Dear family and friends,
Today, Ryan and I begin the great adventure of our new summer English program! It will last for the next three and a half weeks, during which time the English proficiency level of the students should increase and the new international students should become orientated to culture of LTS (our seminary), the academic expectations of the school, and become more comfortable in this environment (both To Fung Shan hill and Shatin, the city where we live, and the greater Hong Kong metropolis). We ask for your prayers.
We started at 9am this morning. We have 13 students- 10 new international students from Myanmar (Burma), Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos, and Nepal, and 3 returning international students who wanted to join the program to improve their English (one really needs the extra help, and the other two are just keen Master's students, including one from Malaysia, who want to improve their performance).
They seem like a great group, shy but friendly, and we have both men and women. Once they feel more comfortable and we all know each other a bit more, it should get even fun! I lead the welcome, introductions and opening devotions (thanks to help from my Dad who helped by picking texts and giving me insights into the readings related to week one's theme: 'A sojourner in a strange land') and we added a little hidden English lesson into the material, and Ryan is currently in the classroom leading and monitoring the English entrance exam that LTS administers to new students for placement into our English courses during the regular semester. He's a pro at it, now that he's given the test several times! It's a bit of a rough test, and we would like to create a new one, but we just aren't there yet. In any case, it should give us some idea of where the students are at in terms of their language abilities! (We have no idea where the level is for most of these students, though based on past experience we know that those from Laos will have a very low level while most of the students we get from Myanmar are usually quite competent.)
We are both pretty nervous, and the huge difference in the level of the students is a real stress for me, as I am continuously unsure of what level of diction to use in the classroom, or how many hand gestures I should be employing, so please keep us in your prayers as we try to navigate these uncharted waters. As you know, Ryan and I are not trained English teachers, with zero education classes under our belts and only a few classes on English literature in college between us (like Chaucer in Old English is going to come in handy here! I think Ryan's course was in Children's Lit.- I am not sure which is more absurd in this situation?) Anyways, we don't actually know what we are doing, and flying high by the seat of our pants, so please think of us and pray that wisdom might be showered upon us and that God will grant us sanity.
We have a great program planned... but what might look good on paper does not always come together in the classroom, and these students are ours all day long, 5 days a week! And when we started planning 7 months ago, we didn't think about how hot it would be at the end of July, and how a broken air con system would affect us (we are literally soaking wet)... the bus driver is also on vacation this week, so our outings will have to be on foot (and might we remind you we live 20 minutes up one of the steepest hills in the world! Well, 30 minutes if you don't walk as fast as Katrina!) and every day brings new different 'issues'.... I pray we don't have to deal with typhoon's as well....
But, we stay hopeful, and follow the spirit...
Peace to all of you (we miss you!). Love,
Katrina and Ryan
Monday, July 28, 2008
Saturday, July 26, 2008
Summer English Language and Orientation Program
Dear family and Friends,
Hi! Katrina here! You have had many great posts from Ryan with exciting photos but I am afraid I am going to bore you a bit with this one... I am going to ask for you think of us and pray for us and we embark on an adventure right here on To Fung Shan hill: out summer program starts on Monday!
We have been planning the summer program for over half a year now, and we are both pretty nervous about how it will all go down! To explain the situation- the new international students to LTS have never had an orientation program, which surprised us a little when we arrived here last August. We had insane culture shock moving to Hong Kong, and we had been to a shopping mall before! When we thought of some of the students who had moved here from rural parts of SE Asian countries, or even from cities, I mean, nothing compares to Hong Kong! We have just returned from traveling through several countries in SE Asia, and we have seen what Cambodia looks like, and it's nothing like HK! It's the opposite!
Needless to day, a few students looked like a deer in headlights for the first couple weeks or so, and we felt their pain. In the past, students arrive just early enough to attend a couple day 'retreat' (HK style, which means you don't have any time to sleep and worship or share during a really intensive program) and then they start classes the next week.
Some students also come to LTS with little English, and others need their language skills refreshed, and so the school felt that an intensive English program during the summer before the academic term begins would benefit these international students greatly. Remember, they have to take bachelors, maters, or doctoral level classes in English for their degrees!
We are trying to address some of these issues in our summer program, as well as working on their writing skills, and Katrina's pet peeve- plagiarism issues! Sometimes I feel like a WTO member complaining about Asian plagiarism, but the students need to learn academic standards, and I am more than happy to teach them how to cite their sources and engage critically with their readings!
