RTST/Thanksgivvukah/Clockenflap/MOS

The title of this blog might not make a lot of sense, but regardless, I've had a very busy 2 weeks since my last post.  I know I can't explain everything that has happened, so I'll just attempt to summarize my life without going into an overly descriptive 1500 word essay (like my English paper due last week).

First, last weekend was the annual 24 Hour Race, organized by Running to Stop the Traffic (RTST).  Each year, students from all around Hong Kong meet at Victoria peak and run 3k laps around the trail for an entire day, in order to raise money for Freedom Matters, a charity that fights human trafficking in Nepal and India.  Anyways, I decided to volunteer for what my school calls the Feel Good Squad, a group of people dedicated to shouting at and motivating our school's runners.  Our school fans were much rowdier than all the other schools, wearing pikachu and dinosaur onesies, attempting to speed up our runners, meanwhile receiving glares from the other international school students.

Robin and Sam aka a dinosaur and pikachu

Over the course of 24 hours, people got tired, injuries happened, but memories were definitely made.  Very few of us really slept much (which made homework difficult the next day), but the runners managed to push through, even at 5am in the morning when other teams were walking and giving up.  Our school ended up 3rd or 4th place out of 30 something teams, with most of the competing boys running 15 laps and the girls running at least 10.  Of course, our school won the best fans award for the fourth year in a row.

The beginning of the race

The next day, after returning to school and realizing the magnitude of work for next week, I tried to take a denial nap.  It didn't work, so I felt obliged to actually work.  Between a 200 character Chinese test, that prior mentioned essay, a TOK presentation, a chem lab, and a Spanish debate, I had plenty to stay busy with.  I managed, and the assignments and the following school days passed by.  Partway through the week I received news that some family friends were visiting from Michigan and that we were going to meet for Thanksgiving dinner on Thursday.

On Thursday, I attended school on Thanksgiving for the first time in my life.  Besides the glancing references from others about dead Black Friday shoppers and Indians, my Thanksgiving was amazing, and I realized I had so much to be thankful for over the course of the last year.  I skyped my family, said hi to my Alaskan cousins, then went to another class.  After thst, I took the subway to TST (Tsim Sha Tsui) for Thanksgiving dinner with the Zhongs.  We found a really nice restaurant overlooking Victoria harbor and replaced turkey and stuffing with fish and dumplings.  Afterwards, we returned to their hotel and they gave me a suitcase.  Apparently my parents sent a suitcase with them full of my favorite food, plus flip flops to replace my broken ones, and a random pair of American flag Sperries.  Even more to be thankful for!  Afterwards, I was supposed to say goodbye and return to school for the 9 o'clock check in, but since it was too late to make it back on time using public transit, I sent an email asking for an extension (I'm not so sure if my head of house received the email, meaning I might be locked on campus next weekend), and then we dessert.  When I finally made it back around 11, I realized I had a suitcase of food, and no possible way to finish it.  So, I invited friends to my room and we ate until we reached typical Thanksgiving levels of over fullness.

This weekend, the streak of busyness continued.  I had usual lion dance practice, then went to German Swiss International School with some friends to work a booth for a charity.  After that, some friends gave me a free ticket to Clockenflap, Hong Kong's biggest music festival.  30,000 people gathered at a park overlooking the entire city, listening to UK and HK bands.  I might not have recognized any of the performers, but it was such an experience, as I'd never been to a music festival before.

After returning to school, I had a spontaneous idea: to climb the mountain next to school the next day. I spent the entire term looking up at the mountain, Ma On Shan (MOS), and wanting to climb it, but I never had time.  Since I had a surprisingly light homework weekend, I figured this was my last chance of this term, since I only have one weekend left before my return to Michigan.  Anyways, I posted on Facebook and many people said they wanted to go hiking the next day.

