(I will not be posting for the next two weeks. I will resume posting on January 3. In the meantime, I leave you with the following puzzler. Thanks for reading. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.)I’m pretty sure that the one on the right is for a barbershop.
Anyone want to guess what the sign on the left if for?
Answers next week.
We are flying to Thailand in a few hours. Our plan is to spend the weekend in Bangkok before taking the overnight train north to Chiang Mai. Hotel rooms are booked. Tickets have been purchased. Our itinerary is set.
This is Katie. She was born and grew up in Hong Kong –well, kind of. She currently works in the advancement office at the school where I teach. She was one of three chaperones that went on our Indonesia service week with me and eighteen eighth graders. During our week together, I enjoyed getting to know Katie and a little bit of her story.
When she was a student, Katie boarded a plane with her mother and flew to Toronto. Katie had no relatives in Toronto nor did she know anybody in Toronto. She and her mother went apartment shopping and within a week they signed a lease on an apartment.
And then a few days later Katie’s mother got back on the plane and flew home to Hong Kong leaving Katie behind.
Katie was fifteen years old.
She had just finished the eighth grade.
For the next four years Katie got herself up every morning, rode two city buses to school, shopped for groceries, cooked for herself, did her own laundry, cleaned, paid the bills, and moved apartments once. Oh, and of course it was up to her to make sure she stayed on top of her homework.
It’s an understatement to say that the parents –and students- in Hong Kong go to great lengths to ensure their children’s success. Every year, our school has students who finish eighth grade and then leave Hong Kong to go to high school in The States, Canada, or Great Britain. Typically, they go to live with friends or relatives.
Katie’s story is a little unusually, but not unheard of.
-Jack
[printed with permission]
We told her that the offer was sweet but that it really wasn’t necessary. But she insisted. On Friday -her last full day in Hong Kong- Aunt Julie whisked Annika and Elise away for the afternoon. I reminded the girls to grab their MTR cards, but Aunt Julie said not to bother. Today, it was going to be all taxis.My, my, how luxurious.
First, she took them to the legendary Peninsula Hotel in Kowloon where they had high tea in the foyer with its soaring ceilings. The girls had been up past their bed times trying to assemble their best outfits. After all, the Peninsula has a very strict dress code. The wait staff brought them tea and a multi-tiered display of plates holding delicate finger sandwiches and fancy pastries.
Next they went to the Jade market where Aunt Julie allowed them to each pick out a piece of jade so that “Whenever one of us looks at her piece of jade, we’ll would be reminded of tour special ladies day out together.”
Last, they finished their big day together by getting foot massages.
Finally, they came gallivanting home well after the dinner hour and proceeded to regale their mom and dad with the tales of their adventures.
God bless all the great-Aunties of the world.
On Thursday, I gave Aunt Julie several options of thing we could do. Being the animal lover that she is, she said she would love to take a hike and see some of the wild monkeys I had mentioned. No problem, I know just the place. So I lead the whole family and Aunt Julie to Monkey Mountain. I took us directly to the place where earlier this fall my wife and I had seen dozens and dozens of monkeys. I walked ahead of the group to scout for monkeys.
Nothing.
Come on you monkeys. Where are you? Hey, we’ve got Aunt Julie here all the way from Philly. What are you guys doing? You are making me look like . . . well, a monkey’s uncle. Quit fooling around and get out here where we can see you.
After twenty minutes of brisk walking, I doubled back and met the rest of the group on the path. “We’re coming up empty,” I confessed. After a brief discussion, we decided to turn around, go back to the main road, and then figure out what to do from there. I was getting frustrated. If it's monkeys that Aunt Julie wants, then it is monkeys Aunt Julie will get.
Once back down by the main road, we decided to try the path around the lake. I had never been here before and was now working without a plan. Again, I scouted ahead and was coming up empty when my phone rang. It was my wife. “Get back here,” she said. “We’ve got monkeys.”
