Brian is 30

We celebrated Brian's birthday this week at Outback Steakhouse. This is becoming quite the tradition, as he's celebrated 5 of his last 6 birthdays there. Our foreign coworkers came out with us, Tracy and Alain.

We surprised Brian with dessert. Luckily for him, there were no singing servers, it was only us at the table who sang to him.

Happy Halloween

We had our Halloween party at school on Friday. Everyone dressed up and we had fun. Jill's students were a bit confused with the interruption in their schedules and ended up crying all day. Even candy didn't help.

Here is a group shot of us. Jill and another teacher both dressed up as cats and I'm obviously the skeleton. I'm not wearing my mask here but it was pretty scary for the kids, I only wore it in my class for a short time and didn't wear it around the little tots.

Boo!!!

Our cook decided to take it upon himself to defend us from the zombie king so he grabbed his trusty ladle and impenetrable pot lid and they dueled.


Here are some pictures of the kids. Jill didn't have time to take any pictures of her students so these are some of mine.

Our good friend Dave from Australia came visit us today. He was flying home from Korea to Melbourne and made an overnight stop over here in Hong Kong in order to see us.

When we lived in Australia in 2007 we traveled with him for a month and ended up using his parents address for our local address. He's a very special friend and we were so happy to have him stop in.I had the afternoon off so I could show him around but unfortunately Jill had to stay at school for the whole day. We had a great time exploring.

Long weekend

We're still enjoying the end of a long weekend here. Today is the Chung Yeung Festival. Our coworkers couldn't really explain to us what the festival was about, but here's what google just told me:

Legend has it that a soothsayer once advised a man to avoid disaster by taking his family to a high place for the entire ninth day of the ninth moon. The man obeyed, and found upon returning home that all living things had died during their absence. The Chung Yeung Festival commemorates this legend, which dates from the Han Dynasty (202BC-220AD).

I guess it was appropriate that we went for a hike today. Nothing seems to have died in our absence though, thankfully.

Our school is at the base of the nearest apartment building seen in this photo. That's where we started our hike. Our apartment would be behind the mountain on the right side of the photo.

This is the biggest spider we've seen outside of Australia!

This is "Nephila Maculata", more commonly known as a Golden Orb Weaver. It's a relation to some of the spiders we saw in Australia. Jill was nice enough to put her hand close to it for scale. They are venomous, they carry the same toxins as the black widow spider, however in a lot smaller doses. If bit, it will hurt a lot but you would be fine by the next day.

Here is a picture of a Golden Orb from Australia. Once again Jill being the brave one.

I think these Australian ones look scarier.

We got a lot of other things accomplished this weekend, though nothing else was photo worthy.

We both bought Halloween costumes, and I believe this is the first time in my life to have a store-bought costume. I can't remember any other - I've always made my costume. That was half the fun, I guess. You'll have to check back next weekend to see pics of the Halloween costumes.

Having only 1 day off this weekend we had to fit in a lot into just one day. Jill wanted to go shopping and I decided to go for a hike. We heard about some trails up the mountain behind our school so I thought I'd head there.

I climbed this mountain, this is about half way up already

There were some old buildings up there. This was an old entryway to a temple

Butterflies were the only wildlife I saw

But the view was great. Well worth it

A nice purple flower growing in the window frame of the temple

Open Day

We just got back from work today, and yes, it's Saturday. Boooo It was 'Open Day' at school, meaning prospective students and parents came to look around the school and sat in on sample classes. A lot of decorating went into it, but thankfully not much rested on us. My responsibility was Story Time. I did "The Little Red Hen", with the help of the children making the animal sound when I held up the picture of the animal. It went well (enough). Brian did a cooking class. He made 'spider cookies' two crackers stuck together with peanut butter, with pretzel sticks sticking out as legs and m&m's as eyes. There was a bit of chaos at the beginning of his class as there was a sign up sheet with 8 slots, yet 20 kids showed up for his class. The principal told him not to worry about it even though he only had enough supplies for the for 8 kids. Brian tried to explain "logic" to her but it didn't work. He had to scramble to get more supplies and made do but had to leave after lunch to restock at the store for his next session. We also had to sing and dance to children's songs (think "The Wiggles") which was fine except that for the most part, we just looked silly and not many children participated.

We finished around 3 but we were on our feet all day so it just seemed like a long day.