In reality, only me and my Kosovan friend Altin actually woke up for the 7:30 hike, with everyone else choosing to stay in bed for another few hours.  I'm glad I didn't stay in bed though, as the hike up and down MOS was a relatively challenging, but worthwhile 3 1/2 hour hike.  As we neared the top of the mountain, we could see for many kilometers/miles around us, and my school that I spend so much time at seems so insignificantly small.  When we reached the top, we could see downtown Hong Kong, downtown Shenzhen, China, and the dozens of other mountains of Hong Kong.  It was such a quality break from day to day life at LPC and the view was so incredible.  After some time chatting and taking pictures, we rushed down MOS (only tripping a few times), and returned to school in time for brunch.

 A few pictures from the hike

After brunch, I started working on my espanol and zhongwen, but then remembered that I should probably post something on my blog.  If I waited another week, I'd end up with a blog that rambles even more than this post.  Anyways, I only have two school weeks left in this term, and then soon enough I'll be facing the (actual) cold of Michigan and seeing my friends and family back there!

European Cultural Evening/"Cold" Weather Begins

The last two weeks after my trip to mainland China were relatively average (if you can call anything average at this school).  With the exception of losing my remaining free periods to the elective/philosophy course named TOK (Theory of Knowledge), school here currently seems like school anywhere, just slightly more difficult. Learn, write a paper, take a test, etc...  However, the extra-curriculur activities have been just as engaging as ever, if not better, and the campus recently prepared for another major cultural event, that is European Cultural Evening, henceforth known as ECE.

ECE is the second of four cultural evenings this year, and follows in the footsteps of the African cultural evening that I previously blogged about.  Everyone had high expectations, considering the success of the last event, and I was really looking forward to the week, especially the Saturday events.  The cultural festivities started off on the preceding Sunday with the Viking games, a series of water based competitions with little ties to the Vikings other than the random Scandinavian electro music in the background, and the Norwegian, Swedish, and Danish students that hosted the event.  The water may have been cold by Hong Kong standards, but frankly was warmer than the summer temperatures at the Northville swim club.  On kind of a sidenote, the weather has been getting colder here (down to a frigid 65 degrees), and as a result many of the students have been wearing jeans and sweatshirts.  I was wearing my usual shorts and a t-shirt one day, and someone asked me how I wasn't cold.  I may not be cold now, but it will be a hard transition to return to an actual winter in Michigan.  Back to the pool games, each block at the school was represented by a team of 6, and along the way, I volunteered for my block, 1.  After 3 rounds of water polo, chicken fights, and a pool chair relay, our block won (despite the claims of block 2 that we somehow cheated in water polo), and we were given some European chocolate.

The rest of the week, other activities occurred, including Dutch games, which I ended up missing, pierogie making for Polish independence day, a discussion on European immigration policy, and the French can-can. In preparation for the cultural performance, the Europeans encouraged people from other cultures to join the dances, and somehow I ended up in the group doing the can-can.  We may have rehearsed several times that week, but my skills, and the groups as a whole were severely lacking.  The only times when we kicked high enough was when we accidentally kicked each other.

On Saturday, everyone at school was very excited for the dinner/play/and dance that evening.  Before all the fun, I started the day with homework and volunteering.  I volunteered at an international school, CIS, raising money for a Cambodian shelter for girls recovering from child sex trafficking, selling friendship bracelets made by the girls at the shelter that my school works with, and that I will be visiting next spring.  Over several hours, we raised roughly $600 US dollars, which will definitely help the children through the charity AFESIP.  Furthering on this topic of human trafficking, next weekend is the annual 24 Hour Race, a race around Victoria Peak raising funds to combat modern day slavery.  This year, teams from high schools all around Hong Kong will be running a relay, including two teams for my school.  While I will not be competing, I'll be volunteering for the race organizers, and for team motivation.  Next weekend will be much fun, but back to the festivities of Saturday...