I hustled back down the path and met up with rest of the group in a parking lot – not exactly the monkeys’ natural habitat- but, hey, we had monkeys.
Single file, they were coming down the path and pouring into the parking lot. Dozens of them. Big, small, old, mama’s with babies. Lots and lots of monkeys. The parking lot was filling up and soon we were surrounded. I was actually getting a little nervous. I kept moving in slow circles to watch my back to make sure Bonzo wasn’t getting the jump on me and my backpack.
But, I was also keeping an eye on Aunt Julie to see how she was doing. While I was starting to sweat, she was cool a cucumber. A regular Jane Goodall, I tell ya. She was just soaking it all in, not a care in the world. Even when two adolescent monkeys started fighting and screeching a few feet away, she didn’t bat an eyelash. She just kept milling about, observing, and silently taking it all in.
Finally, we decided it was time to head out. The rest of us took the long way around to get to the bus stop. Not Aunt Julie. She walked right down the path filled with monkeys.
The spirit of Dian Fossey lives on.
For several days last month, there were two Julie VanNoords on the seventh floor. Aunt Julie from Philly came to visit for a week over Thanksgiving. The only thing more enjoyable than discovering Hong Kong for yourself is getting to introduce Hong Kong to a first-time visitor. Hong Kong has so much to offer that it could never be experienced in seven days. I find it incredibly satisfying to take into account the interests of our guests and try to match those up with what Hong Kong has to offer. Over the course of her one-week, we tried to give Aunt Julie a taste of the city, mountains, and water.
Sunday we took her to Sai Kung fishing village where we watched all the dog owners walk and show off their beloved pooches on the sea-side promenade. At dusk we all went for a sampan ride among the islands in Sai Kung harbor. We followed that with dinner on the balcony of one of our favorite Indian restaurants.
Monday, I took off of work and Aunt Julie and I rode the Star Ferry, took the tram up to The Peak, and scratched a few other touristy things off of her to-do list. We timed out trip up to The Peak so that she could take in the view of the city both during daylight and at night. She treated me to lunch at Indochine a very upscale Vietnamese-French restaurant in Lan Kwai Fong.
Tuesday and Wednesday Aunt Julie ventured out on her own to shop Nathan’s Road and the jade market down on Kan Su Street.
Whenever I go down to the outdoor Ladies Night Market near Yau Ma Tei, I look at the apartment buildings that rise above this crazy, bustling night market and wonder “Who lives here?” Out of all the places a person could choose to live in Hong Kong, who lives up there in that apartment with the greying curtains and the plastic flowers on the window sill? Then, a few days ago, I found out that one of my colleagues Renata’s grandmother actually lives in the Ladies Night Market. Not near it. In it. She is one of those people who lives in an apartments that look down on the makeshift markets stalls that sell anything and everything from six to eleven every night of the week.
Yesterday, I bumped into Renata in the near-empty teachers’ lounge. “Renata, forgive me if this sounds a little strange,” I said, “but the next time you visit your grandma in the Ladies Night Market, could I tag along?”
“Absolutely, my grandma would love it.”
“Why thank you, I would really like to do that . . . ”
“ . . . so that you can blog about it!” interjected our co-worker Kathie who was the only other person in the teachers’ lounge.
“What?” I stammered as innocently as I could. I was stalling so that my mind could catch up.
“The only reason you want to go visit Renata’s grandmother in the Night Market is so that you can blog about it,” she accused. “I’m onto you VanNoord.” She wagged a finger at me with a devilish grin.
“Why . . . I . . . ” I pulled myself together and with mock woundedness said, “Why Kathie, I’m just plain hurt that you would think that I’m that calculating.”
“Well it’s true!” she said.
I turned to Renata, sighed, and then confessed, “Well, okay. Maybe just a little.”
Am I really that transparent?
Am I really that shallow?
Don’t answer that.
-Jack
(Renata was undeterred. We’re going to visit Grandma just after the New Year. You of course will be able to read all about it here on the blog.)
