Santa-hatted Shenanigans

My parents have returned home to the frosts of Scotland. Monday was a school holiday so I had one last long day with them where we hiked along the Dragon's Back on Hong Kong island and then hopped on a bus to Shek O for a chilled out lunch and a spot of relaxing on the beach. The hike went along a ridge with some pretty impressive views of the coastline and, with a sneaky bus journey at the start and the finish, wasn't very strenous at all.

Mum and Dad go paddling in the South China Sea

The week at school has been pretty hectic -Rich and I have been running lots of Christmas activities and on Wednesday there was an Open Day for prospective students and their parents so the whole school was on red alert. Understandably they wanted to show off their native English speaking teachers, but my timetable on Wednesdays didn't fit in with the open day schedule, so I had to teach a class that I don't normally teach in front of about 20 primary school students and a collection of parents, which was just a little scary!

Busy at the Christmas Cafe

The weekend has brought lots of Christmas celebrations as most people are jetting off home or to exciting holiday destinations next weekend. On Friday I watched Love Actually with a bunch of girls and a lots of chocolates before we headed on to a flat Christmas party to dance to some cheesey Christmas classics. Last night was the official Chatteris Christmas event, which involved take away pizza and santa hats on Repulse Bay beach. The boys who organised it did a great job, they'd decorated the trees with tinsel and fairy lights and brought along some Christmas music and made party bags for everyone so that we all wore our free Santa hats and even provided a Christmas carol book so we had no excuse not to sing along. It did feel kind of festive singing 'Jingle Bell Rock' at the tops of our voices, but Santa hats and sand between your toes is a strange combination!

Singing Christmas Carols on the beach!

Song sheets and santa hats!

5 more days of school and then it'll be time for my Christmas holidays! I'm off to collect my washing and try to decide what to pack!

A week in the wilderness

November weather is nice and cool, making it a very good time of year to go exploring the 80% of Hong Kong that is still an undeveloped, mountainous wilderness. However, having noticed that my blog so far is full of pictures of beaches and parks, I'll endeavour to include some pictures of buildings in this entry!

Last weekend I went on a very leisurely hike from the Wan Chai Gap to... Aberdeen! The (mainly downhill) walk went past the Aberdeen reservoirs which look very odd. You get wild, jungley greenery growing down to the sides of the reservoir, but then the water levels were quite low and the baked orange coloured rocks that line the sides of the reservoir look like they've been carefully sculpted by people. Aberdeen itself has a nice waterfront promenade to stroll along, although it's not the most peaceful stroll due to the old women offering rides on their sampans.

The waterfront at Aberdeen

Me and a reservoir

On Monday at 1pm I set off in a bus full of orange and black tracksuited teenagers to school camp. We went to Sai Kung country park, in the Eastern New Territories, where we stayed in the Lady Maclehose Holiday Village (me for 1 night and the students for 2 nights - the teachers were on a rota!). The holiday village was quite similar to the 'camp' that we stayed at when we first arrived in Hong Kong, but this time there were individual bungalows instead of blocks of dorm rooms, so we had our own teachers bungalow where we could hide from the kids. On Day 1, we went on a boat trip to see some corals. Instead of having an expensive glass bottomed boat, the students were equipped with plastic buckets that had glass plates stuck in the bottom. They pushed these against the surface of the water (leaning over the side of the boat) so they could see the seabed quite clearly. It's a great idea, but sadly the corals we were looking at were disappointingly grey and lifeless. We then returned to camp for dinner in the canteen and the poor students had to sit for 2 and a half hours watching an episode of Blue Planet (they dubbed over David Attenborough with Cantonese!), a presentation on coral environments, a video about mangroves and a presentation about creatures that live in the mangroves. I don't think the environmental instructors who were running the programme had done much work with school groups before!

The boats speed back to land

Day 2 at school camp was sunnier than Day 1. In the morning we went a wee walk beside a mangrove. The instructor kept stopping and explaining interesting things about the plants we were seeing, but the student didn't seem that interested and the explanation was in Cantonese. At the end of our walk we got to scramble on a beach that the mangrove was slowly reclaiming and look for crabs under the rocks. Then it was back to camp for lunch, which we needed as fuel for our afternoon hike. We walked up a hill and down the other side to a BEAUTIFUL, rugged, isolated beach. There were warning signs about dangerous undercurrents, but that didn't stop me and a few of the boys having a paddle!

