Robyn and Ben in Hong Kong: August 2006

Robyns room...

sorry, i cant seem to put all the pictures I wanted to on one post, so look at the one below this then return to these two.

Robyn, touching both walls of her room.

Im not joking, we are right next door to a Cafe which serves seafood so fresh you can pick it before you go in. We have to almost step over these little guys to get to our front door.

A tour of our new flat!!!!

First we have the front door

Then we have the view of Robyn and Hannah in the living room with the door open.

This is a shot from above the front door looking down into the Living room.

If you turn left as you go into the front door you have the dining table.

Between the dining table and the sofa is a small corridor going left.

First door on the right is our kitchen. I can't describe how small it is. i took this from the door frame looking in...

Opposite the kitchen and on the left of the corridor is the toilet. (not bad considering)

This is going to be my room. It is meant to be a double bed. The only way i can sleep flat is by laying from corner to corner.

Junk Boat

Not much news today, we have a big storm due tomorrow, but then it should clear up. My first task working for Grace seems to be involving getting everyone out of the hostel and into their flats. This weekend we are all going on a junk boat trip. What this involves is everyone paying twenty dollars each (just over a quid) and all being taken on a massive boat to an outlying island. Once there, more speedier boats appear to let us do watersports and stuff. Me and Rob both feel a bit sniffy today, our immune systems are not inline with Hong Kong so we are trying to get vitamin C and vegetables down us. Hong Kong Ribena looks cool though.

Robyn went to her drama interview today and ended up acting out the death scene of Romeo and Juliet. It seems to have gone well despite this, plus if she gets it it will give her a bit more cash.

We are in an internet cafe at the moment, just round the corner from our hostel. We just had dinner and a cockroach jumped on my hand. Robyn was put off her dinner a bit and I kept thinking i felt something crawling up my leg. It's just something we have to get used to.

I have got a couple of shirts copied for me by a local tailor. I needed some more linen ones and ended up paying the equivalent of twenty quid for each shirt. I think i could have got them cheaper but the salesman was such a nice guy. He even has daughters just starting at Coventry university, small world.

Other unusual childrens names we have found at school recently have been 'Sit', 'Witty' and 'Charade'. I decided to play charades with 'Charade'. She was rubbish.

B&R x

SARS

Well as a small little extra bit of tourist information It was confirmed last night that opposite our hostel is the infamous hotel where the SARS virus broke out. Lovely.

It is sunday today so we do not have school or training thank god. We have just been shopping at a mall near the star ferry and are both shattered. Sunday is when all the houseworkers and other domestic staff are let off from their duties, so all the markets are jam packed with people eager to make the most of their free day.

Here is a picture of some of the weird and wonderful things you can pick up at the market. I need to find a translator to let me know what some of the stuff is, but the dried fish need no such explanation. I was walking down the street the other day and i saw some being dried on the pavement in the sun. It was right next to the main road where everyone was walking and people were having to step round them. I can't imagine eating something which has been dried in Hong Kong pollution.

Having said that though, Honkers is amazingly clean for a city of its size. It is rare to see litter on the floor and there are strict penaltlies if you drop some. I think alot of this cleanliness is a result of the SARS outbreak. You never see people spitting, and even if someone coughs on the tube they are given a wary look. At school, if a teacher has a runny nose or sneezes, there is pressure from the other staff for that teacher to wear a blue sterilized mask. Even when you walk through the markets or on the streets you can almost guarantee that you will have no physical contact with anyone else on the pavement no matter how busy it is. Walking down Oxford street in London you expect to be bounced around all over the place. Here you hardly ever even brush against someone, its quite strange.

Miss you all, Robyn says hello. She has an interview to work for one of the local Uni's helping with drama production. She is trying to sort out a CV to give to them.

B x

First flat warming party

Some of the guys

Michelle

Girls having a chat

Charlies Angels with a twist

Posing

More posing

Donald and Rach

Arghh

Me and Scottish Richard

We should never have been given that superglue

On the left is Texas Mike. I asked if he was one of those Southern American people that support George Bush. He replied "Those types of people tend not to travel... So I can't be"

Bx

School training pictures

Typical looking classroom

Oddly I seem to have a bit of a fan club

Robyn in her best teacher type pose

Some of my first class

Hong Kong graffiti on a school desk

Frog

We have just been training again today, not much news but I took a few pictures which i hope to get up here soon. Robyn is sharing a room at the hostel with a girl called Nicki who is teaching primary school kids. The kids when they are young are either allowed to pick their own English names or they are given them by their parents. Letting a kid choose their own name provides the most hilarious results, so far she has had quite a few kids called 'Kinky', quite a few with old names like 'Trevor' or 'Alfred' and one little lad called 'Frog'. We found a great Veggie/chinese place two days ago for Robyn, and since have found a few more. I have only had one bad stomach experience so far sampling the local cuisine. This was not helped the next day when I decided to try octopus balls. Below is a spy type shot of the offending establishment.

