First Post: The Adventure Begins

Dear Friends,

Hello and welcome to all of you who have decided to swing by and see what all the fuss is about.  If for some reason you didn't already know my name is Jason and the reason you are reading all this is because for the next 2 years, I will be jetting off to Macau (or Macao) to start my career as a teacher.

I've come to learn that some of you don't really know where Macau is.  In fact I've some people seemed to believe Macau is some obscure location in Canada... it is not.  So the teacher in me has decided that I should enlightening you with a few facts about my new home:

• Macau is a special "administrative region" of China, meaning it is technically a part of China but Macau has its own government, currency, and is for the most part self-regulating much like Hong Kong
• It is located at the southern end of China facing the South China Sea
• Macau is approximately 60km away from Hong Kong
• Before 1999, Macau used to be a Portuguese colony much like how Hong Kong used to be a British colony before control was transferred over to China
• Macau is only 30km2, in comparison, downtown Toronto (according to Wikipedia) is 630km2, so in other words Macau is tiny
• The main revenue that powers Macau's economy is tourism (there just isn't enough raw resources or land space to sustain a viable economy), but more specifically casinos and gambling; it is basically the Las Vegas of Asia, and in fact some of the casino chains from Vegas can be found in Macau as well such as the MGM Grand and the Venetian

Alright, so that was a little something about Macau, here's a quick rundown of what this job is all about:

• I'll be teaching at The International School of Macau (TIS)
• I will be teaching grade 7 math and science, there will be 3 sections with me covering both science and math for those sections
• The school teaches by the Alberta curriculum
• The school year starts Aug 29th and for the most part follows the same schedule as most North American schools would follow

As for how I got the position, that's a long story... actually no it isn't at all.  I was actually only offered the job on August 1st,  received a interview 4 days before that, and only just heard from the school exactly 1 week before that.  3 weeks ago, I didn't imagine that I would be teaching in Macau.  That's how I got this teaching position, it's that easy. :P  Needless to say the last few weeks have been pretty hectic finishing my summer job and simultaneously going through the motions of packing and getting ready for the move over.

With such a short timeline between getting the offer and actually having to leave the country, I haven't gotten the chance to say a proper farewell to everyone.  For that I must apologize.  But the good news is that I'll be coming back to Toronto for Christmas as well the summer this year.  As it appears that my days of student summer employment are over, I'll have too much free time on my hands during the summer and I expect to see you all at some point or another when I'm back in Toronto.  I do want to give a shout out to my summer co-workers for putting together a wickedly fun send-off event.  I'll miss not seeing you wonderful people the rest of the summer.  Thanks also goes to the friends who came to the Jays game with me on Friday; while it wasn't the best game, your company meant the world to me.

Towards that extent, I want to convey a sincere thank you to all of my friends and family back home.  The person I am today is a product of the relationship that I've built with all of you.  I might very well not be in the business of teaching students (let alone teaching students in a foreign country) if it were not for what you guys and girls have helped me discover about myself.  Sure it probably sounds overly-sentimental, but I wouldn't be here without all of you.  

In a much more direct manner, I wouldn't be in the position I am today without the help of a network of people both back at Queen's University as well as my associate teachers on practicum.  Special credits goes to Alan Travers and Elspeth Morgan from Education Career Services at the Faculty of Education at Queen's who guided me down the path toward this position.

While I'm excited about the upcoming experience, right now I'm more nervous than anything.  Before the end of the month I'll be: a) living in a new country, b) living entirely on my own, and c) teaching in my own classroom.  I feel that once I get settled in to a place to live and get everything set up, and start getting into a routine I can actually start feeling truly excited about this opportunity.  I'm sure the next 2 years will be a challenge, but with the support of my family and old friends back home, as well as new friends in Macau, I hope this experience changes in my positive manner both personally and professionally as a teacher.

Alright well I think I've blabbered on for long enough.  But I will try to update this blog with some semblance of regularity while I'm in Macau.  I hope that you will join me for my adventures in Macau.  Needless to say ,I'll miss all of you back home and I hope that you will all keep in touch through facebook, msn, or skype. I'll see you on the other side!

Cheers,

Jason

(Disclaimer: I am the world's worst proof-reader, excuse my occasional lack of grammatical sense.  Yes you may ridicule me about how I manage to become a teacher with my tremendous grammatical ineptitude).