might dismiss all this as superstitious nonsense, consider the training that the Chinese doctors must go through, which is fairly comparable to what I'll be starting next year at NYU. The attending physician we spoke to had gone through five years of training, then since he wanted to practice in Macau, he had to work as a sort of intern/resident for 1-2 years before getting his official certification. Also, 5000+ years of observation must have come up with some sort of insights and semi-effective treatment, otherwise people wouldn't still be using it, right?

MUST is also trying to adapt traditional practices to Western ideals of "scientific medicine" through standardizing treatments and drug dosages, as well as introducing some fancy new machines, like this one, which is supposed to show which of the six major systems is out of balance based on measurements of surface temperature (e.g. on palms and feet), pulse rate, blood pressure, and a few other things. I'm a little skeptical about how accurate it can be, but they're trying, at least.

The third floor we visited was the research wing, mostly used for analyzing samples of traditional medicine to determine composition and purity. For example, if the medicine is supposed to be an aphrodisiac/increase potency, did someone just add Viagra to the pill? Again, there were many interesting juxtapositions - any biochemical lab would have been justifiably proud of the state-of-the art equipment (e.g. mass chromatography machines), but the substances they were testing ranged from bits of dried leaves to pungent black liquid. Our tour guide, one of the researchers, mentioned that they were also trying to get approval for clinic trials on the efficacy of traditional Chinese medicine for treating H1N1 cases, though I'm not sure if that ever got off the ground because they were planning to use MUST students as subjects, making the ethics a little murky.

Anyway, the whole tour was quite intriguing, and it helped me fulfill one of my original Fulbright side project goals of learning more about Chinese medicine. Although I still don't know enough to help me in seeing patients, e.g. figuring out what herbs a little old lady has been taking for arthritis that might interact with her other prescriptions, it was a good place to start.

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!

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!