Intense European decoration session

Before dinner

The night started with a dinner with food from all around Europe.  The food was very good, even the British food, the decorations were nice, the music was classy, and everyone looked nice in formal clothes.  All of a sudden, two students walked in, and wedding music played, and the theme of the night was announced, a royal wedding.  As a result, a fake wedding was staged between a Spanish girl, Miren and a Norwegian guy, Brage.  After dinner, everyone walked upstairs, took plenty of pictures, then went to the show.

The Royal Family

The show was based around the honeymoon of Miren and Brage, as they traveled around Europe.  Full of dances, cultural jokes, and other performances, ECE was hilarious throughout the entire show.  Even while some of the dances weren't particularly great (cough, cough can-can), they were bad enough that they turned out funny.  As the "honeymoon" concluded, everyone congratulated the Europeans on all their hard work planning, rehearsing, and cooking, and we all went off to the "royal masquerade ball".  Not really.  That was the description on the invitations to the dance; however, us cheap high-schoolers couldn't afford masks, and we all changed out of formal clothes.  It was still lots of fun though, and we stayed at the party for the next few hours.

Non Europeans after the show

On Sunday, reality sunk in, and I had to go back to all my homework and preparations for another busy week ahead.  I'm really looking forward to the 24 Hour Race now, and I also can't believe that in less than a month, I'll be back visiting my other high school.  Anyways, I have to go now to filming and editing club; I'm definitely staying busy every day here!

By the way, here is the link to the events photo album https://drive.google.com/a/lpcuwc.edu.hk/?usp=chrome_app#folders/0B9ho4aApZB8FcWFOMndtVWdOcTQ

China Week Dongguan

Now that I returned from China yesterday, I've had a lot of catching up to do.  Checking all my emails, doing my homework, and deciding which of the 600+ photos to post from last week has been taking some time, and I still have quite a bit to do.  But I figured I might as well write a post, considering how much happened last week.  My trip to China was incredible, and my group had so many experiences that I would never have back in the US.

We started off the trip by crossing the PRC border to Shenzhen (skipping the lines of course using our Hong Kong id cards), and then taking a 2 hour bus ride to the "small" city of Dongguan (only 8 million people!).  There, we settled down in our surprisingly nice hotel, and worked on our performances and lesson plans for the upcoming three days of teaching and cultural performances.  We had the first of many overly filling, delicious Chinese meals that night, before going to bed relatively early in preparation for the upcoming days.

The next day, we traveled to an elementary school for the children of migrant workers in Dongguan.  I was amazed by the amount of order everywhere we went.  Each morning, the 1000+ kids would march in their uniforms in exact lines and do morning exercises or listen to speeches about famous Chinese people (mainly Mao).  In classes, this level of order was not as great, with a kid biting another kid in the middle of the lesson, but still significantly better than I remember in elementary school. It was also interesting to see the learning styles of the children as we taught them.  Repetition and memorization seemed to be the emphasis of education, often too much so.  When asking a student "How do you go to school?", they would answer by repeating the question, instead of actually answering it.  When we called on students to act out different forms of transportation (our topic for English lessons), the majority would just reenact my demonstration exercise, instead of following the clear Chinese instructions of my co-teachers to act out a different form of transportation.

We continued to go classroom to classroom on Tuesday and Wednesday, teaching a list of common English words and phrases related to transportation, while the other groups taught countries, food, nature, etc.  The kids seemed to really enjoy the lessons, typically mobbing us "teachers" after the lesson was over to ask for autographs in their school notebooks.  The experience of teaching English to these students was very interesting, and I hope they remember their lessons and continue to improve.

Some of the students

 

After teaching was done on Wednesday, my friends and I had to perform at the cultural exchange show, where students from LPC and the Chinese school did songs and dances from around the world and China.  I had to sing in a group for the "Cups" song, as well as with all 20 of us from LPC performing a Chinese song, "Kan Guo Lai".  The performances went really well, except for one verse of the Chinese song that we hummed after forgetting the lyrics.

