week #1 - done!

It's Friday here in Hong Kong, friends, and that means class #1 is done! Students just got done with lunch and have started their final exam, in the class on Theories of Learning. They have a few hours to work on it - 3 hours to remember all that they learned this week and all the reading they did.

Then when they are done, many of us are going out to eat together, since one of the students is leaving (only here for this one class). So the plan is to go and get some dim sum (aka dumplings)

Try this link to see what dim sum is:

http://library.thinkquest.org/05aug/01714/dimsum.htm

This is a picture of the class from this week, minus one student who had to go back to the mainland for her kindergarten's graduation:



There are students from the following places: United States, Korea, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Cambodia, and China.

Next week is "Global Issues and Curr Design for Culturally Diverse Settings"...quite the title, huh?

After class yesterday, Debbie (the prof here this week) and I went to meet Colleen in Tsim Sha Tsui, down the MTR a few stops. We were joined by what seemed like thousands of others going in the same direction. I noted to Debbie that it was either a cattle shoot (think of merging 4 lanes of traffic to one -- that's how it was trying to get all these people down a skinny escalator) -- or a mass exodus (all the people getting off the train and trying to leave the station). It was quite funny.

Actually, I found a picture of the MTR routes online. Look to the upper right (the burgandy-colored line)...ICS is at Shek Mun station. Now find Tsim Sha Tsui....yea, we had to make a bunch of changes. Imagine this with rush hour...it was PACKED!! But we had fun and it was nice being able to navigate around!

Take a look at this: (CLICK ON IT TO ENLARGE)



Anyway, we met Colleen there b/c Debbie wanted to go to a jeweler her mom went to last year. After we visited the jeweler, we went and ate dinner at a Vietnamese restaurant. We had LOTS of food, some I didn't care too much for, and other dishes I really enjoyed trying. Here's what our table looked like (mid-way through; sorry, forgot to take one when the food first came out):



We had cold vermicilli salad, beef with broccoli, steak pho (a soup with broth and steak in it - the steak is raw, but the heat of the soup cooks the steak while it's sitting there), and spring rolls. Notice, too, my sweet tea. Boy, when they say SWEET tea, you get SWEET tea! It's yummy!

We ended our night by walking back to the MTR and navigating our way through the endless crowds again - all those people who were wanting to get to their next (or final) destination. Here's a pic of the streets right before we entered into the MTR:



So, off I go, to explore for the weekend! Won't post again likely till Monday, but will hopefully have a lot more pics to share and a lot of fun stories to tell!

Have a good weekend!!