Friday 11th May

This week I have been really tired and every day after school I have gone somewhere for dinner with friends and come straight back home and been in bed by 9pm. Now I am not a morning person anyway, but getting up at 6.30am every morning has been really hard this week. School has been good, but I have felt really tired by the end of each day and I feel like this week has really dragged.

I have been sorting out what I need for getting my Visa in Hong Kong, the school have booked my flights for 8am Sunday. Naturally, they were the cheapest ones that they could find and I fly to Shenzen and then take a 2 hour bus to Hong Kong. It’s been an average of 32 degrees, most buses don’t have air conditioning and I get travel sickness really easily. Great. The school have also given me an allowance to book my own hotel, which I finally got round to doing today.

After school yesterday Doreenda, Amanda, Anna and I went to try a new restaurant that I have been wanting to go to ever since I got here. Not far from the school there is a lake and there are tons of restaurants around it and I had heard about a Malaysian restaurant that I wanted to try, so we went there. Now I have never eaten Malaysian food before (so this is my new thing for the week) but the food was really good, we each ordered a dish and an appetiser each and tried a bit of everything, it was delicious! I’m quite proud of myself actually as I am a really fussy eater, a few years ago I never would have tried the things that I am trying now. We had a really lovely evening next to the lake and then got a taxi home and I was in bed by 9pm again.

Today was an exciting day for grade 2 as we had our green star awards. For grade 2, after each lesson I mark their work with a traffic light star system. If they have done well, they get a green star. If they have done OK or haven’t exactly understood what I wanted them to do but its obvious that they have still tried then they get a yellow star. If they have barely done anything then they get a red star. If the children get a red star they lose their playtime the next day to finish the work, and if they get 3 red stars in a row a note goes home to the parents. If the children get 3 green stars in a row they get a certificate at the beginning of Mondays lesson and we have a little award ceremony. Then at the end of the semester, the 3 children with the most green stars get a prize and seen as today was meant to be my last day, I had already told them that today was going to be prize day. Now over the past 2 weeks it has been really close, to the point that I was trying to think of a tie breaker as 6 students all had the same number of stars. By today I had 3 clear winners and 5 students came in joint 4^th place with only 1 star less than the student who came 3^rd. I gave out the prizes and everyone got a certificate saying how many green stars they got out of a possible 27 to take home and show their parents. This process will start again on Monday for the last 6 weeks of school and everyone kept saying to me that they were going to try their best and get a green star everyday! I am so pleased that it has motivated them as I was a bit worried that the students who didn’t do well would be discouraged and not even try, but they were the ones who said they were going to win the prize next time because they were going to try their best. It was great to see them all so excited, I was actually really proud of them all today!

After school I went for dinner with Anna, Amanda and Raena in the city. We went to the Kros nest (another place I have wanted to go to but never been) and we all shared a pizza which is their speciality. We ordered the medium pizza and it came on its own tray and nearly filled up our table it was that huge! The pizza was really good though and we were there for ages just chatting. That is my favourite kind of night out, just going for a meal and chatting with friends, not going to a smoky bar and not being able to talk over the music. I must be getting old! We got a taxi back home and it was 9pm when I got to my apartment.