Wow, was reading the previous post I just did, and I have a terrible grammatical error: It should be, I tore my ACL, not torn, and term started Monday, not today...

Good news and bad news.

The Good: I am co-choreographing HKIEd's production of Disney's Aladdin!!!!! So psyched. I am thrilled beyond all belief at the moment about it. And we will have cameos in some of the dance sequences, which is also terribly exciting. I saw posters from some of their previous performances, and the costumes look gorgeous, so I have hopes for this one.

The Bad: I may have done something quite drastic to my knee. A group of the ETAs were playing soccer with some of the soccer players (or rather football), and in stealing the ball from someone, my knee made this hideous crack to the side. And down falleth I. I was down and unable to think about even getting up for about thirty seconds, and then I rolled myself up and in the process of trying to cope with it, it buckled sideways (a new experience) and down I went again. So in short, it hurts like no other and is swollen. Will try to get to a doctor tomorrow. My friend thinks there's a chance I torn my ACL (crosses fingers that it's not, knocks on wood).

The Other: term started today, and we've finally started getting our schedules. Nothing too serious till next week, but still, it's exciting to be doing something finally. *nods proudly*

All right, I hurt, I'm going to go lie down and pretend like nothing happened.

It's another hot Sunday night, and I've just come back from food in Tai Po. I had noodles with 'spicy' pork and tea. Since last I posted, this is what has happened:

1) tour of Central - all the ETAs went into Central and walked around. We had a lovely lunch at a restaurant (some dim sum and then a few other dishes ordered at random). We went through Lan Kwai Fong, which, after hours, becomes a huge draw for foreigners to the bars and clubs. We walked past the American embassy, went to the office of International Institute of Education, etc.

2) barbecue - the students at JCSQ (the student housing where I'm assigned to work but don't live) invited us to a barbecue on Thursday night. We literally skewered meat on metal prongs and held them over the fire. When they were almost done, we spread honey on them, held them over the fire for a bit longer, and then ate them. Tasty, but it took quite a long time for each thing to be finished.

3) became a 'registered person' - went to Kwun Tong office to register as living in HK. I had to fill out a form, then they took my picture, then they took my thumb prints which will go onto a smart chip and be inserted into my id .

4) ate a lot of good food. :)

5) been in a water fight - with JCSQ peoples...and apparently the next gathering we have they're going to make us sing and play telephone...in Cantonese. *faints quietly*

6) played basketball - although the words 'playing basketball' are misleading. I've been shooting hoops. Badly. But still. I'm moving around. I feel very lazy half the time...besides the walking, I'm not doing any dance or anything, so I feel like I'm not getting any exercise, yet eating so much. I've also been swimming. The pool here is really nice.


7) misc other - laundry, room cleaning, a spot of shopping, etc. We had induction to the Centre for Learning Education the other day. We still don't know our schedules, although classes start tomorrow, but we now know where everything is!

8) I miss the laundry at Bryn Mawr. *sigh* You never appreciate how good it is till it's gone, no?

9) Apparently the pics I tried to send out in a word doc didn't go through...and rumor has it that all other Window's office programs before 2007 are incompatible with 2007. Which is annoying beyond all belief. So I shall try to figure out how to add pictures if possible.

Monday started the last few days of English class/Cantonese lessons for awhile. We'll pick Cantonese back up in September, but only for once a week or so for about a month I think.

Monday night four of us who are working in the Jockey Club Student Quarters met up with their equivalent of Res Life. We had dinner at the Canteen (I had a rice noodle soup with beef balls...odd), and then they took us to a 'performance'. The new students, presumably first years, have started coming in, and so there were lots more people on campus than I'm used to seeing. The show was a viewing of various clubs on campus. So we saw hip hop, more 'traditional' dance, karate, drama, music, etc. Very interesting, actually. The hip hop in particular, for it's almost an entirely different approach to the music, even though they were using American songs ("Ring the Alarm" and "Like a Boy" for example). The only problem with the show was that 1) it was two and a half hours long and 2) it was entirely in Cantonese. Almost a culture shock. Everyone there was so much more enthused than I've ever seen frosh at American colleges. And all of them wear the same t-shirt for orientation apparently. One of the non-performance highlights was when the two emcees pitched (literally pitched) cups of noodles at the audience. One came flying in between me and the person next to me...we both dodge out of the way and it smacked into the person behind us.

