Destination Christmas

Hi Blog Readers,

Well since the Fall Break, things have been plugging along here in Macau.  It's been a continuous 8 weeks of school without any additional breaks.  Hence, it has been a bit of a dry spell for traveling and some of the more exotic adventures.  However, the Christmas break is right around the corner and more adventures lie in wait.  In fact, the next few months bring about a whole slew of travels and adventures.

Here's a preview of what I'll be sure to be posting stories and adventures about in the next little while:

December-January (Christmas break): Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia
January (Chinese New Year break): Shanghai, China
February (SCISAC volleyball): Taichung, Taiwan
March (Experience week): Cambodia
April (Spring Break): likely Japan

During Christmas, I'll be going on a cruise with a teacher friend from Guangzhou.  The cruise starts from Singapore, going to Kuala Lumpur, and Penang in Malaysia as well as Phuket in Thailand for the first week.  Neither of us have been on a cruise before so it should be a very neat experience.  In the second week, my parents come for a visit and we'll be going back to Thailand, this time to Bangkok.  This will also be the first Christmas that I don't make a trip back into Canada. 

More details about the other trips as they approach, although if you've been following along with the blog all this time, they should hold an air of familiarity.  I do have a few random pictures from school related activities to leave you with.  You'll hear back from me with great details about the Christmas travels shortly into the new year.  Regardless where you are from, I hope you enjoy a safe, happy, and wonderful Christmas season with loved ones.  Merry Christmas and Happy New Year everyone!

Halloween Theme Dress Down Day at School

The development volleyball team.  While we have a pretty awesome veteran team, this team's special to me because I'm head coaching their first volleyball playing experience and this team is the one that solely has my imprint on it.  They're all smiles after their first win of the season.

We found an (affordable) all you can eat sushi in Macau.  Uh oh, here comes trouble :D

We're lauching into the chemistry unit in science and that means lots and lots of labs.  The kids are testing the properties of matter.

Middle School Christmas Concert.  All my kids were performing and it was nice to see their work from other classes on display.  I'm very proud of their performance.

Dancers were included for one of the songs at the Christmas concert.

Introducing the 2014 SCISAC team

Twins Day.  Bet you can't which one I am.  But I'm sure you can tell which hockey team I like ;)

When School Gives You Breaks, Go Travel

Hello blog readers,

The last few weeks offered up a good number of long weekends and school breaks.  We first had a long weekend for the Mid-Autumn Festival and then during the following weekend, we had another long weekend for China's National Holiday.  Most recently, we had an entire week off for our school's Fall Break. 

For the long weekends, I got a chance to get out of Macau to check out some other familiar places nearby.  For the Mid-Autumn long weekend, I went to Ocean Park in Hong Kong and during the National Day break, I went across the border to Guangzhou.  There's not a whole lot of tell you about either of those trip, so you can just take a look at the pictures to have a sense of the things I saw during those 2 trips.

Red light casting an eerie glow on these jellyfish.  Blood jellyfish!

Fish swarm

Hong Kong Ocean Park Aquarium

The long gondola ride to the other half of the park

Sunset over the South China Sea

A wonderful afternoon in Dafushan park

Biking anyone?

Guangzhou

A lively nightlife area on Hong Kong Island called Soho.  It attracts a lot of expats from Hong Kong.

Fireworks in Macau during Mid-Autumn Festival

For the Fall break, a more substantial trip was in order.  The original plan was to go to Singapore for a part of the week.  However, after hearing of a wonderful trip idea to the Philippines from our school's newest PE teacher, who was traveling solo, I asked if I would be allowed to tag along for the trip.  Before I knew it, we were jetting off to a little town in the Philippines called El Nido.  El Nido is on the island province of Palawan, southwest of the capital of Manila.

The journey to El Nido is worthy of it's own blog entry.  After flying into Manila (in a typhoon) at 12:30am, we have a long layover before our next flight early the following morning to Puerto Princesa, the capital of Palawan.  It would have a waste to find a hotel room for a few short night, so just hunkered down and had a short, uncomfortable sleep on the floor of the airport terminal.  We we certainly not the only one, as many others also decided to rough it for their connecting overnight layovers.

