I work for a good school. When I signed my contract here I was promised IB Diploma training in my first year. In my first 4 months of that 2 year contract I received what I was promised. At my school in Colombia a similar promise was made, and in two and a half years there they never made good on that promise. I am happy with my school here.
My IB Diploma (curriculum) training took place in Hong Kong last weekend. Myself and one colleague were sent to Hongkers for 3 days of intensive subject-specific (Mathematics SL for me!) training. We flew out from Jakarta on Thursday (with a bottle of duty-free booze each) and arrived at our HK hotel about 6pm. Duck, pork, beer (Tsing-Tao of course), egg tarts and wine were consumed in large quantities at low prices. Happy days!
Friday was day 1 of training. We were staying at the hotel recommended by the course providers, so there were about 100 other teachers at the same hotel. This means being herded to breakfast together, and herded to the buses together. They literally treated us like kindergarten kids which was a bit weird. Luckily I didn't get lost as I don't remember seeing many policemen nearby to help me. The opening address at the conference was quite funny. They were basically telling us that there was a good chance we would get hit by a typhoon later that night or the next morning, and that the course would be cancelled on the Saturday if that was the case. The whole of HK was bracing itself for the typhoon but it ended up missing us, although it did get reasonably windy and cool that night.
My "class" at the conference consisted of 25 "students" (teachers) and our workshop leader. I felt very worldly as there were 3 people there from Guangzhou (where I lived), 3 from Jakarta (where I live), 1 from Turkey (who actually went to the school I was teaching at there) and several others that had distant connections to my life. The workshop leader has actually just moved to Jakarta so he could become a useful resource for me. The 3 days of the course were wonderful because I actually learned lots of useful things. I could not say that about many of the other training courses I have done since becoming a teacher. I sincerely believe that I will be a better teacher a a result of the course, not just have a nice piece of paper. That should be good for my students as well.
That evening my colleague (Chris) and I headed up to Victoria Peak to check out the lights of the city. We were accompanied by a few other teachers who managed to get us completely lost for 2 hours finding our way there, but it was good fun. We even went crazy and paid for a nice Japanese restaurant overlooking the city. Later on Chris and I went wandering the streets and saw a man with a pool cue leaving a doorway with signs only in Chinese. We went in to discover a pool hall, as we had hoped. The lady at reception spoke English. She was quite convinced we were looking for a room (not for sleeping!) but we managed to convince her we wanted to play pool, so she told us our table number and we went in. There were about 40 full-size billiard tables, with all except ours occupied. There was only one woman in the room. There were 100 or more men playing snooker and billiards, with not one alcoholic beverage in sight. Strange. It 20 years since I played on a full-size billiard table. They are big. Very big. The pockets are small. Very small. It is more than a little challenging. Chris & I completed one game of snooker in 50 minutes and were suitably frustrated to leave it at that. We grabbed a bottle of wine to finish the night off on a positive!
Saturday night we took the Star Ferry across to Kowloon, where we wandered aimlessly, as we had no map or no idea where we were expected to be going. Chris is cool. He is an adventurous traveller from way-back. We found a restaurant that looked nice but had no English at all. We went in and sat down and looked at the Chinese menu, and then each pointed at a group of Chinese characters. Chris went for the longest word in the purple section, while I chose the shortest in the blue section. After we ordered they found a menu with some English on it, and everything seemed to be tripe and gizzards so we got a bit concerned. It all turned out will though - Chris got some fried cuttlefish and I scored a big bowl of noodle soup with tofu and minced chicken (or maybe chicken gizzards). Very tasty and good fun. We then found a couple of bars that sold REAL GUINNESS! My first pint of real Guinness in 3 years I think. It was very, very tasty, so I had a few more. We tried to get into a hidden bar/club but the cover charge was for "all you can drink" and it was too late for that, so we headed home.
Sunday, after the course had concluded, was our final evening in HK. We met up with a couple of other teachers and went out for a bit of a lads evening. Lots of great food, lots of drink and a great night all-round. Getting out of bed for breakfast and check-out on Monday was rather trying though. After checking out Chris and I wandered around looking (very unsuccessfully) for shops to buy useless gifts from. This is a big part of Indonesian culture. If you go somewhere you are expected to bring back oleh-oleh (gifts) for your 700 closest friends. We honestly did try, but our hotel just wasn't in a touristy area. So we headed to the airport for more mostly unsuccessful shopping, but we did manage to purchase another bottle of duty-free each before the flight home.
Cleared customs at about 10pm which was good, as we both had more than our allowance of booze and were a bit nervous! Evidently the bribe isn't much to get an extra bottle through but you don't really want to go down that path! Then we were stuck in traffic because of flooding in Jakarta, so it was midnight before I was in bed. Safe to say Tuesday was a very long day at work!
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