Brainwashing Hong Kong Teenagers

Since everyone who reads this blog knows me, everyone who reads this blog probably knows that I'm a huge Phillies fan. In case you haven't been following the playoffs, the Phillies are currently tied 1-1 entering game 3 of the WORLD F**K**G SERIES.

When I decided that I wanted to spend the year abroad, I didn't really consider sports. Well, that was stupid. I've spent the better part of my life and a good chunk of my savings over the years supporting the Phillies, a.k.a the losingest team in the history of professional sports. So of course I leave the country right in the middle of the most successful era of the team's 126 year history. Seriously, I'm not making that up. The Phillies are--right now as I type this--better and more successful than they've ever been. EVER. EVER. And, if the team's history is any indicator, this will be the only time in my ENTIRE LIFE that the Phillies will be a dominant baseball team.

Last year, I was at Game Five. Both Parts. In the stands. Geoff Jenkins sprayed me with champagne. I marched down Broad Street. It was probably the happiest I've ever been. Years and years and years of rooting for alternately pathetic, incompetent, underachieving choke-artists had finally paid off. Being at that one game (over the course of three days) made it all worth it.

So, yeah, I'm going a little crazy over here. Last year (and this year until August), I was going to games every week. I was watching every night on TV. When the Phillies won the World Series, it felt like the culmination of 22 years of hard, painful work. Also, I WAS THERE. Now, I can only watch games on the internet because the games start at 7 AM and the bars that would show them aren't open (I didn't even have the internet for my first month here). Most of the people I know are either British or Chinese. They couldn't care less about baseball. Sure, they try to talk to me about the games, but it only makes things worse. My boss thinks it's great that I love the NHL so much. My roommate wants to know how the "football contest" went. I wish those were jokes, but they're not.

This season and these playoffs should have been a thing of beauty for me to watch. It's rare in any sport to see a team defend their championship with as much determination as these Phillies have. All of the clutch hits and late-inning heroics have been incredible. (As my friend and Mitch pointed out on his blog, this Phillies group stands out for being such a great team.) But due to the above factors, by the time the Phillies rolled into the playoffs, I had become a box-score fan. I had probably only watched 3 full games since coming to Hong Kong.

But when the playoffs started, I decided that I couldn't let a little twelve hour time difference stop me from seeing the Phillies try to make history. In the NLDS , two of the games against Colorado started at 4:27 PM EST (4:27 AM here), so I did what any crazy person would do: Took a sleeping pill the night before at 8 PM and woke up at 4 to watch the game before work. When the games started coming on at 8 AM here, I MAY have told a little white lie to have the IT guys install the program I needed to stream live games from my office.

I've been doing my best to watch as much as possible. If I have a class to teach during the 6th inning, there's nothing I can do about that (other than make a bunch of excuses to keep leaving the class to go "grab something from my office real quick"). But if a game comes on and I can watch, I will and I have.

There are, however, a few very, very, very, very, minor upsides to being in Hong Kong for this. A big part of my job is "cultural exchange." What better way to do that than teach the students about baseball? And what better way to do that than stream the games on the overhead projector? I certainly can't think of anything. I've also taken the liberty of plastering my classroom walls
with Phillies stuff.

The bulletin board, an elaborate time-line detailing the team's history (click on it to see the full-sized image), may very well be my masterpiece. I've made it my mission to turn my school into Phillies faithful. I may even have a few converts:




Byeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

What the heck I'm doing in Hong Kong

Hey now! A couple of people have been asking me exactly what I'm doing in Hong Kong. I always roll my eyes and say, "Jeeze just read my blog don't make me TALK to you god ugh."

I was hired by a company that I can only refer to in outside media as "Shmatteris." They're the ones who hired me, flew me out to Hong Kong, and put me up.* Upon my arrival, Shmatteris "trained"** me and placed me in a local school, Loi Kwuk Pat Fung College.

