Up the Down Stair Case

Our school building (and therefore our apartment) is brand new -less than two years old. The building is "L" shaped.” One wing is the secondary wing and houses grades six through twelve; the other wing is the elementary and houses grades one through five. Kindergarten is at another location in town. On the second floor, bounded by the two wings is a large, brick courtyard; except nobody calls it a courtyard. Everyone refers to it as the “podium.” Must be a British thing (?).

The school cafeteria is also on the second floor so students can eat on the podium if they choose. But this time of year, most of them choose to eat inside due to the heat and humidity.

Because it never gets extremely cold in HK, buildings here are able to blur the lines between indoors and outdoors. For example, the two wings of our school building are connected at every floor, but they are connected by an open air walkway. While most of the stairwells in the building are enclosed, there are several staircases the students use throughout the day that are also open-air. A little unusually to this boy from west Michigan where it isn't uncommom to have 30 inches of snow on the ground.

The classrooms are air conditioned, the halls are sort of airconditioned, and the staircases are hot and humid. So in the course of going from one class to another, students get to experience all the variety that Hong Kong has to offer.

The school has elevators which we as a family can use as we go to and from our seventh-floor apartment. But students are not allowed to use the elevators during the school day. While most of their classes tend to be clustered on a single floor, students do have to go up and down throughout the day. For example, at one point in the day, Annika has to go from the fourth floor where most of her classes are, down to the first floor for band, and all the way up to the sixth floor for science, only to return to the fourth floor for her next class.

The school has a beautiful 500-person theater that is housed on the fourth and fifth floor. The school also is home to two full-sized gyms which are necessary because the school has nothing that resembles a playground or athletic fields (those would be a luxury in a very crowded HK. The high school sports teams rents fields just down the road.) The school also has a beautiful, indoor pool.

On the ground level between the two wings is the parking garage which can house about 25 cars. The parking garage serves as the main enterance for most people -our family included- comming and going. But if we come back at night after 9:00 p.m., the big metal, rolling garage door is closed. Then we have to ring the bell and security will open up the little entry door that’s been cut in the metal garage door.

And once security has taken our temperatures to make sure we didn't pick up the H1N1 virus while we were out eating icecream, we are free to head up to our apartment.

-Jack