Better late than never!

Sorry about the delay folks, but this week was filled with me pushing things to the last moment, mostly work-related items, so the blogging had to suffer a little bit. Thanks to Gina's oh so subtle "hint", I've gotten back on track with the whole blogging thing, so everyone thank Gina for being attentive (Thanks Gina) The sun has finally burnt through the fog and rain that dominated last week, and the weather has been beautiful. Lots of blue sky and sunshine coming my way!

This week wasn't too terribly exciting, aside from Friday's event. I had my classes and library hours as usual, and even invigilated an exam on Monday. For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, invigilation is a fancy word that they use here to talk about administering an exam. Using invigilate makes me sound like I'm doing something quite complication, and I think that it might be funny to include it on my resume some day. In the middle of the week, we had rehearsal as usual, and I managed to fall down the stairs and possibly sprain my ankle again, for what would be the 7th time. One of my professors thinks I should go see a Chinese bone-setter for my ankle problems. I told her that I would have to get back to her on that one.


I think that Friday was probably the best day this week, mainly because I finally got to see one of my favorite authors, Margaret Atwood, give a lecture at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, but getting there was a bit of an epic journey for Hong Kong, because in order to get from Lingnan to HKUST, which are on completely opposite sides of the New Territories. It takes about 2 hours, because you go by bus, then MTR, and then another bus, and then a short walk across the campus to the lecture hall. I also met up with a few of my colleagues, Preet and Alastair. Preet and I were all sorts of giddy, because for us, this was something akin to meeting one of your favorite movie stars, and then being able to listen to them talk about their creative process and what makes them work. She was a great lecturer, very entertaining, witty, and a little bit feisty. I really didn't know that much about her, so this was a first for me. What else was interesting to me was that the Consul-General of the Canadian Consulate here accompanied her to this lecture, and they arrived in cars with flags, all diplomatic-like. Apparently Canada's biggest exports, next to hockey and beer, are Margaret Atwood visits. She generously sat for more than an hour to sign books, and when it was my turn, I went blank and the only thing that I could manage to say was my name. I'm also sure that I just stared at her for an awkward minute or two before I managed to pull myself together to mumble my name at her. So now I have my own personally autographed copy of one of my favorite novels, The Handmaid's Tale, which I am reading again, for the millionth time.

This weekend revolved around attempting to finish marking my journals, and then moving on to the next stack of journals for Kristina, and scoring exams for the psycholinguistics class. Somewhere in there, I also managed to get all my errands done, and send in my application for my mainland visa. Americans still can't get multiple-entry ones, unless you're a businessman, but they said I could get the double-entry, which turned out to be half the price that it was last year. I guess that we are starting to see the effects of the new president over here! (You can always tell where the relationship between China and the US is by visa prices and availability) I'm also getting excited about planning a trip to Yunnan in April with my friend Megan. Yunnan looks like it is going to be a great trip!

Foggy Weather is Here Again

The weather these past few days has been suspiciously like what I imagine London to be, or at least a Sherlock Holmes novel; wet, dark, cold, and a fog so thick that you can hardly see through. Its the type of weather that makes you want to put on your pajamas, get a mug of hot coco, wrap yourself up in a blanket and watch movies all day. Now, if you substitute the hot coco for coffee, and movies for marking journals, you've got my Sunday. I've really just avoided going outside as much as possible, since the weather has been so miserable and unwelcoming. Serves me right for bragging to everyone else about having warm weather whilst they were stuck in snow. Hopefully the fog and rain and wind will move on this week and we can get the pleasantness back that is spring in Hong Kong. Spring here is the most perfect weather that I have seen, blue skies and warm air before you hit Hong Kong summer, when it gets so hot and humid that you feel like you are melting as soon as you step outside.

Journals can be just as unpredictable as Hong Kong weather, in the sense that you almost never know what you are going to get, even when you think you've got things down. Now, don't get me wrong, I love my students, but sometimes when you have to read the same paragraph 6 times in a row, to try to understand what they are communicating, it can be a bit tedious. On the other hand, they quite often suprise me with how insightful they can be, or unknowingly wise. They find a moral lesson in unsual places, and never cease to entertain me with their ever-changing grammatical collages that they use to convey a complex idea or thought. Seeing what they come up with makes you think twice about how languages can be so descriptive, and at the same time, so restrictive to the thought process. What I take from this is that you never cease to be a student or a teacher, no matter your position in the classroom.

If you want to see some of our student's more creative and artistic work first-hand, one of our classes, Painting and Poetry, now has their own blog where students in the class post their assignments and creative pieces from the class. I will also link the site in my blog log so you can keep up with them if you are so interested. It shows how creative our students can be, and I am very proud of all of them for what they have contributed to the creative universe. Enjoy!