Today I went into Kowloon Tong to the mall. I know it sounds like I shop a lot, or go window shopping a lot, but it's only because every single train station has a mall practically attached to it. And I've been to other areas that are non-shopping oriented...being more food oriented instead, I suppose. But in the evenings, there's just not the time to go out on a big excursion of sorts. Plus, it's too humid/hot to do all that much outside without sweating to death. So when the weather cools off and I have a more condensed schedule, I hope to go elsewhere. But I ate at a ramen place, but not like the ramen that we have that comes in those plastic packs back home. These were much more noodley. I bought a messenger bag because the strap of mine broke off and I can't get a needle through the layers of thick material to fix it.

Anyway, came back. Here I am! I should go study. We did numbers and money this week, which will be incredibly useful, if I can only learn how to hear them.

The days are just flying.

So let's see. Friday, we went on a tour of the New Territories (I think I'll have to send pics out separately, as I can't seem to figure out how to upload photos to this yet). All of us, on a bus, with three guides. It was pretty fun. Some of the places/scenes were 'rural' with great views of natural landscapes, like huge mountains, waterfalls, and the ocean. Others had views of the man-made cities...we went up this one mountain and at the top there was a pavilion with a fenced in area and we could see Sha Tin (I think) and all the tall buildings (maybe it was Tai Po, now that I think about...one of those, anyway). It was awe-inspiring. We also saw China, interestingly. Tshenzhen (spelling?) which is pretty much right next to us. We're closer to the mainland than to Central, which is crazy. We're all hoping to get our visas to go to China within the next month or so. We have to get our ID cards for HK first. Let's see. We ate at this restaurant where we received a 'basin' lunch. It was intense. They bring out a huuuuuge basin of meat including pork, fried pig skin, chicken, squid, fish balls, etc. They put it on a burner, and it bubbles. That is the only way to describe what our food did; it jiggled up and down. It was not appetizing, for me. I ate some, to be polite/be able to say I've eaten at a basin feast.

That night, some of us wanted to go out for dinner, so we went into Mong Kok. We took the bus to Tai Po, the KCR to East Kowloon Tong (I believe), and the MTR to Mong Kok. We came out on this street that was so lit up by shops, ads, and billboards, that it was brighter than day is sometimes. We wandered around in a daze until we saw a sign for Korean food. It was buffet barbecue style. Really good, although somewhat overwhelming. Enjoyable. Afterwards, we again wandered before heading home. It took about an hour or so to get back home, so by the time we got back, I was exhausted. Having been out in the heat all day and then out for four or five hours that night was intense.

On Saturday, I got up early to go with a friend to get his id card in Kwun Tong...wandered around for lunch (dim sum in a side restaurant somewhere). We met up with three other ETAs and one of their friends and went to Ocean Park. They have the pandas there!!! We waited in line for over an hour, but got to see pandas wandering around and eating and being adorable. We then waited in line again for another hour to get on the cable car to cross over to the other side of the park. It was beautiful. It goes up a mountain and then across to another mountain. The line runs right around the coast, and you can see the South China sea from it. Gorgeous. We got over there, but it was so hot and crowded. I've never been in such close contact with so many other sweaty pushy people. I thought I was going to pass out from the heat and being really tired. Anyway, we went to the water show, where the dolphins and seals did tricks etc. We also went to the shark aquarium. It was awe-inspiring....you go in to this dark room and see a huge tank of these enormous creatures swimming in a lit pool. They had your run of the mill sharks, so to speak, manta rays, sword fish, etc. Then you walk through this glass tunnel where they are all around and above you. Amazing. The heat got to us eventually, and we headed for home (bus, metro, train, bus) and had dinner at a curry place in Tai Po where we had been once before. Good food, very reasonably priced. Got home, showered, and crashed. Slept till 10 the next morning (today).

Had a chill day. I did laundry, went to the pool with the people on my hall, made dinner, and ran into Tai Po for a couple hours with a friend. Good times. I needed a chill day.
Unfortunately, I also need to look at my Cantonese. I'm having a lot of difficulties learning said language, but I shall persevere! Until next semester, when I may switch to Putanghua :)

I suffered my first rain-related injury last night. Coming back from a successful trip to Tai Po in the sudden torrential downpour, I slipped crossing the road to my hostel. Naturally, I was wearing flip flops, so I've taken some of the skin off my toe and I have a bruised knee. When I got back to my room, El Gecko was patiently waiting for me - on my bed. He greeted me shyly before scampering off across my pillow and hiding somewhere in the vicinity of my desk.

Yesterday, all said and done, was uneventful. Cantonese class was cut from 3 hours to just 2 and even so it still seemed long and difficult. Those tones! I cannot do tones! I struggle to hear them and even more so to produce them in conversation. Part of the problem is that I have to change the way in which I study this language in comparison to the way I studied French/Spanish/Latin. I could pick up the vocab with relative ease...but each word is tonal, and and and that just makes it difficult.