Apparently, it’s not socially acceptable to say to your very pregnant friend, “Amber, you’re not that big -just because your stomach enters the room three minutes before you do”. Well, now you tell me.
Women –it turns out- already know this.
Which got me to thinking that if men were the ones who got pregnant, the social protocol surrounding pregnancy would be radically different.
Gus: Heya fellas. Long time, no see.
Everyone: Hi Gus.
Fred: Dude, you are so huge!
Burt (high-fiving Gus): You are -like, as big as a house!
Fred: How much have you gained?
Gus: (beaming from ear to ear) Forty-seven pounds.
Everyone: Awesome! You are da man!
Fred: (knuckle-tapping Gus) Sweet! Last year, my cousin Karl, put on 51 pounds.
Burt: Somebody get Gus another piece of cheese cake.
So, I’m sorry Amber. I didn’t mean to make you feel bad.
But, it wasn’t my fault.
I couldn’t help it.
I’m a guy.
-Jack
[posted with permission and a lot of laughing]
Recruiting new staff for an international school is a much more involved process and therefore the hiring cycle starts much earlier. As a result, before we break for Christmas vacation, our school here in Hong Kong needs us to officially declare our intentions for next fall. We have until the 16th to either sign the contract or not. Yikes.
On a related note, if any teachers out there have ever considered teaching overseas, I would encourage you to consider it more fully. This has been a really wonderful experience both professionally and personally. It’s been very rewarding for our family. No doubt about it, it has definitely stretched us and has been hard at times, but we have really been blessed by the whole experience.
International Christian School would be a great place to start the process. It is a stand-out school by any standard. I haven’t worked this hard since I was a first year teacher, but the staff and students are wonderful to work with. Beautiful facilities. Great city.
But I would be more than happy to help anyone who is interested in embarking on an international teaching job search. December is the beginning of the hiring cycle for international school.
I was fortunate that I was actually able to secure a two-year leave of absence from my school district in Chicago that made this China endeavor possible. Because of the soft economy, your school district might be more inclined to extend to you a leave of absence than they would have been under other circumstances.
Email me.
I teach middle school. I have a daughter in elementary school. I have a daughter in high school. The result: I attended three school Christmas concerts in four days. 
Singapore is a city-state on the southern tip of Malaysia. She’s a booming metropolis that often gets compared to Hong Kong. We flew into Singapore on our way to Indonesia.As you can see, Singapore takes the rule of law very seriously –especially when it comes to drug trafficking.
After dinner on Thursday night, I had the boys pack up and place their suitcases on the dock outside of their cabin. They couldn’t understand why I was going to have them leave their suitcases outside on the last night. But, once I’d inspected the room to make sure it was packed up and clean, I had them haul their suitcases back inside.Only then would I let them go down to the beach to join the girls at the bonfire. We spent our last evening in Indonesia around the fire sharing what we had seen and learned. Everyone agreed, our week spent a half a degree from the equator had been a memorable one.
We had to get up at 5:30 the next morning so it was lights out at 9:00. Despite the long day –despite the long week- the boys were a little energetic. I finally got them into their bunks and settled down. As we all lay in bed, David –Mr. Shrimping himself- broke into song. It was an original, stream-of-conscience summary of our week. David may be a goof, but he’s incredibly musical. In addition to touching on the highlights from the week, he sprinkled the song with Indonesian words we had learned over the week. He had us all laughing instead of sleeping. It was a great way to finish our week. Finally, I had to flip on my teacher voice and tell him that was enough and for everybody to go to sleep.
In the morning, we didn’t have time for a sit-down breakfast, so the staff from Telunas Beach gave us all a sack breakfast to eat on the two-hour boat ride back to the Batam where we would catch the ferry to Singapore. From there it would be a short flight back to Hong Kong.
Thank heavens for individual in-flight movies and video games to keep the kids busy. I was exhausted.