When we did get into Puerto Princesa, we had to take a very bumpy 6 hour bus ride to El Nido.  Suffice it to say that I knew about this bumpy trip beforehand and decided to fork out a bit of extra money to fly out from El Nido to Manila on the return journey.  It wasn't the most brilliant weather when we got into El Nido, but we were thankful that the typhoon had moved on.

I had done very little research into El Nido before coming on the trip, so it was quite a neat experience to go to a new place where you learn about things as they come.  El Nido turned out to be a quiet seaside town at the northern end of Palawan.  El Nido is not the commercialized tourist beach hub like Boracay or Bali are, but definitely has a distinct and very enriching Filipino culture still lingering through the town.  There were many locals around and throughout the trip I found the locals to be very friendly and jovial.

So what do you do in a proverbial paradise like El Nido?  The first thing that comes to mind is simply just sit out under the sun and enjoying the beautiful scenery and just relaxing.  However, is not what comes to be if you're traveling with a PE teacher like I was.  Granted even all teachers, including PE teachers need the occasional massage or two, or a few hours lying in a hammock.  Outside of that, our time was allocated to exploring the town, finding our way to more secluded beaches, trekking through the bush to take a swim under a waterfall, and enjoying water sports such as kayaking and paddle-boarding. 

My personal highlights of the trip includes the must-do island hopping tours and getting back into scuba diving.  Apparently island hopping is THE thing to do in El Nido.  All around the coastline of the town are a series of small islands arranged in a geographic feature known as an archipelago.  Many local boat operators run daily island hopping trips to take tourists to check out the neat, hidden away areas of the islands.  We lucked out, the evening right before our planned island hopping date,  we found a restaurant owner that had a speed boat and could offer to combine the best features on 3 of the main island hopping tour circuits, served barbeque lunch on a secluded beach, and rented out snorkeling gear.  It was well worth the extra few buck to go with this tour.  Amongst the stops for snorkeling and a few beach stops, the most interesting location was a seemingly unremarkable rock face on one island that had a small gap that people could swim through into a small lagoon on the other side.  At the back of the lagoon, there was a small cave that we were allowed to swim into.  While there was nothing remarkable about the cave, it's not everyday you get to swim into one, so it was quite a thrilling experience.

The Philippines has the reputation of being one of the world's best places to scuba dive.  It wasn't even my intent to dive during this trip, but as Kaitlyn decide to brave the trip back to Puerto Princesa instead of flying out from the El Nido airport, I spent the last 24hrs in El Nido on my own and needed something to do.  On a whim the night before, I asked around about the price and feasibility of going on a dive trip.  Once again, I found one of the only places that had a speed boat and therefore could offer half-day dive trips.  Before long, I was on said speed boat, whizzing off for two dives on my last afternoon in El Nido.  The icing on the cake, was that because it was low season, and the dive shop was starved for customers.  I got to go on what turned out to essentially be a private speed boat for two consecutive dives for less than $25 Canadian!

Swimming through the coral reef "forest" was just as amazing an experience here in the Philippines as it was during my first time diving two years ago in the Perhentian islands in Malaysia.  It's incredible to comprehend that the wall of coral you're swimming along the side of is literally a wall made of living organisms, animals no less, that form the basis for hundreds of species of fish and marine invertebrates to form an ecosystem.  My second dive was especially rewarding as I saw a good number of hard to find aquatic species including a juvenile lionfish, a sea turtle, a school of probably 50 grouper fish in a very tight ball, a behemoth sized clam, and a few barracudas. 

Unfortunately, due to the incompatibility of water and photo-taking equipment, there aren't as many photos of the island hopping as I would have liked to have taken and none during scuba diving.  However, I do have a sampling of some of the terrific sights from El Nido.  Take a look at the pictures below:

Welcome to El Nido!

Mermegmeg beach outside of El Nido

Seafood Feast!

Anchor away!  Island hopping for the day.

Barracuda barbeque on the beach?  Yes please.

Dinner on the beach.  What a scene.

The El Nido archipelago islands

Hermit crab friend joining us on the beach for lunch

2am slurpees at the Manila airport.  What a great way to start off Fall Break.

A local school in El Nido, quite a bit different from any school I've been to.

