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!

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!