week 4 8th February-14th February

Personal and Cultural Development

Chinese New Year was celebrated on the 14Th of February the same day as Valentine's day. This is the year of the tiger and everywhere you look you can see tigers. Children wearing tiger hats, shop displays with tigers and even tigers made completely from dyed flowers. This week has been full of mini celebrations as the excitement of New Years has been building. It can be easily compared to how we feel as Christmas approaches.

The family all gets together, the buses stop running and most of the shops and restaurants close. Hong Kong Ied starting to empty on the Wednesday. All the mainland students return home and the students inform me this is the best holiday to go home on because you visit all your relatives and they give you red pockets full of money.

Michaela and I were very lucky to be invited out for a New Years meal. Wai Wai-Michaela's buddy who was also Johnny's last year took us out for a vegetarian meal. We sat around a round table, two in fact because her extended family totaled about thirty while many many different dishes were brought out. While the meal was completely vegetarian, the tofu and other foods were flavoured to taste like meat and seafood so it was definitely an interesting meal. You had to be quick with your chop sticks because as soon as a new dish comes people stand up and try and get some, if Wai Wai wasn't looking out for me I don't think I would have eaten. Its very different to at home where you wait and make sure you only take the right portion that allows everyone else to have the same amount, but I think I prefer here-its fun and really brings the family together.

The international office at HKIed invited all the students for traditional Chinese food, Chinese cutting and calligraphy writing. We spent the afternoon cutting and writing on red pieces of paper that the locals would use to decorate their homes at this time. Joanna, a local student gave a presentation on Chinese New year and answered all our questions such as why the colour red. Tradition has it that a beast would come and steal children every New Years but one New Year a little girl walked out in front of the beast unafraid wearing red and the beast never came back, so every New Years everyone wears red, the house is decorated in red and presents and money pockets are also the colour red.

Actual New Years was spent with the other international students. We all brought a dish from our own country and it was a feast. We also exchanged presents like 'secret Santa' but secret Sa Fin'. Its common here to exchange presents wrapped in red. So we ate, danced, played a few games, exchanged presents and really bonded as an international group away from home.

Professional Development

At the beginning of the week we had the opportunity to visit Hong Kong Jockey Club Primary School. The school is on campus but has no land for the children to play on or spend their recess so each floor has a separate green area for the different years to go during break times. Apart from lack of land, a common problem in HK, the school has very impressive resources and its location on HKIed campus allows it to take advantage of the amenities such as the swimming pool.

We were given a tour of the school and then we sat in on an English lesson. The teacher was absolutely brilliant and has left a lasting impression on how teaching should be done. She had a great repoire with the class and you could tell from their enthusiasm they were enjoying themselves. The children were learning English but they were doing it though maths. They had to find out the heights of their classmates and do some comparisons. The teacher used a tally to control behavior with points being added immediately and threats of removing points being serious. The children became too noisy at one point during the lesson and the teacher made the children put their heads on their hand. She moved around the classroom and it seemed like she was giving a drama performance where she needed to ensure the full audience saw everything. I learned a lot from the short observation and it was interesting to compare my experience of schools in Northern Ireland to this one. Each of the subjects are taught separately here, just like in a secondary school at home. The children can wear a uniform similar to home or a more comfortable polo shirt and bottoms. While Buddhism is taught at some primary schools at Hk Jockey Club PS it is not purposely timetabled into the day like how we have Assembly or RE classes.