After that day was over, we had two full days in China dedicated to "cultural appreciation" aka sightseeing.  The first day we spent in the outskirts of Dongguan, biking at a really nice lake trail called Song Shan lake.  Going on tandem and tri bikes, we had a nice half day away from the bustle of the city.  Afterwards, we visited the Dongguan Institute of Technology, to talk with local university students and see what a Chinese university is like.  While the food was better than some universities I had eaten at before and the buildings were pretty nice, Chinese universities are still not on my list of where to apply.  We finished this random, fun day by visiting a cake museum, where we learned about the history of Chinese cakes, and best of all, we got to make our own cakes and eat them.

The following day, we took a 2 hour bus ride to the China's third largest city, Guangzhou.  It was such an eclectic mix of Qing dynasty buildings, modern glass skyscrapers rivaling Hong Kong's, and factories.  We started out at a 9 story mall dedicated to plastic junk exported to the rest of the world.  We had an hour to look around and buy, but in the end, I spent less than 10 yuan (less than 2 dollars).  Afterwards, we walked around some of the historic parts of the city, stopping to eat lunch near a canal.  In the end, we traveled to the central business district, with glass and steel everywhere, and entered the Guangdong Province museum.  This museum was the main one for Guangdong, the largest province (100 million people) with the largest provincial GDP (almost 1 trillion dollars).  Resultantly, it was very nice, with 5 giant floors dedicated to the history, art, and sciences of the region.  After 2 hours, we went back to our hotel, and unfortunately had to pack up for our return trip the next day.

The museum

 

On Saturday, we grabbed our stuff, left the hotel, and reboarded the bus to Hong Kong.  However, we were in for a surprise, our third and final museum, the Opium War Museum.  It was dedicated to the valiant defense of the Chinese as they bravely fought with their blood and sweat to vanquish the British from the wonderful motherland.  All sarcasm aside, the museum was filled with poorly translated signs, inaccurate statements, and attempts to portray the Opium Wars as a victory for China.  The propaganda throughout the museum was quite entertaining, and my entire group was restraining laughter, especially when we read a statement claiming that only the Communist Party of China is able to eradicate drugs in the world.  I posted many of the signs on Facebook, so I won't describe the rest here.  Afterwards, we left the museum, ate lunch at the Hong Kong-China border city of Shenzhen, and reentered the land of free speech, Facebook, and frappuchinos.

Overall, my China week trip left many great memories, and it was so amazing to be able to volunteer, have fun, and learn all in one week.  Hopefully I will be able to travel more around China later, but this first trip to Guangdong province was definitely worthwhile!

ACE/China Week Prep

Contrary to my last post, I actually do have time to write before leaving for China.  We're leaving tomorrow at 9am, but we still have so much prep work to do.  Before I talk about all of that though, I'm going to rewind to last weekend and the great cultural evening.

At my school, each continent/cultural group hosts a special dinner/dance/play every other year.  So, last weekend was the first cultural evening of the year, and was hosted by the Africans of the school.  They put so much prep work for it, always planning, rehearsing, and promoting the event, and it really paid off.

The day before the event, the group staged publicity events, painting people's faces and staging an African dance flash mob.  Then, they announced the different costume themes for each block the next day.  My block, Block 1, was assigned African Idol (famous Africans), while the other blocks had African warriors, wildlife, and royalty.  The entire atmosphere on the campus changed as everyone was so excited for the next day. 

The next day, I finished some studying before prepping for the evening.  I had no clue what I could wear for my theme, until my friend Munya recommended that I dress up as a famous football/soccer player from his country, Zimbabwe.  He lent me a jersey, cleats, and long socks. I thought I was ready then, but then someone told me that I was underdressed and offered to paint the Zimbabwean flag on my face.  I agreed, but was slightly concerned regarding my failed history of facepaint.

Munya, the Zimbabwe Flag, and me

Anyways, it turned out really well and everyone headed to the canteen for a fancy dinner prepared by the African students  There were dishes from around the continent, all in a room filled with African decorations and flags.  After we all finished eating, we took the oh so common LPC photos.  Basically if you bring a camera near any group of students at my school, every person rushes to be in, just so everyone can see their face on Facebook later. 

