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.....