Here I am doing my "Little Red Hen" story

And Brian showing how to make his spider snack

Here are the spider bites

Brian had about 30 different pictures of him up on the walls showing the different styles of phonics teaching

He's in every picture hanging from the ceiling here too

We had to decorate our class wall too. Here Brian and Ms. Lau designed the globe and had the students label it and add decorations

My wall was decorated with my students art work from the last few weeks. It was kind of a mixture of random crafts

Headed out again to the markets, we had to buy a new door bell. That's right, we bought our doorbell at the market. There's a buzzer and a wireless bell inside our apartment. Anyway, took a few pictures while we were there.Jill doing some looking.Down town at night is pretty lit up. We're used to the neon lights from Korea though.


A big part of the markets here is street food. We had already eaten so we weren't quite in the mood to taste a lot but I did indulge in a bbq meat skewer for dessert.

I believe those are chicken feet in the middle.



Lot's more food. Mostly fried. I'm going to slowly work my way through all of these sooner or later.

Why I (heart) HK

Random reasons to love living in HK

• We walk under a covered walkway for 80% of our commute to work. We can get to the mall and supermarket without going 'outside' in the heat or rain.
  
• The MTR (subway) is so easy and cheap to use. To get to the island costs just $2 CDN.
• I can spend the day in throngs of people in the busy downtown area, but I come back home to a quiet area with less population.
• Though our apartment is small, it's new. I've only seen 8 (small) cockroaches since we've been here. I think that's pretty good for HK - way less than I expected.
• Brian cooks and I clean, so our small apartment means less area for me to clean.
• English. Everywhere. On signs, products, and (for the basics)people understand it in shops and restaurants.
• Compared to my experience living in Korea, people are more polite - ie holding doors open, or saying thank you, not bumping into you, not spitting near your feet...
• Western products in the supermarket are abundant and not marked up. KD, Mars Bars, Doritos, though don't worry, it's easy to resist since we know they'll always be there for when I really want it.
• There are English directions when you buy a product. My washing machine, for example. In Korea I'd push random buttons and hope for the best.
  
• Shopping is cheap if you know where to look.
• It's so close to SE Asia that if we wanted to travel, we could do so cheaply (though we're in saving mode).
• We get paid a little more than Korea for less teaching time, as well as 8 weeks of paid vacation and paid national holidays.
  
• H&M; 7 of them.
  

In conclusion, I think HK is extra great because we compare it to Korea.

Mid Autumn Full Moon

It's mid-autumn festival today. Kids make lanterns and eat moon cakes. The holiday is to celebrate the moon and the harvest. We took this picture outside of our apartment tonight. We're surprised it turned out so well.

World's Longest Escalator

Today I went out on my own in search of the world's longest escalator. To be more specific, it's the "world's longest outdoor escalator system" (790 M). It's a series of escalators on Hong Kong Island. It only goes one way; down during the morning rush hour, and up the rest of the time. There are lots of interesting shops lining it, and you can get off and back on it as you wish.

Looking down on the escalators

Have I mentioned that I love Hong Kong? I'm thrilled to be living here.

Happy 60th birthday China

Jill and I have been trying to go to a dim sum restaurant for a while now, we tried twice but the process seemed really difficult. Dim sums are a variety of small dishes, usually steamed. There are dozens to choose from but we haven't found one with an English menu. Well, yesterday my Chinese co-teacher offered to take us out to one near her house. So we had a little adventure on the bus and finally made it there. We had lots of yummy dishes and a few new experiences.

Here we are at the table. On the left is my co-teacher, Ms. Lau and her daughter.

In addition to the 5 dishes in the picture below there were 3 others that we ate. The new and different ones are the chicken feet (bottom left) and the cow stomach soup (top left). The rest were normal, dumplings, beef balls, shrimp rolls and some others that I can't really name. The whole meal totaled about $20.

Mmmmmm, chicken feet. They weren't that bad actually.

The mid - autumn festival is coming up this Saturday. A traditional treat is the Chinese Moon Cake. After eating and doing a bit of shopping we found a shop selling them and had a taste. They are sweet and pretty good. Lot's of different flavors. Jill and I had coconut and pineapple.

Walking around afterward I saw a small Chinese shop. Ms. Lau said it was a Chinese medicine shop. That's when I noticed the jars on the shelf. Can you guess what's in them?

On the right are mouse fetuses, in the middle is snake and on the left are a bunch on big lizards. Apparently they are some sort of alcohol and one would typically drink the liquid and munch on a few of the floaties inside. Pretty nasty if you ask me.