LKPFC is a Band 2 Secondary school located in Kwun Tong, Kowloon. In Hong Kong schools are classified as either Band 1, Band 2, or Band 3, with band 1 being the highest rating. Our school is considered a high Band 2, or as my school officials like to say, "Band 1.5." Secondary schools are a lot like middle school and high school. Primary School runs from P1-P5, and Secondary School from S1-S7. I teach S4-S7, which is like 9th-12th grade.

So even though I technically work for Shmatteris, I spend virtually all of my time at LKPFC. I sometimes have to attend Shmatteris "training" workshops and events at other schools that have Shmatteris employees, but on a day to day basis, all of my work is at LKPFC. While you may be able to tell that I have some issues with Shmatteris, I'm happy to say that I love working at LKPFC. What is it that I do, exactly? Let's find out!

My job*** in the school is divided into two main parts, teaching and ELEEP****. Our school runs on a 6 day cycle, and I teach the oral lesson for every S4-S7 English class on even-numbered cycles. On odd-numbered cycles, I assist the Local English Teachers, or LETs, deliver their oral lessons. Sound confusing? It is.

The style of teaching in Hong Kong is much different than that in America, with a much lower emphasis placed on interactivity. Because of that, students' interest in English is often quite low. In the classroom, my job is to trick them into thinking that English is so much fun to learn. So every other cycle, I prepare a few different games and activities for the classes met with varying success (my baseball-inspired trivia game was a "hit," get it? An activity where they created their own countries was not).

Outside of the classroom, which is where I spend most of my time, I mingle with the students and try to get them to speak English. I'll play basketball, table tennis, badminton, etc. with them, ask them questions about their personal life, you know, things that teachers do. Actually, they're supposed to look at me like I'm not a normal teacher, which is good since I'm not a normal teacher. I also organize small and large-scale events designed to both promote English use and cultural exchange. These could be something like a Thanksgiving Celebration or a huge Christmas Party (my school is Baptist). During lunchtime every day, I organize a small event. For instance, Wednesdays are "board game days," on Mondays I screen Seinfeld, and on Tuesdays, I give them an article from the NY Times to read.

I'm also in charge of running the English Ambassador Team, or EAT. The EAT is a group of student volunteers whose job it is to assist me in promoting English throughout the school. They mostly help me plan, promote, and run our events. Next week, two EAT members and I are going to do a lunchtime radio show. Since I only see most students once a cycle, it's nice to have students that I see all of the time. Even better, it's nice to have students do work that I'd have to do if they weren't around.

That's the end of my most boring blog post ever. I hope it clears some things up.


*By "flew me out to Hong Kong and put me up," I meant, "Made me buy a ticket within one week of offering me a job and made me find an apartment within two weeks of arriving before kicking me out of temporary housing at a YWCA."

**My training, while a lot of fun, consisted of playing a lot of games and delivering lessons with up to 4 other teachers to classes of 15 students.

***My job title is "CNET," which stands for "Shmatteris Native English Teacher." While there are many different ways to explained the job--I usually use either "Teacher" or "Glorified Camp Counselor"-- I believe fellow CNET John said it best on his business school apps when he described it as, "A Program Coordinator for a non-profit in China." See, "China" sounds cooler than "Hong Kong," and "Teacher" doesn't adequately explains our multiple functions in the school. John's so good at resumes.

****I'm not sure what ELEEP stands for, but if I had to guess, I'd say, "English Learning English English People." It means extra-curricular junk.

Byeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

Why Hong Kong is Both Awesome and Not Awesome

I haven't really written about how the 12 hour time difference affects my life, mainly because it doesn't. See, there's this thing called the internet that lets me keep in contact with friends and family, watch TV, and read the news. There is one thing that's missing from my life right now, however, and that's sports.

As many of you know, I'm a die-hard Phillies fan. Last year, I was lucky enough to get to go to Game 5 of the World Series a.k.a. The Day The Phillies Won The World Series a.k.a. the happiest day of my life (no, seriously). Well, the Phillies made the playoffs! YEeeeahHHH!