Bx

Telephone...

Robyn was trying out a bit of Cantonese which we have picked up since we arrived with some students. She tried to say "Hello" which sounds like this when spoken "Diym Ah". She said this to a student and the kid paused, had a bit of a think and exclaimed "ahhh you say telephone!" Cantonese is pretty tricky in itself, some words are spelt exactly the same, but have different meanings depending on the pitch of your voice. It could make the difference between saying goodbye and calling someone a pig.

We had our second day of training today which was a little bit more tricky as we had the same kids which we had the day before, so some warm up games had to be changed quickly and plans changed fast. Now im starting to wonder if when I was young, a teacher would sometimes do what we did today and just improvise on the spot. They always seemed like they knew what they were doing...At the moment I am in Kowloon library which is just next door to the hostel, Robyn is in front of me e mailing people. We have just dropped some laundry of to a little lady in the street to wash. I tried to explain that i needed her to be careful with one of my shirts, and that the colours run, not too sure if the message got across though(it costs one quid twenty for two bags).

In other news we are signing a contract for our flat on Friday night, I tried to barter with the landlord to get more than just the three lots of two person flats he was providing, as our friends are showing interest to move there too. We reached a compromise of sorts by him allowing all three pairs of us two live on the same floor, that should be some housewarming party.

I have been having problems uploading photographs onto the photo album because of security systems on the computers we are using. This could be solved easily if I could read windows in Cantonese, which is harder to use than you would expect. So take a look at the end of the previous post and that should explain the pictures you are seeing below. We are off to grab a bite to eat now, Rob being a veggie has had some brilliant food ordering results so far. Three times she has ordered food and been presented with a plate of green unknown vegetables, all identical, all pretty boring. It's kind of like just eating brocoli and boiled rice. She is eating healthy by default at the moment. Good veggie food is out there somewhere, we just need to know how to ask for it correctly.
Missing you all, B&R

In answer to your comment mum, i am still going to be working in the office, other than that its all a bit vague.

And a message to Robs dad. Surfing does seem to exist here, but we will check out the beaches and get back to you soon about what its like.

Just a quickie (so to speak)

Today was our first proper day training. We spent the morning learning about the history of the charity, then we spent the next part planning lessons. Then came the really fun part of meeting our first Honkers children and trying to put the lesson plans into action. Whats's great is that the lessons place more emphasis on fun rather than actual work, desks tend to be moved to the side and the main idea is to try and merge fun activities with learning English. This is the case for all except Robyn, more light has been shed on her post. It turns out she will be the only person working in a total governement run school. What this means for her, in general day to day experience has yet to be known, mainly because she is the first one ever doing it. (yikes) The kids themselves which we dealt with were brilliant, I was surprised at how good their English was, and expected the task to far more difficult than it turned out to be. In no time we had our kids jumping around, playing games and even managed to bring the Richard And Judy quiz 'You Say We Pay', into our English teaching, which they loved. Even better was after the first break we had other co-workers coming and asking for our ideas because their kids kept saying they wanted to be in our group. What it seems to come down to is how much energy you have, I asked a kid what his normal English lessons are like and he said he hated them, but liked learning the way we were doing it. I think it is just such a cultural difference, half the battle is to try and get the kids to realize that we are not like their teachers to the extent that we stand above them and just lecture them.

Anyway, Robyn and myself are going to find a nice chinese place with some others to go eat. Just in case you thought it was all work, in our photo album should be a few pictures we have taken recently on nights out. The first is of Robyn wet after our first rain storm. The second is at an Irish bar round the corner from our flats (yes it seems we have sorted them). It's a bit blurry but the people you see above everyone else are dancing on the bar, pics of Robyn and me doing the same will surely follow at some point. The last is of a guy we work with called Shaun, when everyone said they were going to 'dress up', for a night out, he went the whole hog, looking like a pimp.

b&R

Paper shoes

So the tour started at 11 AM. It was organized by the university students of Hong Kong to introduce us to the city and the surrounding areas we may not normally get the chance to see. The day before there seemed to be alot of interest from the whole group to take part in the tour, however only three of us eventually turned up. I felt really bad considering the work the students put into the tour.