Hammock time!

Our first trike ride in the Philippines

Standing at the edge of a cliff-face on one of the many islands of the El Nido archipelago.

Snorkeling in beautiful blue waters of the Philippines.

Glad to be here!

Sunset a beach.

The last sunset in El Nido.  It's hard to leave.

A water buffalo in the water.

Swimming under a waterfall.  Incredibly refreshing.

Thanksgiving lunch on a beach, in El Nido.  Awesome!

There was an abandoned church on one of the island during the island hopping tour.  Neat.

Since coming back, I've been bombarded with report card business and marking.  It makes enjoying such a vacation all the more important, when I come back realize that it'll be 9 straight weeks until the Christmas break.  In the three weeks since the Fall break, I've finalized my plans for the next break during Christmas.  I'll tell you in detail what I'm doing in the next post, but in the meantime I will say that there is definitely a LOT of traveling to be had in those 2 weeks for Christmas.  In the coming weeks, school presses on, as does the volleyball season.  During the first week back, our team was pressed into participating in tournament meant for high school teams.  While we only won a single game the whole weekend, it was the only one that mattered, as we beat our own senior girls team to steal away the 3rd place trophy at a tournament that wasn't even intended for us.  Honestly, however, if we actually played our best game, we probably could have won 2-3 more games and even played into the 1st place finals.  Since that tournament, we started our local Macau season.  We started the Macau season with the team of returning players (we also have a team of brand new players) playing a game each of the last 2 weeks.  Their first game was absolutely dreadful, arguably the worst they've ever played as even they will admit.  We were served up like turkeys against a team we once again, could have beaten with a better effort.  I give the girls credit as they regrouped well and dominated the 2nd game winning 25-6, 25-12.  Next week, the new girls start their campaign.  For them, this year is a learning experience and there will likely be only 1-2 of them that will legitimately challenge the 10 returning girls for a roster spot on the penultimate SCISAC team. 

Junior (middle school) girls win 3rd place in a high school tournament.  Not too shabby.  This team is looking good and honestly it has nothing to do with my coaching.  The girls love the game that much and pour everything into being better players.

That's all for now.  You'll hear from me again in a few weeks time.

Finishing up my first organized race, the Macau Run of Hope (5.6km).  Finished in 28mins:10secs, just over 4 minutes behind the first place winner, another teacher from the school.  Could have done even better if I actually did more than one training run.

What Teachers Do Outside the Classroom

Hello readers,

So it's has been a little while since I last added an entry to this blog.  The school year is now in full swing and there a been quite a few new adventures I've gotten into since last time. 

I had mentioned a teamwork building trip to an outdoor, overnight camp in Macau, specifically in the remote southern region called Coloane for our grade 9 students at the end of the last entry.  The trip was quite stress-free for us teachers, as the outdoor education staff did a great job running everything and we were simply allowed to sit in the background to watch the kids go through the activities. 

The first day had the kids participate in some uniquely challenging team building activities.  One activity had them boosting up classmates to hurdle a very high horizontal bar, while another had students support each other in crossing a series of beams without having the beams make a noise when it touched the floor.  In the evening, the kids had to prepare their own dinners and build their own stove for cooking their dinners on.  As a courtesy to us teachers, we were provided with a properly cooked dinner prior to looking after the students build their stoves and prepare their food.  I will say though that most of the student groups did a decent job in creating their food dishes.  Extra credit grades go to the group that came to camp prepared by bringing curry powder to spicy up the dishes.  It was a very late dinner after a long day of activities so the kids weren't too picky about what they were eating. 

The second day provided the kids with even more firsts and other hair-raising adventures.  They all had the opportunity to tackle new heights in completing a high ropes task or rock climbing activity.  All of the naturally enthusiastic kids got a jump by getting in on the activities first.  I noticed a few girls belaying for the kids who were climbing and together with my grade team, pushed them into trying the rock wall.  A few of them were quite terrified of heights and one of the girls started tearing up which backed the other teachers off their attempts of getting her to try the activity.  I persisted and after working through a good chunk of things to say from my motivational playbook, I got their entire little circle of girls to try the activity.  That girl who teared up?  Well she literally raced all the way to the top of the rock wall in very little time and was bursting with excitement and enthusiasm when she got back down to Earth.  I also got another student, a boy to scale a high ropes challenge where he seemed petrified to move upon getting to the start of the rope line.  Despite encouragement from his friends and the instructors at the place, he would only heed my instructions.  Despite it not be an achievement of mine, I was very pleased that I was able to connect with the kids and help them overcome their fears and doubts to reach a goal they didn't think they could accomplish.  It's a feeling every teacher prides themselves in and it was no different for me. 