The bad news? Since I've come to Hong Kong, I've hardly been able to watch them. See, when the Phillies play a 7:05 PM game, it comes on the next morning at 7:05 Am in Hong Kong. I'm either sleeping or at work. One of my favorite things about baseball is following a team for 162 games and really getting to know the players: their habits, their mannerisms, all of their quirks, etc. In the last 2 months, I feel like I've fallen out of touch with the Phillies. They're back in the post-season, and even though I went to about 10 games while I was home and I've been checking the box scores and reading the blogs, I don't feel the same connection to this team that I did last year. Missing the last two months of the season really took its toll.

The good news? I can watch today's game against the Rockies BECAUSE I'm in Hong Kong. Allow me to explain. Game 1 of the NLDS Phillies-Rockies starts at 2:37 PM EST. If I were in America, I'd be at work in an office, refreshing ESPN.com 40 times a minute because I couldn't think of a good excuse to get flash installed on my computer so I could watch/listen to the game. In Hong Kong, the game comes on at 2:37 AM. That means that all I had to do was go to sleep at 7 PM last night so I could wake up at 2:30 and turn on the game! Did I do it? You bet your balls I did it. And I'm doing it again tonight for game 2. Go Phillies!

Byeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

RIP Michael Jackson

A few months ago, the unthinkable happened. Michael Jackson, a.k.a. the King Of Pop, a.k.a. the Sultan of Swat, a.k.a. His Airness, died at the age of 50. Did this tragedy affect (or is it "effect") me in a deep, personal way? Let me answer my question with a question: Yes.

But Michael Jackson (or as I call him, Mikey) touched each and every one of us in a deep, personal way, even when he maybe shouldn't have. In his professional life, Mikey enjoyed a string of successes topped only by The Beatles, who, let's face it, were a lot more talented. His personal life, however, was marked by a terrible run of bad luck that nearly ruined his hard-earned reputation as a phenomenally talented entertainer who wasn't a danger to himself and others.

First, Mikey had the misfortune of a couple of kids blabbing to their parents even after he specifically told them not to. Then, he slipped on a banana, sending him into a giant tub of bleach and permanently lightening his skin. More recently, the liberal media took a perfectly common practice--airing-out-your-baby-by-dangling-him-from-a-balcony--completely out of context. He was just airing him out! Talk about unlucky! I mean, what's the big deal?? I blame the Jews. Mikey's bad luck finally ran out (you can't have bad luck after you're dead) when he created 19 aliases, used them to obtain any and every drug known to man, and then overdosed on an ungodly amount of prescription medication. Can a guy ever catch a break?

Thankfully, we'll always have the music. Who can forget where they were when heard Thriller, released in 1982, for the first time? I certainly remember dancing to 1979's Off the Wall at a bar the night he died! And I couldn't call myself a true Mikey fan if I failed to mention everyone's favorite: His 2001 release, the ironically named Invincible. It's safe to say that we can add Mikey's name to a list that includes such legends as Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, and Kurt Kobain- artists tragically taken from the world at the peak of their creative powers. The real tragedy here is that Mikey clearly had so much great music left in him.

Ever since Mikey's untimely death, I've been searching for an appropriate way to eulogize him. With my my little-red travel blog chronicling my Hong Kong adventures, I have the appropriate space. It wasn't until my recent trip to the Hong Kong Space Museum, however, that I finally found the perfect way to say goodbye to my hero:




Byeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

Space Museum

On Sunday, Paul and I went to the Space Museum. Now, you may be wondering, "Why does China have a space museum?" I wondered the same thing, but that was before I found out that China was the first country in outer space! Did you know that? Also, did you know that China put a man on the moon almost 40 years before that jackass Neil Armstrong? In addition to lots of solid information and history, the museum also has a lot of fun, interactive exhibits, like this one:



And this one:



I highly recommend the Hong Kong Space Museum.

Byeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee