Below is a link to my art course websites. Just in case anyone wanted to see what I was up to at work and the skill these students have. Click on 'Artists of the Month' to be wowed!

http://210.21.225.84/issc/jessicachapman/MainPage.htm

Cold Front

If you haven’t heard yet it’s been usually cold here over the past week. Temperatures have dropped to a bone chilling 15 degrees. That may not sound cold to you Eskimos over in Canada, but we don’t live in igloos over here. I have had to pull out my pants, buy leggings, wear socks and even purchase sweaters. We even contemplated buying mitts and scarves. All of our air conditioners have been replaced with heaters and the students have been arriving at school with 3 to 4 layers of clothing worn underneath their jackets. The mice have also been appearing in our rooms looking for a warmer place to go about their mouse business. Thankfully our temperatures are getting closer to normal lately and the socks have been put away.

Greg’s Birthday

For those of you who didn’t know, Greg’s birthday has already flown by us. It was on a Thursday, which happened to be our Parent teacher night that was followed by a PT day. Thus no drinking occurred until Friday when we threw Greg a bowling birthday party…yes they bowl in China. We walked to a bowling alley not far from our place and did some big ball bowling. The balls, pins and alleys all look the same here in case you were wondering. We had great fun, even though most of us were pretty bad at it. The one main difference between bowling in Canada compared to China, is that here you can drink as you bowl. Thus your game gets sloppier as the night goes on. We of course went out afterwards for a drink and some boogying. For Greg’s birthday he received a brand new bike from his amazing girlfriend, a quart of Jack, a ping pong racket that was already his but had forgotten at a friends and a light to go on the back of his bike.

Jay Jays

While we were in H.K. Alicia was able to tell us about the Jay Jays that work in the city. They are ladies who come from the Philippians to work as house maids for the rich people of H.K. Most of them have husbands and family back home but were unable to find a job or make enough money. So they’ve travelled there to work as nannies or maids because of the higher salary and better living- some even have university degrees! A lot of the money goes back to their families, which they rarely get to talk to and may only see every 3 years, if they’re lucky. The reason I am telling you this is because we were so surprised at how many Jay Jays there are in H.K. (approx. 140,000….according to Wikipedia, so it could be inaccurate). On Sundays, when they have the day off, they all gather in the streets and lay blankets down on the ground to eat and socialize. We saw so many of them! Alicia says some of them aren’t treated very well and work very hard, but that some might be lucky enough to have a good employer.

Hong Kong for the first time.

Three weekends ago Greg and I had the chance to bus over to Hong Kong to visit my former roommate Alicia from MTA. She is living there now with her father who is working for the Canadian embassy. Hong Kong is only about an hour bus ride away, but it takes much longer to get there because you have to go through customs.
Even though it’s an hour away it feels like you’re a world away. There are a lot more English speakers than here. So many that you could live there without having to learn any Mandarin or Cantonese. Its main areas are more densely populated in comparison to Shenzhen and you can tell immediately that they have a large upper class. The stores are mostly large name brands. It reminded me of the New York City in some areas. What really caught our eye was the abundance of high quality cars. Every 5th or 6th car might have been a Honda or a Toyota (but top of the line ones). The rest were BMW, Mercedes, Ferrari, Porche or anything else you can image. We also noticed that they drive a little better, but I figure it’s because they have nicer cars over there that they don’t want to injure. We traveled mostly by subway while we were there. Saturday was spent walking around window shopping and buying a few things that we can’t find in Shenzhen. Hong Kong has a lot more Western groceries than us, so we found some Campbell’s tomato soup, cereal, and cookies that were mushy (as appose to hard as a rock). Greg was also very happy to find a place that served poutine!
Our Sunday was actually spent at the beach with Alicia and some of her friends who had camped over night there. The beach was at the far end of the island where it was less populated and more mountainy ... but Greg thinks it’s more mountainous. We had to take a small boat to get there and were surprised to arrive at a small beach with almost no one in the water. The sand was beautiful with almost no rocks and the water was comparable to home when it’s at its warmest. It was very quiet and peaceful for the bustling island of Hong Kong. We were only able to spend a few hours there before we had to make our long trek back to Shenzhen. We will definitely be going back again. It really was a great weekend and it’s awesome that we have a place to stay when we go.