Our African outfits

When all the photos were done, everyone headed out to the assembly hall for the play.  For the next hour and a half, the students from over 20 African nations entertained us with a show celebrating Africa and its people, while making fun of common stereotypes.  It was hilarious and so well rehearsed, and the entire student body rushed the stage to congratulate the actors when the show was over.

Part of the play (photocred to Arzucan Askin)

The evening concluded with a canteen party (the LPC way of saying a dance).  Even though only 250 people go to LPC, the dance was a great time, since almost everyone goes.  We were dancing till almost 1 until we headed back to our dorms, chatted for a while, then finally went to bed.

The school week following was relatively uneventful, with the usual barrage of assignments: a Spanish test, a geo test, an English paper, etc.  However, all the first years were getting excited for our China week trips the next week.  We had to prepare lesson plans and skits to present to the kids, so we can teach them a few vocab words.  All of our ideas about teaching the kids were crushed yesterday when in final rehearsal for our project, our group leader yelled at us all, and told us how horrible our presentations were.  Such motivational words!  I'm still excited for the trip, and we all are prepping more today and rewriting our lesson plans, but I'm slightly concerned we may get locked into our hotel rooms, forced to practice our plans instead of experiencing China.

Necessary rooftop break after the terrible rehearsal

 

Now, I have to pack up the rest of my stuff, get a little homework done, and eat lunch, so I've got to go now.  I won't be reachable on Facebook (blocked by China!) or any other form, since I'm leaving my laptop and other technology behind.  Next week will definitely be quite a learning experience!

Mid-term Macau and Cancelled Camping

Over mid-term break, some friends and I decided to plan a trip away from campus for a few days; first going camping at Tai Long Wan, Hong Kong's nicest beach, then crossing the Pearl River delta by ferry to Macau.  In the end, only half of this happened, but it was still a great break from school.

Two days before the break, when I had to get my overnight stays approved by LPC, I heard from a teacher that unsupervised camping is illegal.  Somehow wholesome hiking, camping, and swimming is illegal, but taking an hour and a half ferry to Macau, the biggest gambling city in the world, was allowed by the administration.  Anyways, my friend James invited us over to his house on Thursday instead of camping, and we went out for some Italian food and a movie.  We watched "We're the Millers", which I tried to watch 2 months prior in the US, until my sister accidentally ditched me .  Thanks Hollywood for the delayed release in Asia!

The next day, I returned to school, grabbed my clothes, camera, and passport and headed to the ferry terminal.  Our group bought tickets, went through security, then hopped on the comfortable high speed ferry.  An hour and a half later, we ended up in a very different city, with Portuguese signs everywhere and a completely different skyline. Of course we had to pass through customs, but using our Hong Kong residency cards, we managed to skip the long line filled with mainland Chinese trying to go to the casinos. 

MGM Grand...Not our hotel, but we took their bus by accident and went into the lobby

By a combination of complementary casino bus and taxi, we arrived at our hotel and checked in.  Afterwards, we started walking around until we found a good place for dinner.  We ended up at a Portuguese restaurant, where we ate great seafood, stews, and bread.  When people from my group tried to talk in Portuguese to the waiters, no one understood.  Macau may have many signs and buildings from Portuguese colonialism, but during our entire trip we only met one Portuguese speaker, and he wasn't even a local.

Near the restaurant

The skyline

 

After dinner, we walked around the city for a while, buying traditional pastries, and ultimately ending up in the casino district of the city.  Its so strange walking from a colonial street, then two blocks later entering casinos rivaling Vegas.  We went into the lobbies, but couldn't enter the casinos.  We tried to get to the top floor of the Grand Lisboa casino (the strange looking tall building above), but we could only take the elevator to the 40 somethingth floor.  At midnight, our group split into two, half taking the taxi back to the hotel, the others walking across the 2km bridge back.

