Foodie time

So after a stressful few weeks at work trying to tie up loose ends etc. I am finally done with all the important teaching. So I decided to go and meet a friend who just came back from Nepal. I had a bit of time to waste before meeting up with her so I went to Pacific Coffee Company (pcc)  I had an Oreo cheesecake which tasted faintly like cardboard and sugar. ( I wouldn't recommend it) #gordonramseywouldkillthem.
I also had a caramel latte which was pretty good. Not too sweet which was nice. I def recommend that.

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Whirlwind week

Final stretch has arrived for my cousins departure. Barbecue on Sunday,  ladies night on weds, dinner and drinks on Friday, dinner and drinks on Saturday,  I'm sure there will be more in the next four days.

I also had my improv drama competition with my drama students, they did great! We didn't win but such is the way sometimes.

I also had a monkey incident on my way to work, all these monkeys kept coming and coming and coming down into my village. I know better than to think I can go near them, especially when there are babies around, so I kept my distance and waited. Not a good start to the morning, and I didn't even get great pictures. Ugh.

At the barbecue two of my favourite little boys came, they are so cute, as I'm sure you can see from the photos. They also really livened up the place, everyone was playing with them and dancing with them. Haha so sweet.
Today is the final dinner and drinks so far so we'll see how it goes. Lol

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Rough week but still going

Whoooweee it has been one hell of a week! First weeks back after holidays are always hard but this felt nearly impossible. It is currently Saturday morning at 9am and I am on the train and not in my bed.
The week started ok until I got an email for my schools drama club. Every year we enter an improv competition and this year we have to use an imaginary prop in our play. Ugh very difficult!  So the next four days were filled with me staying after school until 630 sometimes,  that's late when you start at 745 and wake up at 530. I also have recently developed some haters in my classroom, they have decided that having English classes in English is unfair and would prefer to have a local teacher  who can teach them in Cantonese. They have also decided to not do anything in my class and just give me bad attitude and death glares. It's only two, sometimes three, students but it's still saddening for me and it unnerves me on class.I also tried to give my class a practice paper since they have an exam on Monday,  and only two students did the paper. TWO!!! It also makes you question your teaching methods. Especially since in Hong Kong you are judged by how well your students do in the hkdse.
Added to that is that my cousin Anne is leaving, she's moving to London with her boyfriend. This sucks cuz that means all the rent and bills are now mine. Yikes!!  Also it's so hard to find a good roommate. Lol.
All in all the week is not so difficult now that I'm writing it down,  I think it's just more the tired effect. And as I said it's Saturday morning and I'm up. I'm on my way to teach English conversation classes at another school. Maybe this one will appreciate me more. Haha
So the school was a lower level school but the kids were fantastic,  a little bit shy at first but once they got into it they were great.
Hopefully the next week will be better. And my group wins an award  



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Time to give in

So I have this weird holiday thing that I do. Holidays for me mean freedom, so I hate wearing a bra on holiday. I wear bandeaus and sports bras just no straps. It started a few years ago out of necessity one day as I had a burn on my shoulders and it caused great pain to put those straps on. Now I've just continued doing it every holiday. Well today I took that fated step to signify that holiday time was officially over and I put that bra back on. Oh how I will miss freedom, but summer is coming soon so I will just have to hold on until then.
Last night I went to my friend Dave's birthday, such an awesome guy and his wife is pretty amazing too. Everytime I get together with Ashley and Tiffany I laugh so hard. It's always nice to have people around that you can just let loose and be silly with. I have her in the picture I posted, she's playing her leg as a guitar.
I also spent the majority of yesterday writing a paper. I will be so happy when this PGDE is finally done.
So tomorrow I go back to work, early morning and lots of classes. Ugh back to the grindstone.

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Back to reality

So after an eventful and long day of travel I am back in Hong Kong. I've already gotten a much later start to the day but after only ten days away I must admit I'm finding it hard to adjust. I still want to go lie on the beach with an apple San Miguel. Instead I am heading to school to finish writing a paper that is due today! Yes, you read that right. I procrastinated until the last possible moment. Ugh.
On a brighter note my cousin shawna and her husband Michael flew in this morning. So provided I get this paper done relatively quickly I cam still have some fun before work starts again on Monday.

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Boracay

Boracay is beautiful, pretty cool people (except for those who find it necessary to remark on my size)  gorgeous beach, great food, and cheap drinks.
I tried paddle boarding for the first time today, it was super fun but much more difficult than I had anticipated. Haha
This is the last day of tropical bliss before heading back to Hong Kong and shaking myself awake to the reality of work and writing papers. Ugh three papers until I get my PGDE, can't wait.
So far on this trip we've had greek, mexican, Italian, American, French and philipino food. It's been a great holiday but all good things must come to an end I suppose.

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So let's see what has happened in the past month...We are of course in post exams right now at school so a lot of farewells and meetings and ceremonies and such happening at school. I have a drama club at school as well and we had our performance on July 5th, so weeks were spend trying to get ready with students not showing up. In the end our whole performance changed and we went from doing a nice full length play to three short mostly improved plays that seemed more chaos than performance. Oh well Ce la vie! There was also as always the famous Canada Day celebration in Lan Kwai which proved to be a bit of a disappointment this year. There was hardly anyone in LKF and the booths weren't as much fun as usual and the people working the booths really didn't care if they did anything or not and most of the time weren't even at their booths. Plus during the day we had gone to Shek-O beach and had a lovely but long day in the sun. The beach was AWESOME! Danny knows a place that not too many people know about so it wasn't packed. Getting to Shek-O was pretty busy and hard to get on the bus but that was nothing compared to getting home. We had to wait for more than an hour in line to get on a mini bus to get to the MTR. Anne and I took a taxi from there to go home and change etc. But the rest of them just went straight to Central which made them even more exhausted. Then of course it was Danny's Birthday! Super fun and about 40-50 people showed up, which was way more goodie bags than what I had made but for those that came late I guess they missed out. Darts, Foosball, and beer pong all in once place, how can you go wrong! It was super fun and everyone had a great time. Which brings me pretty much up to date...going out for some dim sum with my co workers and English Panel Chair...mmm Dim Sum!

