I had said I was going to China to teach, but I’m not there yet. Where I am-- where I’ve been for more than three weeks-- is Hong Kong. At the Maryknoll house in Stanley, I live with priests, portraits of the baby Jesus, and drinking water stored in vodka bottles (see photo).
The Maryknoll Volunteer Teacher Program is an intermediary between myself and Sun Yat-Sen University-- where I’ll be teaching for the year. The program requires a two week orientation in Hong Kong before departure into mainland China. Under the influence of jet lag, orientation was an especially bizarre experience. It was possible to fall asleep while discussing safe food handling and wake up to instruction on the sound short “a” makes.
Just as I was starting to sleep through the night, orientation was over and the other teachers were off to their respective universities. Because Sun Yat-Sen University starts late, I was forced to take a weeklong vacation in Hong Kong. It has been rough: dinners with the fathers and brothers, shopping in Causeway Bay, art museums, hiking through the New Territories, swimming in the South China Sea, etcetera etcetera. In between these hardships I have worked on lesson plans and taken up Bikram running (I am only half kidding, this heat is ridiculous).
Despite the excellent company of the fathers and brothers, the excitement of Hong Kong, and my own lack of preparedness as a college instructor, I am impatient for mainland China. I’m also running low on Hong Kong dollars. Tomorrow I’ll take a one hour ferry to Zhuhai, an ocean front city in the heart of the Pearl River Delta that is home to Sun Yat-Sen University.
Also, the spider in the pictures below is real… and not at all spectacular.
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