So Rob and myself got placed with one tour group, and the only other guy who turned up went on his own with the others. At first our group seemed a bit quiet, they were sitting in the corner and not really talking or making an effort. That soon changed though when we all got into the taxi, I was with the girls and we did not stop chatting all the way to their university, where we had lunch and a tour of their campus. After lunch we all went on the KCR, which is a railway line into the 'New Territories' of Honkers which is a far more rural area. There we were shown two different types of temples and could even go inside (but no pictures allowed of that). What was brilliant was that being with the Hong kong students gave us the chance to ask questions ourselves about their own culture. One amazing thing we learnt was that there are shops which sell just paper replica goods of real objects. For example take a look at these paper shoes.

Now they seem real, but they are in fact made to burn so they can be provided to departed ghosts and spirits who may need such items in the afterlife. You can get paper I pods, Playstations and even a paper umbrella. i also found out the significance of incense in Hong Kong. Firstly Hong Kong comes from the name 'Incense port' when translated, as that was its main historical trade. Secondly incense is burned so that ghosts and spirits can taste and find their way. This is why so many shops place incense outside their door, not to create a nice smell like i thought, but instead for ghosts.

One last interesting place we were taken was a walled village, In the picture is the entrance. Basically it is exactly what it sounds like, a self contained village which is walled in and protected. Reasons for this protections was mainly from bandits eager to steal goods and produce. However even when Britian took over Hong Kong these walled villages were given immunity from external governing. Whatever happened within the walled areas were dealt with by their own law and their own rule, apparently with no meddling from the government. We spent the whole day with the students and they were all great. What was lovely was that they all stayed with us after the tour ended at five pm, they could have gone home, but we were having such a good time they took us around Kowloon, showing us the popular shops for students and giving us an idea of Chinese pop culture. We all exchanged contact information and i think the girls said they are eager to take Robyn shopping. bx

Yesterday we went for a tour with some of the local university students. I'll write more about it when I have the time later as im in a juice type bar at them moment and being a bit antisocial. The rain at the moment is torrential. The tour was really interesting, got lots to tell, and a few more pics to come. Bx

sorting things day

No exciting news today really, we are just trying to wrap things up and sort out stuff on our to do list. We have been to see the flat again, and are more pleased with it this time. We went to view it with some girls who have seen other flats, and they said it was quite big in comparison. It also seemed bigger to ourselves because this time the furniture in the flat we were shown was a lot smaller.

Other things we are doing today is sorting out honkers sim cards so we can use our phones here, (Robyn still can't recieve any texts) we are also hunting phone cards to call home. I think later we may be going out for dinner and a drink somewhere with the gang, and a pub crawl of sorts tomorrow. Woop. B&R x

Flat hunting

Well we are now starting to have to think about finding flats, which is pretty scary. One of the main problems is that in the last year the prices have gone up by around thirty % for renting, so choice is limited. As is space. We have found a possible flat with the help of Grace who came with us to view it. She talked the landlord down by 400 dollars a month and it seems like a good deal, problem is that is it sooooo small. Below is a layout of the flat.
I can't begin to describe how small the place is. We will be living in each others laps, so to speak. At first we thought we were getting a bad deal, but it turns out that these sized flats are completely standard. On the plus side it is located on hong Kong island, and is incredibly central. At the moment we are both still staying in the youth hostel, those rooms are pretty damn small in themselves, but believe it or not, the new flat is smaller. There is a pic of our current room size underneath this.

Nothing else to report really, Robyn is sitting next to me making noises into her water bottle. She's bored. She wont be writing as much at the moment because we both just have the same things to tell you, she does read the comments though, so dont stop. Last night we were lost and walking through the streets just getting a feel for the place, as we were coming up to a corner I smelt something really nice and got quite excited about finding the source of the exotic smell. When we got round the corner though we found it was a Macdonalds. She laughed at me. B&R xx

Two more pictures

I realized i have not put any pictures of any of our co-workers up, this is the only one I have taken so far, more to follow. Below is Robyn trying to work out what to have for dinner. Up to the point I took the picture we have survived by pointing and using caveman type sign language to indicate what we wanted. The problem was that, with much difficulty, it was communicated we could only eat from a set menu that night. This turned our plans upside down, eventualy we indicated that Robyn could not have meat and to just surprise us. i ended up with duck, she ended up with mushrooms and cold Ginseng tea (which is really nice).