Back in Hong Kong, several parents met us at the airport. We dismissed most of the remaining kids who would find their own way home from the airport. My colleagues and I had to escort two of our students all the back to Shatin.
Preparing to take eighteen eighth graders on a week-long trip to Indo had been more stressful and nerve-racking that I could have anticipated. Leading up to the trip –overburdened with passport numbers and packing lists and parent meetings- there were several moments when I wasn’t sure that I was going to make it. But I survived, it was an amazing, memorable week, and we brought all eighteen students back safe and sound as promised.
And, as a bonus, my very pregnant colleague did not go into labor.
The kids were outstanding, the villages unbelievable, and the beach was amazing.
But I was exhausted and ready to crawl into my own bed where hopefully I could sleep through the night without any critters gnawing on my thumb.
-Jack
Shortly after we started on our hike, I’d noticed that our two drivers weren’t with the group any longer. I had wrongly assumed that they had stayed back with the boats. Halfway through our hike I found out what they’d been up to. While we were still on the river bank, getting ourselves organized, they had gone on ahead of us. On the second half of our hike the jungle got denser and they had been busy bushwhacking the way with their machetes for us. One more thing I can scratch off my list of things to do in life. Hike through a tropical jungle while my guide slashes his way through with a machete. Done. After an hour’s hike we arrived at the much-anticipated waterfall. It was everything the kids and I had hoped: tall, with a deep pool below, and plenty of high rocks to jump off of. And yes, there was lots of cajoling and jumping including a couple of kids who had not jumped off of the platform back at the resort. One of my students stood on top of the bluff for ten or twelve minutes before she finally jumped and then she only managed to do so because I –with her permission- gave her a push.
We were due back for lunch, so we toweled off as best we could, put our shoes back on, and headed out.
I thought about suggesting to my students that we walk in silence in hopes of seeing monkeys, and then thought better of it. As I did one last check to make sure no one had left anything behind, further down I could hear them singing.
-Jack
Finally, we arrived at a bend in the river, the boat drivers pulled in, and we all jumped onto the muddy river bank. Surprisingly, no one fell back into the river. Once we got ourselves organized, we made our way single file down the somewhat muddy jungle path.Oh well.
I guess your priorities are different when you’re fourteen than when you’re forty-four.
Hey kids, check it out! Rubber trees! Gather round, Mr. Mike is going to explain to how the locals harvest the sap of the rubber trees into these coconut halves. Fascinating!
Nice try, Mr. VanNoord.
They were too busy poking each other and trying to remember all the lyrics to all the verses of Taylor Swifts “Back to December.”
No seriously, see how they strip away the bark and . . . . But . . . see . . . they tap this little nozzle into the tree . . . and . . . oh, never mind. After Mike finished explaining the process to me and I got a few obligatory pictures, we had to walk at a brisk pace for several minutes to catch back up with the rest of the group.
But see . . . the rubber comes out all milky . . . and . . .
All our island hopping up to this point had been done in one large wooden boat. So on or last full day in Indonesia when we were scheduled to go on a jungle hike to a waterfall I was a little confused when the staff had us get into two smaller boats. We motored on the open sea for about twenty minutes until we turned inland and started making our way up a wide, lazy river. On either side, the banks were dense with mangrove trees which are common in the tropics. They typically grow in the brackish water where fresh-water streams pour into the salty sea water. These bush-like trees send out a complex network of exposed roots that help to secure the soil in the mangroves. Mangrove trees form an important part of the local ecosystems by preventing erosion.
It would be an understatement to say that serving in two Indonesian villages had given me a fresh appreciation for modern life in Hong Kong or Chicago. Yet, those visits had not prepared me for the scattered dwellings we saw on the river bank as we made our way through the mangrove. It was not only the primitiveness of the homes on stilts, but the utter isolation that grabbed my attention. These humble abodes which were fifteen minutes upriver in the middle of nowhere, made the villages we’d been in seem like teeming metropolises. Try as may, I couldn’t even begin to image what life was like out here.
