Sneak Peak of a Classroom

This is my classroom on the second floor at the new McDonald International School Building.  It will the be the classroom for second grade literacy.  Most classrooms 1st - 5th will look similar as the space will not change much.  The exceptions to this will be Kindergarten classrooms which will be larger and equipped (some of them) with restrooms in the rooms. 

It is hard to see but I will have a view of the Cascades!  It is not obvious in the video but they kept the old chalkboards and mount them on sliding walls that goes up and down.  When raised, the walls reveal a "closet" for backpacks and coats.  When lowered, the walls hide the closet and will be usable chalkboards.  The projector will be mounted on the ceiling.  Yay!  It was a big hit with all the teachers to no longer have a tech cart in the middle of the room that everyone trips over on a regular basis.  We also have air conditioning in the form of a ceiling fan.  Hey, this IS still a public school.

Sneak Peak of the New Library

Here is a sneak peak at our new library and computer lab at McDonald International.  It is on the third floor with a spectacular view of the mountains.  This video is a couple months old but the room was close to completion by then.  Books and the rest of the furniture will be moved in August.

A Hong Kong Visit

We went to Hong Kong last weekend. It was a two-hour airplane ride to get there.  Although Hong Kong is included in China, the city used to be a British colony. It was returned to China in 1997 and since then, Hong Kong has been a Special administrative region of the People's Republic of China.  This means the city is under a different law/system from mainland China. 

 For example,  the money is different: Hong Kong uses Hong Kong dollars, Mainland China uses Yuan.

These are the Hong Kong dollar bills.

These are Chinese Yuan bills.

In mainland China, the government controls what people read and watch. For example, many books in English are banned and internet access is limited.  But Hong Kong is not under this policy. So, we could access to internet sites such as YouTube, Google, and Facebook, and I could buy a couple of books, about China in English, which I have never seen
in Mainland China.

There are more differences particularly because of the British influence. People in Hong Kong speak Cantonese, which is a different Chinese language from Mandarin.  Mandarin is spoken in most places in Mainland China. Also Hong Kongers (also called Hong Kongese) can speak English very well. People drive on the other side of the road from the Mainland and the U.S. The drivers in the cars sit on the right side of the cars.

Did you know there is a Disneyland in Hong Kong?  This was the first time in Jay's life that he had been to Disneyland, so he was very excited. But as soon as we arrived there, Jay got sick and he couldn't ride many of the attractions...Too bad.  We managed to see the parade and fireworks. Jay had a good time...

  

The next day Jay felt even worse so we remained in the hotel room and we couldn't go into the city of Hong Kong. We will go back in the future..M

One last look at our room...

As we prepare to end the school year, I took one nostalgic video of our classroom before we move to our new building.  It has changed a little from April,as all good rooms should do, to reflect the ever growing progress of kids.

It was a learning experience as I used my camera phone and the system burped an unhappy burp when I tried to mail it to my home PC.  It is a truncated video but should still provide some entertainment value.

Hot Pot and Sichuan Opera

The area we live in is famous for its hot cuisine. One of the popular
cuisine is a hot pot. There are many " 火鍋”(means " fire pot" )
restaurants in Chengdu.  There is a pot in the middle of table and you
put whatever you choose such as meat, chicken, fish and
vegetable,(literally, whatever!)  into boiling broth and you eat as
they cook.

You can choose a broth base, hot chili pepper, chicken, beef, and fish
head, etc. We ordered “Red pepper oil" and white base. We have young
children so kids eat white broth base, which is not hot. As you can
see, "Red pepper oil" is beef base broth with very spicy chili oil and
hot pepper floating! We ordered slice beef, sausage, backchoy, Chinese
cabbage, mushrooms, ground shrimp, etc.

The restaurant is famous for its show as well as its hotpot. Sichuan
is known of the opera.  And one of the operas has "face changing "
man.  We could enjoy this wonderful face changing man while we were
eating the hot pot.  Jay could see the man who changed his faces many
times in front of him. But we don't know how the man did!! Literally
the man could change his face/masks while you are blinking! I heard
it's a national secret and our Chinese friend who took us there even
didn't know how to do!! It's simply entertaining!!