But please pray for us as we lead this program. We are doing 99% of the work ourselves, and the program is three and a half weeks long! We will be teaching and interacting with the students all day for 5 days a week- and there are only two of us! I still don't know how the laundry will get done, especially since our washing machine appears broken, and who will walk to all the stores and do the shopping, or the washing up, as we don't have any helpers! Holy! And all of this while the intense summer is raging- you know, I love the summer, but it seems you spend your summer in HK either soaking wet from torrential tropical rain, or because you have just sweat your entire body weight into your clothes (our commute is a 20 minute walk up the steepest hill you can imagine!)- or both at once! :)
It will be intense, to say the least, and I still have to plan for the five classes we are teaching this fall in "free time"... haha...
Thanks for your continued prayers and warm thoughts...
Love,
Katrina and Ryan
Hi! Katrina here! You have had many great posts from Ryan with exciting photos but I am afraid I am going to bore you a bit with this one... I am going to ask for you think of us and pray for us and we embark on an adventure right here on To Fung Shan hill: out summer program starts on Monday!
We have been planning the summer program for over half a year now, and we are both pretty nervous about how it will all go down! To explain the situation- the new international students to LTS have never had an orientation program, which surprised us a little when we arrived here last August. We had insane culture shock moving to Hong Kong, and we had been to a shopping mall before! When we thought of some of the students who had moved here from rural parts of SE Asian countries, or even from cities, I mean, nothing compares to Hong Kong! We have just returned from traveling through several countries in SE Asia, and we have seen what Cambodia looks like, and it's nothing like HK! It's the opposite!
Needless to day, a few students looked like a deer in headlights for the first couple weeks or so, and we felt their pain. In the past, students arrive just early enough to attend a couple day 'retreat' (HK style, which means you don't have any time to sleep and worship or share during a really intensive program) and then they start classes the next week.
Some students also come to LTS with little English, and others need their language skills refreshed, and so the school felt that an intensive English program during the summer before the academic term begins would benefit these international students greatly. Remember, they have to take bachelors, maters, or doctoral level classes in English for their degrees!
We are trying to address some of these issues in our summer program, as well as working on their writing skills, and Katrina's pet peeve- plagiarism issues! Sometimes I feel like a WTO member complaining about Asian plagiarism, but the students need to learn academic standards, and I am more than happy to teach them how to cite their sources and engage critically with their readings!
But please pray for us as we lead this program. We are doing 99% of the work ourselves, and the program is three and a half weeks long! We will be teaching and interacting with the students all day for 5 days a week- and there are only two of us! I still don't know how the laundry will get done, especially since our washing machine appears broken, and who will walk to all the stores and do the shopping, or the washing up, as we don't have any helpers! Holy! And all of this while the intense summer is raging- you know, I love the summer, but it seems you spend your summer in HK either soaking wet from torrential tropical rain, or because you have just sweat your entire body weight into your clothes (our commute is a 20 minute walk up the steepest hill you can imagine!)- or both at once! :)
It will be intense, to say the least, and I still have to plan for the five classes we are teaching this fall in "free time"... haha...
Thanks for your continued prayers and warm thoughts...
Love,
Katrina and Ryan
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
More Pictures!
These pictures pick up where the last post left off. Most of our other pictures of the Angkor temples, all our Thai beach pictures, and our Singapore pictures are on film, so you'll have to wait to see those in person.
Ryan in front of one of the trees growing out of Ta Prohm. Don't forget to notice the intricate carvings. Amazing.
Our hotel in Siem Reap, Cambodia, the jumping off point for visiting the Khmer temples (such as Angkor Wat and the like).
A view of Ta Prohm through the trees. This was the first Wat (temple) we visited and it was the most dramatic. Trees had grown up through the temple and displaced many of the walls and roofs.
Ryan in front of one of the trees growing out of Ta Prohm. Don't forget to notice the intricate carvings. Amazing.
Monday, July 21, 2008
Pictures! South East Asia Trip
Here are some pictures of our trip through South East Asia. We took about three weeks to see what we could. Enjoy the pictures - they'll tell so much more of the story than I could.
Our hostel in Bangkok, Thailand.
Some of the beautiful detailed roofs at the Thai Royal Palace grounds.
More roofs at the Thai Royal Palace.
The famous green roofs at the Thai Royal Palace.
Look at that detail! The whole complex was decorated like that.
The Thai Royal residence. The landscaping is gorgeous.
Monks at the Thai Royal Palace (all the tourists took pictures of them).
The train station in Bangkok.
Katrina at the Palace in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.
One of the beautiful buildings of the Cambodian Palace grounds. The grounds were also very well maintained.
Ryan at the Cambodian National Museum (in Phnom Penh), showing his ticket Canto-style.
One of the buildings of the National Museum.
S21, the detention and interrogation center for the Khmer Rouge. It is a former school that was turned into a prison to hold and question people before sending them to the killing fields.
A stand along a roadside in the countryside of Cambodia.
The Cambodian landscape.
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