Girls on the beach

Boys on the beach

The rest of the school week was comparably uneventful. The students were still at camp on Wednesday but I had to go in and lesson plan for 3 hours, and on Thursday we all had a day off to recover, but I didn't do anything unusual.


On Friday Cat arrived in town for the weekend. We had a nice dinner in Knutsford Terrace and then took a quick stoll along the waterfront en route back to her hotel. She's been busy with her dad's business aquaintance's family for the rest of the weekend but we'll hopefully have dinner again tomorrow before she jets off home.


Since I wasn't required to tour guide Cat around, I went off on another hike today. This one came from 'The Serious Hiker's Guide to Hong Kong' so it was a bit more strenous. We climbed up from Tai Wai MTR to Amah Rock and then on to Lion Rock, which is about 500m high and is part of the ridge that forms a natural boundary between Kowloon and the New Territories. The views on the ridge are pretty impressive - you can see the whole length of Hong Kong Island - but the haze means that cameras don't really capture it too well. We could tell it was a 'Serious' hike when the concrete path disappeared. Up near the top we had to scramble amongst the rocks. I'm hoping my legs won't ache too much tomorrow!

Elise, Scott and Sarah hold up Amah Rock

View of Kowloon and Hong Kong Island

The scary ridge.

Intrepid adventures in the New Territories.

My students had tests this week, so the whole school officially finished at 1pm on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. On the Wednesday, 3 of my first year girls invited me to go and have lunch with them. I asked if Mr Macauley (Rich) could come too, and so we all went to McDonalds! The girls are really good at English, but also REALLY hyperactive so it was quite hard work keeping track of their conversation for more than an hour, but then they took us on a wander through Tin Shui Wai Park which is really quite pleasant and not particularly far from our school. It was nice to see a bit more of the area we teach in.

Me, Kelly, Clarissa and Summayah in Tin Shui Wai park

On Thursday I decided to go on another Tin Shui Wai adventure, to the Hong Kong Wetland Park, which a pink signpost (they have LOTS of them in Hong Kong directing you towards tourist places) indicated was only 12 minutes walk from our school. The Wetland Park is man-made, but borders on a natural marsh reserve. It was partly built to compensate for all the wetlands that were drained to build new housing in the area, and to educate the local people about the value of the little protected parts that remain. My kids at school had told me the Park was boring and full of mosquitoes, but I was quite pleasantly surprised. The walkways around the park are carefully constructed so you don't really see all the other visitors (although you HEAR the visiting school groups!) and the different areas of the reserve look natural rather than man made. There was a mangrove section which you cross using a floating boardwalk and I got quite excited by being amongst a geography-textbook habitat! I also saw some of wildlife... although not necessarily the most exciting of species.

Little Egret

Crabs in the mangrove mud

Butterfly

Today was my third adventure in the New Territories. I went to the East side this time, to Clearwater Bay Second Beach. I've been meaning to go to a beach for a few weekends, but the weather wasn't too great, or I couldn't find anyone to go with, or I got distracted by going to Disneyland, so today when I woke up and realised it was going to be a bit of a scorcher, I decided to head out alone. I'd never been to a beach alone before, but it was a really relaxing experience. The only downside was that I had to leave all my stuff unattended on the beach while I went for my swim in the sea, but the worry was well worth it when I got to think 'It's NOVEMBER and I'm swimming in the sea!!!!' The beach was a really good place to chill out as it's not got any towns around it and the road is up the hill from the beach and hidden amongst the greenery. It was so lovely to just listen to the sounds of the waves crashing on the floor rather than the traffic and the car horns and the pedestrian crossing beeps that you get in Mong Kok. I must try to go back again before it gets too cold.

Clearwater Bay Second Beach

The soothing sound of waves on the shore

The intrepid explorer chills out on a rock