After a long long while......

So once again i am apologizing for not keeping on top of things...I could promise to be better but I don't think you are supposed to make promises you can't keep. So what has been going on since March 18th you ask? Well I guess a lot! I don't think I can remember everything from that far back but I will maybe start with just the beginning of this year. So I renewed my contract at LKPFC and have been working here for my second year. I only teach the senior students which is awesome because we can have conversations and I don't have to baby them. The students here are super awesome and I have just resigned another contract for my third year. Although I think next year will be much harder and more work I'm pretty stoked to have my own class and have far too many ideas on what I want to do with them to help them improve their English, all of which I'm sure they will probably not enjoy even though I think they will be super fun. Other than that I go to go back home for Christmas which was nice to see my family again. Not very many friends there anymore, but I guess that happens when you leave, people forget and move on. Anyways it was fun to be back for a bit but nice to go back and get away from the cold. For Chinese New year we went to Sri Lanka, the place itself was quite nice but for a poor country that just came out of a war not too long ago it was EXPENSIVE!!! by far the most expensive place I have been to in Asia yet. I probably will never go back plus there wasn't too much to do. We took a day trip and it was nice but nothing really new or unusual. Then for Easter we went to Boracay, which was amazing!!!! Wow is all I can say! I just love that place and will definitely go back there! I have been to the Philippines before a few times but no place was as great and as fun and as beautiful as Boracay. We had so much fun and the beach was beautiful with white sandy beaches and parties every night. It was amazing and I went out on a sailboat and went snorkeling on another day. Then at the end of May we went for a short little visit to Macau for like three days of sun,fun and Portuguese food. It was nice to just have a little get away from school and Hong Kong and just relax for a bit. we also got to stay at the Sheraton which just opened and has like three pools. so that's all the catch up I have for now and I will try to write more often.....

New digs....so excited...

Hey yo,
So I have just moved into a new flat on Feb. 15th its awesome and great but unfortunately I have no internet and I'm flat broke! The rent is a little high but once my cousin gets here it won't be so hard to get through. It has two bedrooms and an awesome balcony that i can close in if I want to. Plus it has a rooftop all to myself! The landlord has also been kind enough to throw in a washing machine and a propane cooker. Although the cooker really only has one heat...super frickin' hot!!!

I don't have any pictures of the rooftop yet but i also don't have any furniture on it either. On Saturday I will also be having a housewarming party so I will try to get some pictures up but it is hard with the no internet thing going on right now. Anyways I'm excited for Anne to come and we can do a lot more of the decorating together. For now it will just be simple and a bit bare...

My Mom

Just cuz my mom is cool putting up a photo montage of her!!

My christmas time fun

So December was a busy busy month. I taught and played games and did extra practice and study with my students. I played games with my classes and gave them chocolate and candy and sang Christmas carols. Then got ready to head back to the great north for a bit of Christmas family time. I left Hong Kong on the 16th and got into Canada also on the 16th. Immediately my mom,brother sister and I went to Washington for four days of Kostianos family fun. It was great to just be together and have fun by ourselves before the chaos and craziness of Christmas began. Once we got back it was like my feet never stopped moving. I had a pub night with friends, some dinners at Uncle Mel's house, a dinner at my sister's boyfriends family's house, and Christmas eve and morning at my sister's house. I got some amazing gifts this year as well. My brother got me and awesome spinner camera, my mom got me a beautiful fantastical coffee machine (Dolce Gusto), and my sister got me some much needed running shoes so I can get my fat ass in gear and live out my New Years Resolution. On our last night there we also had a wicked Karaoke night at the dodgiest pub ever!! So amazing and we even brought in my Grandma for the fun and for a beautiful rendition of Oh Little Town of Bethlehem.

Once we got back to HK tired and exhausted we slept for many many hours and prepared ourselves for the most amazing New Years Eve yet!! On a boat in the middle of the harbour with a perfect seat for the fireworks. It was so nice to be able to just hang out with family and friends without the pushing of crowds, over priced drinks, and drunken dorks with too much testosterone. It was a great night and packed with the maximum amount of people. I personally think it should become an annual event. After the boat trip we went to Xperience for some more bonding and fun times, unfortunately for me I was sick from the Canadian weather and didn't last too long.

After a few more days of sleep it was time to go back to work, luckily that didn't entail too much since it's exam time so only half days and sitting there watching the kids. I did still have the two upper forms so I was teaching sometimes but not too often. Which brings me to now. Last night I was a product tester for Philips and got paid $800 to test out blenders for an hour. Tonite I will be going to a Quiz night to try and win some more money.
Also I have been working for months on finding a place to live and Finally the time has come....I have found it and it is amazing!!! It's two bedrooms with a big beautiful balcony and a huge covered rooftop!! Pictures will definitely follow as soon as I get to move in. I will pick up the keys on the 7th and start my contract on the 15th of Feb. I am so very very excited. It will def be nice to have my own place for a bit until my super fun awesome cousin Annie-Bananie arrives in April. I also have my birthday party coming up on the 20th and a trip to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia on the 24th of Jan. so I will write again soon.