On Saturday morning, we started the day at the hotel pool before checking out and returning to downtown Macau.  We spent the next 5 hours walking around the old city of Macau, a World Heritage site.  There were old cathedrals, forts, and parks everywhere, and we took plenty of the obligatory tourist pictures.  At one point, we all bought matching rice hats and posed in a public park, as dozens of other tourists stopped to laugh at us and take pictures.  Our multicultural group of tacky hat wearing tourists caught plenty of attention, and we continued to wear them the rest of the day, just because. We even wore them for a while on our trip back to Hong Kong, getting
plenty of glares from people on the subway. 

 Ruins of St Paul's Cathedral

 

That weekend flew by, just like all my time here.  I'll be in mainland China next week, volunteering in a school and touring the city of Guangzhou, and after it will already be November.  I might not get to celebrate Halloween (such an important cultural holiday), but we're still going to a cake factory that day, so I should get my obligatory sugar overdose.  Miss you all, and see you soon!

Caving in to blogging

I can't believe that I have been in Hong Kong for almost 2 months now.  Every day goes by so fast, and I am busy almost all the time, either studying, going to Quan Cais (the name for extracurriculars here), spending time with friends, or talking with people back home.  However, this weekend happened to be mid-term break, a 4 day weekend following a week full of presentations and tests, so I decided to finally catch up and start blogging (credit to Karyn for making this one).  While there's no way I can describe everything that has happened so far, I'm going to try to do a quick recap.

In August, I arrived in Hong Kong after the miserable 16 hour/4 movie flight.  At the end of the flight, I bumped into a Northwestern student who happened to have studied at Li Po Chun, my soon to be school.  He offered to tell me more about the school and show me around over lunch one day.  What a coincidence that someone from my future high school and also from one of my top university choices happened to be sitting behind me the entire flight.

Anyways, my dad and I spent the next week traveling around Hong Kong, visiting Lantau Island, Disneyland, TST, Victoria peak, and many of the other tourist destinations around the city.  It really is an incredible place, with so many skyscrapers, people, parks, and mountains.  When my tourist introduction to Hong Kong was over, I headed out to the New Territories, dropped my luggage off at school, and said goodbye to my dad (and vicariously my mom), and prepared for a completely new experience.




Over the next week, I was introduced to Li Po Chun and all its great people.  Trying to remember 250 different names from around 80 countries was initially a challenge, and I probably asked some people for there name and nationality three times.  Anyways, the campus is really nice, looking down on the ocean and the surrounding mountains, and the people are even better.  Highly motivated and social people from all around the world in one boarding school makes for an incredible school atmosphere.  Sitting through orientation lectures and activities, I started feeling more at home and making friendships that will last for these next 2 years and far beyond.

After the fun of orientation week ended, it was time for school to actually start.  I'm taking higher level Math, English, and Chem, and standard level Geography, Spanish B, and Chinese ab initio.  While all the classes are rigorous, the school runs on a policy of 70% contact time, meaning that only 70% of the instruction occurs in class so as to keep school days at a maximum of 5 hours, allowing for more involvement in Quan Cais.  On an average day, I go to class for an hour, eat breakfast, go to two more hour classes, have a 20 minute snack break, go to another class, then eat lunch and be done.

Study break at the nearby lake

 A few weeks ago, we celebrated mid-Autumn festival (but I have plenty of pictures of this on Facebook so I won't go into much detail), where we stayed at my friend Jeremy's house, eating traditional food and then visiting the fire dragon street parades.  It was a nice change of pace from school, and I really enjoyed it, even if I was not a huge fan of mooncakes, a celebratory "delicacy".

Mid-autumn festival dinner

So, this schedule has been going on for several weeks now, and I'm doing well in my classes, becoming more involved in my Quan Cais, and having an excellent time. I'll try to keep this blog updated every week or so now, so I don't have to make any more 2 month summaries.  For all of you back in the US, I hope you're having a great fall (it doesn't feel like fall here in the slightest), and see you in December!