As the river twisted its way deeper and deeper into the Indonesian jungle, it became increasing narrow. It became so narrow that we could have reached out from either side of the boat and touched the mangrove trees. In fact, several of us did. Suddenly, it occurred to me why we had to take two smaller boats. As the river got more and more narrow, it simply wasn’t big enough to handle the larger boat.
I first heard the drums when I got off the boat. We were in our second village for our second project. As we approached the school, the path was lined with local students in their school uniforms playing traditional Indonesian drums with animal hides stretch over them. What a welcome. We spent the morning expanding and smoothing a soccer field and painting a classroom’s worth of desks bright red.
The village was preparing lunch for us so we were trying to quickly wrap up our work projects. As I was checking around to make sure we hadn’t left any tools lying around, out of the corner of my eye, I could see some activity behind one of the school buildings. I wandered over –and sure enough- the rumors were true. There were a dozen local middle school boys and girls in beautiful Indonesian outfits preparing for a dance.
We were going to be getting lunch and a show. Awesome. As tempted as I was, I didn’t say anything to our kids. After our lunch of fish wrapped in banana leaves cooked over an open fire, papaya salad, and other local delectables, someone popped a CD into the karaoke machine and cranked up the volume. We were treated to -not one, not two- but three dances by groups of local middle schoolers.
After lunch, our kids had an hour of free time. They scatter to the four corners of the village to run around, hang out, and play soccer with local kids. That was my cue to grab my camera and wander from one end of the village to the other and back again
A little service work, good food, a dance by our new friends, and a chance to get some cool photos.
Pretty much a recipe for a great day.
I had managed to get Hudson up on the platform. It was a start. All I needed was one.Hudson is not the most athletic boy in eighth grade. So I was pleasantly surprised to see that he was the first one to venture onto the platform. I figured it would have been one of our soccer or basketball players.
But here was Hudson up on top of the deck trying to decide if he had the courage to jump.
I was giving him the old Coach VanNoord pep speech. “You can do this. Dig deep. Courage is not about not being afraid, it’s about overcoming your fears. The pain will only last a moment, but the glory will last a life time.” I quoted every hackney halftime locker room scene from every hackneyed sports movie I had ever seen. I was on a roll.
I was trying to read Hudson. I figured I would have to go on like this for several more minutes before he had himself psyched up. But right when I was in the midst of channeling Gene Hackman from Hoosiers, Hudson backed up ten feet and made a mad dash for the end of the platform all the while yelling “I am Poooooooookeman!”
Typical Hudson: goofy, lovable and –as it turns out- pretty darn courageous.
Atta boy, kid. I knew you had it in you. I couldn’t be more proud.
And I was right.
Once Hudson broke the ice, other students started to make their way onto the platform. But to my surprise, it wasn’t the hotshot boys; it was several of our eighth girls who made their way onto the platform.
Finally, after Grace had made her third jump, the rest of the boys decided they had seen enough. They were not going to be outdone by Pokeman-boy and the girly girls.
Finally, the rest of the eighth grade boys made their way onto the platform. To my knowledge, one of the boys Quentin only made one jump all afternoon. After a running leap, he did a mid-air spinning 720. I guess if you're only going to do one jump, you might as well make it count.
My students spent the rest of the afternoon jumping of the platform.
Meanwhile, I retreated to a nearby hammock knowing that my work here was done.
-Jack
(I’m sorry, what’s that? Did I jump? Well, how do you think I got Hudson to jump?)
Two nights before we were to leave for Indonesia, I panicked. I looked on the itinerary that the staff from Telanus Beach had put together and saw again all the blocks of time that said “Team-building activities lead by ICS staff.”I stayed up late researching and compiling what I thought would be some fun, age-appropriate group activities. On our first evening at Telunas Beach, we played the first of my activities. I put the kids in two lines holding hands. I squeezed the hand of the first kid in each line one, two or three times. Each of them was supposed to pass the correct number of squeezes down his or her line as quickly as possible. Depending on how may squeezes that last person in the line felt he or she was to grab one of three objects that I had put on the table on the other side of the room.
