Bethia in Hong Kong: IT'S CHRISTMAS - well nearly!

"Oh the weather outside is frightful, but the fire is so delightful. And since we've no place to go, let it snow, let it snow, let it snow." The likelihood of it actually snowing in Hong Kong this Christmas is sadly zero but there is a certain comfort in being able to listen to the classic tunes you hear belting out of shops and school every day, that makes one feel rather at home wherever they are. For me, they have been a pleasant (if not slightly irritating at times when the same 15 seconds of the same 20 or so songs are put on loop right outside the English office) reminder of how lucky I am to be in Hong Kong but I can still be blessed with the music of home.
I learnt something very interesting this week about the mindset of someone in Hong Kong which actually made me think that perhaps they aren't the only person who thinks this. Hong Kong is extremely modern in it's architecture, the slightly older buildings lie in Central and in the fishing villages but the mindset seems to be that if a building is getting old, it needs to be replaced. When I was talking to a friend about the incident at the Apollo Theatre, I hope that anyone who was there is okay, someone asked how old the building was. When I said it was built in 1901, they were shocked and wondered why it hadn't been knocked down and replaced. This struck me as while in London, the Grade Listed Buildings are treasured, Hong Kong's mindset is all about keeping up to date with architecture, there are very few buildings that are older than 70 years old.
This week has most cetainly put me in the festive mood, as I can imagine is the case with many of you as well. In our K3 classes we were talking about Christmas, getting them to write letters to Santa and drawing a picture of what they wanted for Christmas. I learnt that day that I had Batman, Superman and Iron Man all in the same class....yeah, it made me smile to say the least but at least the children - sorry, superheroes - signed their letters with their real names. As a teacher, one should never try to crush or stop a child's imagination, however vivid it is. On top of that, we were teaching the sentence 'Merry Christmas' to K2 and showed them decorations, explaining the ideas of Christmas cards. I have been most fortunate to receive so many Christmas cards from children who I both teach and I don't teach...I will post a picture of them all nicely up in my room next week, when I have got around to putting them up!
Friday saw the monthly birthday party occur and as it was December, the Christmas party. Each child was given matching hats and scarves and Santa arrived to say hello much to their delight. Their joy was very much infectious and it was almost sad to go to the secondary school to help put up decorations (mountains of tinsel) for the Christmas Carnival on Saturday. After a degree of helping, we were given the stage to rehearse. Unfortunately, our dress rehearsal wasn't exactly very good...at all...it was a good thing that I remember the old theatre saying that if the dress rehearsal is awful, the performance is normally good.
Thank goodness that the saying stood. After arriving at the school at 8.15 (I swear I am never getting up at 6.20am on a Saturday morning again...), we managed to stumble through a half good practise where at least everyone remembered their lines. We were given a classroom to sit and wait for it all to start in and who could resist a blackboard and chalk when we were all bored? Several games of hangman, cartoons and practising our Cantonese characters later, as you can see below, we were called backstage. Will and I were told on Wednesday that we had to write a script to perform to introduce the play and so we went out there, Will in his reindeer onesie (costume) and me in my rather formal version of my character...which was a hyperactive version of me. Thankfully that went well and we had Ms Bobo and Ms Judy with wide smiles on their faces at the front. The whole five minute play, if it could be called that, went without a flaw if you didn't count the background music being a little too loud at the start and there was some fantastic drumming from Katie as well as Ben and Will playing guitar and Daisy lent a hand playing the piano as we rocked our way through Jingle Bells, Silent Night, Mary's Boy Child and Joy To The World. We got a large round of applause and even some of the audience had begun to join in which was what we wanted!
After the performance, we milled around the games booths that were below the main hall and helped out as much as we could, saying hello to the children who had come with their parents and guiding people in the right directions, well what we thought were the right directions at least...I said goodbye to Katie as she flew home to surprise her parents (mission accomplished!) for Christmas and Will as he flew to Thailand this morning.
On Sunday I forfeited a lie in to watch the kid's nativity play at The Vine in the morning. It was suitably adorable and saw the story from the wise men points of view which is always a nice change with lots of random songs thrown in which added comedy to the piece. It was fantastic to watch and was just another thing to make me feel even more Christmassy!
Sadly, my holiday doesn't actually start until Christmas Day. I was working today 9-5 ("what a way to make a living" - I know about 90% of you just sung that) making games for the Chinese New Year celebrations in January which look as if they will be good fun judging by what we did today and I will be doing the same tomorrow. I am looking forward to spending Christmas Day with my family at The Vine in the morning and then with friends in Kowloon Bay for lunch and the afternoon. The flat feels strange now empty as Ruth has joined the Thailand crew but I will be glad of all the rest I can get in the time that I do get for the holidays and look forward to seeing what the New Year will bring!
Have yourselves a very merry Christmas and I look forward to hearing all about what has been happening in this festive period. I have been blessed to have two Skype video chats in the last three days, with my wonderful RML Youth friends as they celebrated with a good party and interesting Secret Santa gifts, and my wonderful small group from SPS who were as hyper and gorgeous as I remember. It was so lovely to reconnect with them all as I hadn't seen any of them since I left for Hong Kong.
Merry Christmas to all, and to all a goodnight!
Batkinson

Cantonese word of the week: pronunciaton - melega?; translation: what is this?
Quote of the week: 'Do you intend to use your voice to praise the Lord...or change the world?' - Pitt the Younger
Prayer points:
- That in the family season of Christmas that I won't feel alone
- Lots of rest in this short period of time to prepare for the next 7 months, this is my first proper holiday in three months!

I think I win for the best flatmate, Ruth made Peppermint Creams, fudge and chocolate truffles for Christmas presents...so good...

Frozen yoghurt with a variety of toppings, I've found a gorgeous place where it's pay by the ounce!

Each of the children who had a birthday in December got their picture taken in front of this. So naturally I had to get my own one!

The stage we performed on!

Daisy, Ben and Katie tuning and getting ready to rehearse!

Ben writing Cantonese on the board, or at least pretending to - the word 'Killer' in the corner is honestly the title of the game that is described on the rest of the board, we checked!