More recently, with the volleyball season starting to pick up steam, I decided to organize a tournament for the four volleyball teams at the school to play against each other and against a team of teachers.  It was a busy Saturday, as I was running between playing the games and coaching the junior girls games.  In the games that I played, it was not a pretty sight in the morning.  As a team of teachers we were trying to be too fancy and had a lot of positional coverage errors in our first game vs the combined senior boys team.  We re-grouped considerably better for the first set of the game against the starting players of the senior boys but experienced a collapse of grand proportions, while leading the set 23-20 late.  The boys reeled off 5 straight points to take the set.  Serve receive was abysmal for a considerable part of the 2nd set and it was not much of a contest by the time I rotated to the front court to play the setter position. 

In the afternoon, I transitioned over to coaching the girls team.  They started their first match vs. the junior boys.  Most of the boys had never played organized volleyball before and few still had never been on a sports team before.  Meanwhile, my girls team had 8 returning players who all have multiple years practicing with this team and not to mention, a full complement of starting players who were a part of the SCISAC championship winning team last year.  In a game that didn't have the typical outcome when a boys team plays against a girls team, the girls keep a comfortable lead throughout the entire match.  The difference of experience was evident.  The girls executed the game plan somewhat sloppily but still effectively enough to win by a comfortable margin. 

Right afterwards, my girls had a game against the senior girls team.  In another game, where one would peg our team to be the underdogs on paper, we delivered a composed performance taking the first set comfortably.  In the 2nd set, I decided to rest most of my starters and swap the remaining starters to their secondary positions.  Despite the unusual formation, we dictated the pace of the game well and were in line to put our team's best server to drill a few serves before a few mental lapses closed the set unexpected against us.  The girls came out completely flat-footed at the start of 3rd set and when they finally did snap out of their lethargy, all we could do the rest of the way was trade the senior girls point for point to the end of the match. 

In the final game of their triple header, the girls were to face-off versus the teachers.  A seemingly impossible task in theory, provided the most entertaining match of the day.  The girls served well and didn't back down against the teachers at the net.  The team played great defense and made opportunistic kills throughout the match to raise some eyebrows with all those in the gym.  They actually took the first set 25-20 and forced the teachers to put their full effort into the next game.  With a rejuvenated teachers' team in the second set, they jumped out to a big lead early.  Reminiscent of the 3rd set versus the senior girls, by the team the team played up to their potential, they really could only trade points, clawing back minimally to lose the set 13-25.  Digging deep, the girls started the 3rd set much stronger and resumed their fearless play against the teachers.  But unfortunately, the team still lacked the killer instinct to close out a set after being besieged by some strong (but manageable) serves to have teacher pull even at 13-13 before edging out the girls 15-13.  After the game, I've was repeated complimented by the other teachers' who played or even watched bits of the game on how my team was by far the most disciplined and really looked like they knew what they were doing out there.  Despite 2 losses, overall the girls really do a great job and it has gotten me excited to see where their skill level will be by the end of the season at SCISAC. 

Well that's all you'll get for this entry.  But wait... weren't there a few long weekends the past few weeks as well?  There were, and I did a good bit of traveling around the area just outside of Macau during those weekends.  However, with a busy week and the Fall Break looming, I thought it would be a good idea to post more updates about my personal travel adventures a little bit later on.  During the Fall Break, I'll be heading south to El Nido, Palawan, Philippines.  A week of sun, sand, and gorgeous landscapes awaits myself and another teacher that I'm tagging along with for this trip.  You'll have updates about the Fall Break trip and the previous ones as well in the next entry.  Check back soon!  I leave you with the promised pictures from my school based adventures the last few weeks.  Enjoy!

Dom Bosco 2013