Yeah, it was about as lame as it sounds.
And my activities only got lamer after that.
That same day, we gave the kids some free time. A lot of them spent the majority of the time on the beach and in the water messing around with Telunas Beach’s one surfboard. Other’s spent the time trying to drum up the courage to jump off the eighteen-foot platform. Three of the boys became totally enamored with fishing from the dock.
My co-leaders and I were surprised at how well the kids were getting along and using their free time. We thought to ourselves, if they keep exhibiting this level of maturity and independence, we might be able to dole out larger and larger blocks of free time.
In other words, we wouldn’t have to do any more of Mr. VanNoord’s lame team-building activities.
In the end, all those blocks of time on the itinerary that said “Team-building activities: ICS staff” we pretty much gave to the kids as free time. After all they were on a beach hemmed in by the dense Indonesia jungle. How much trouble could they get into? Furthermore, we were the only guests at the resort for most of the week, so we didn’t to worry about our kids disturbing other paying guests.
Open space to run around and lots of free time: it’s a combination our Hong Kong students don’t get to experience very often. We were happy to give it to them.
The notes in the folder said “Be sure to go shrimping.” I had no idea what that meant. But when last year’s leaders say “Go shrimping,” we figured we better go shrimping. At dinner that evening, we announced to our students that as soon as it was dark and the tide was out far enough, we were going shrimping. They had no more idea what shrimping entailed than I did, but they knew it was something worth getting excited about.
Mike from Telunas lead us down to the beach and sat us on the stumps that ringed the bonfire pit. He explained how shrimping worked.
Ten minutes later, in groups of four and five, equipped with our flashlights and mini-spears, we headed out. Our mini-spears looked like marshmallow roasting forks but thinner and with a multi-prong tip on the end. Each group had a local staff member from the resort leading the way. The groups spread out into ankle-deep water. We all kept our eyes peeled, but it was invariably our guide who spotted the shrimp. He would hold his light on the shrimp and point it out with his spear if necessary. One of the kids or I would ease up on it, lower our spear into place and when our spear was two or three inches above the shrimp, thrust it into the water hopefully harpooning a shrimp.
If we managed to snag the shrimp, we’d lift our mini-spear up to our guide’s bucket, rest the fork in a notch in the bucket’s lip, and pull back until the shrimp pulled free and fell into the bucket.
I got pretty good at spearing the things, but for the life of me I could not spot the little buggers. They are clear in color and half the time they were buried in the sand so that only their tiny eyes were visible. My flashlight was way too weak, so while my students spread out, I had to stay close to our guide and his mega-watt headlamp. I was amazed at his eagle eyes. He would sweep his light across the water and stop it on a location ten or twelve feet away. I would walk over to where he was shining his light and would see nothing. There were times when he was literally pointing with his spear three inches above where there was a shrimp and I still couldn’t see it. How he spotted it from ten feet out, I will never know. With blind faith, I would jam my fork in where he said and –sure enough- I would come up with a shrimp.
One of my students, David had wandered from our small group. He had a strong flashlight and had gotten the hang of shrimping. David not only was getting good at spearing the little suckers, but was surprisingly good at spotting them. Now what you need to know is that I can’t get David to focus for more than three minutes on a single task in the classroom. But for forty-five minutes, he walked around hunched over peering into ankle-deep water and out-shrimped all of us.
We turned all of our shrimp over to the Telunas staff and finished the night sharing our tales of conquest around the bon fire. We were pleasantly surprised, when the next night among all the other delicious food the staff always prepared at every meal, there was a platter heaped with the shrimp that we had caught.
Few things in life are more satisfying than eating food you have caught. They were yummy.