Anyway, after class, I read a Philip K. Dick novel. I enjoyed about the first half. *shrug* I went into Tai Po for the strategic reason of purchasing light weight shorts/capris. We have a walking tour of the New Territories tomorrow, and I'd rather not do that in jeans. I found a section of the mall that I didn't know, which is odd, for I feel that I've been all over that mall with people looking for things. This was an almost sketchy section...it reminded me more of a temporary set-up with small stores crammed full of whatever can and cannot fit. I got a pair of capris and shorts...I'm such a sucker for a decent price. *sigh* But they look fine and now I won't roast every day! I went into a few places that I saw to see about getting a hair cut, but unfortunately no one spoke English. I think I'll have to go into Central for that, which is fine; it will prevent impulse hair cuts. :)

Class in half an hour. No idea what is happening tonight. Tai Po? Sha Tin? Kowloon? Oh the possibilities......

Allo allo allo!

It's 2am, and I have officially created (another) blog, but this one is intended specifically for the purpose of documenting my time spent in Hong Kong as an ETA. With that in mind, a quick recap:

I left for HK on August 2nd. Arriving at the airport on my fourth flight of the journey, the heat and humidity struck me as I imagine the term 'smote' to be used. There are 16 college graduates who were flown from various areas around the States to teach English at HKIED (which interestingly is pronounced Hong Kong Ied). Bundled onto a bus, we arrived on campus and were shepherded into our various dorms. There are four living quarters for students on campus (despite the fact that the 16 of us are technically 'staff'). I'm in the one closest to the entrance and the bus stop which is very convenient both for catching public transportation and for carrying groceries back. My room is equipped to be a double, but I get it all to myself. Facilities is supposed to come remove the extra set of furniture sometime soon, but so far has not done so.

In the last week and a half, we've been in trainings and orientation sessions. I just started learning Cantonese this week, and it's hard! I expected it to be, but having studied Romance languages all my life, I guess I didn't realize how much the tones were going to throw me off (there are 6 tones in Cantonese, and each syllable has a tone, which gives it meaning when combined with the sound...thus dou1 and dou6 mean entirely different things, though at this hour of the night, I have no idea what they might be).

I've also been around and about HK. HKIEd is in the New Territories, and getting into Central is something of a trek. I've actually only been in once. But I have been to Tai Po (the closest area to the school) A LOT. And some other areas as well. The campus of the institute itself is amazing. The mountains are right there, literally backing right up into campus. Hilly as is, the campus is built as a series of levels. Although it was quite complicated to get around at first, I now feel fairly confident wandering around the grounds.

This past weekend, for something fun and exciting, I went to the HK Art Museum to see a special exhibit, the last day of said show. It consisted of maybe 14 scrolls of calligraphy and paintings from ages ago. It was really quite interesting, except the whole having to stand in line for fifteen-twenty minutes at a time to see one scroll. We took the ferry to Central, which I thought was uber lots of fun. I like ferries. And when you get to the other side, you walk across a covered bridge that crosses a stretch of water that the boat can't get through. And I may sound crazy, but it was one of the most awesome travel moments I've had here thus far. I love the scenery (both natural and man-made) here. It was misting slightly (it's an open, though covered, walkway), breezy, and overcast. I remember standing and leaning against the rail, looking out over the water to the skyline, feeling the rain on my face, and just being struck by something I can't even explain. It felt like something out of a movie. I don't even know why.

The food here has been good...not quite what I expected, but good nonetheless. I've eaten in nice restaurants, corner of the street places, and on campus. The one thing that is driving me crazy is the fact that the chicken always has bones still in it. I hate gnawing away at that. It's not nearly as satisfying as having a piece of chicken. On the plus side, I get tea and rice at practically every meal. :) I've had 'Chinese' food, however one wants to define that, Thai, Korean, and Japanese so far. I've walked through countless malls, wandered through streets of shops and restaurants, been repeatedly mistaken for Cantonese, and am starting to learn how to navigate my way around on public transit.

We have another week and a half before classes start. Until then, we'll be doing Cantonese three hours a day and English for two hours. We're also taking two field trips around the sites of HK. I won't get my year schedule for probably a week or so, but the hints given have been that I will work with some French and Spanish, the drama dept, the dance area, and possibly help with writing, this all in addition to working in the primary school, one of the dorms, and the Center for Language Education. Busy busy busy.

Another very important aspect of my life right now is El Gecko. He's been here since I moved in I believe. He likes to run around whenever I come in at night, which is one of the reasons I haven't been sleeping a regular schedule.

But on that note, I think that I should try for some sleep, since I need to be up around 8 to go over some Chinese/talk online/get ready for class/eat etc.

Night night!!!!