Newbies — Brian Tsui

I’ve been in Hong Kong for five days now. I’ve spent most of my time getting my bearings at the Education University of Hong Kong (EdUHK). I don’t know how to tie all the disparate parts of my week so far into a cohesive narrative, so I’m going to cheat and present snippets. (This paragraph was my best attempt at putting a fig leaf over the ensuing naked information dump.)

***

August 9 was the day that I arrived to the Hong Kong airport and met up with Lauren, my ETA partner at the Education University of Hong Kong (EdUHK). EdUHK is the university we’ll be teaching at for the year. More information on the university is in the “About” page.

Below is a photo of the taxi we took from the airport to EdUHK. Because our suitcases were too large, the trunk was held down over our suitcases by a single cable.

A nightmare scenario of our suitcases falling out and spilling onto the highway while other drivers swerved around our suitcases honking and raising their fists in the air at us new American arrivals played out in my mind a few times during the trip. In the backseat, I kept looking over my shoulder. The driver, smiling at me through the rearview mirror, kept telling me not to worry.

When we pulled up to EdUHK, we were welcomed warmly. University staff helped carry our luggage up several flights of stairs to our rooms, and gave us a tour of the campus. The campus grounds were beautiful. There was a garden for geology, a rock climbing wall in the gym, and stores selling all the items of twenty-first century sustenance I might need so as to never have to leave campus. The university staff have been nothing but helpful. They clothed us with books, food, and ample support whenever we needed it. On books: asides from all the print/digital resources in the Arthur Samy Language Learning Center (ASLLC), where Lauren and I will be working, I was super excited when I found out we could take any number of books, from a box of books on English, home.

This is the main open central area of the university. Lauren is to the left!

C-Can is the largest dining hall at EdUHK, one of five places to get food on campus. I believe I’ll be spending a large part of my time this year here. There was braised beef, pork, congee, noodles, western choices, and like twenty more choices. Lauren and I were thinking that we might never tire of options to choose from. And the best part is that the options change seasonally.

Students and university staff lining up for lunch!

If I want to splash around in unsustainable luxury, there’s a Chinese restaurant on campus where dim sum is served. The university staff treated us out to dim sum there, and I might end up hassling with my wallet to sneak in a few meals there in the future.

A note about our rooms. There are fourteen floors up to our rooms, navigable only by walking up the stairs. Lauren and I nicknamed this hike “the Mountain”. If the stairs are a mountain, though, our rooms are definitely the summit — and well worth every step. Our two rooms made up the the tallest floor of the tallest building on campus, overlooking the city of 大埔 (Tai Po) and some of the mountain ranges that run through the New Territories. Our rooms were encased with large windows that obscured none of the mountains. Standing in my room felt like standing inside Tony Stark’s mountainside villa. My room might not have a JARVIS, but it was surrounded by a way more comfortable environment — greener and more full of life.

After our first day of work (read: receiving an orientation), Lauren and I had this photo taken of us. I think it’s going to be one of those photos I’ll look back on and sigh, oh how young we once were. I love it.

These teachers are armed and dangerous with their teaching tools