1st Day in HK

We arrived in Hong Kong safely last night and hit the ground running today. We started our morning with breakfast at a local place near our hotel. We decided to go there based solely on one thing: a sign in the window that said "English Menu's." We both ordered "scrambled egg sandwiches" which apparently in Hong Kong are "egg salad sandwiches." We both figured it was close enough. After breakfast, we walked to the bus and took it to the Shau Kei Wan Government Secondary School to meet up with a few students. One of Ellie's current students (Oi Yee Liu) at The High School of Telecommunication, Arts, and Technology Brooklyn used to go to this school in when she lived in Hong Kong and she put us in contact with one of her friends who still attends this school. We met them at 9am but got there a little early so we were able to watch the students file into school in their white and blue uniforms. We both thought it was interesting to see how they individualize themselves, either by their bags or their hairstyles or the way they carry themselves.

The four students we met up with, Ludy (our main contact), Josephine, Marco and Stella were so wonderful to us. They were the school's prefects- friendly and polite and all had great developing personalities. Here are a few things we learned about their school:
There are 40+ students in a classroom
The school is for 12-18 year olds and there are about 1,120 students total.
They have about 1.5 hours for lunch and they are allowed to go out for lunch and hardly any of them are ever late getting back from lunch. When students cut afternoon classes, its to study for their final exams.
Instead of bells, they have music that plays between classes. (usually cartoon-type music unless its around the Chinese New Year or Christmas)
As Marco said, "We have demerits but don't have merits."

The students asked if we wanted to meet some math teachers and of course we got very excited. We went up to the staff lounge and one of our tour guides popped her head in the door to see if we could meet the native English teacher and some math teachers. We got to meet Annette, an English teacher from Australia and a math teacher, Mr. Herman Yuen. We talked to Herman for a while about what subjects he teaches. He teaches everything from 7th grade math to high level calculus. He gave us the final exam that he gives his high level students. It was some pretty tough math! But the whole test was in English and all the answers had to be in English.
After getting an incredible tour of the school, we went out for a snack with Ludy, Josephine and Marco. We asked them to take us to a restaurant that they would go to for lunch. I (Aneal) ordered the "Seasonal vegetables with Oyster Sauce" and Ellie ordered "Fish Ball soup." Marco challenged Ellie to picking up one of the fish balls with her chop sticks, which she did and then immediately dropped it back into her soup with a big splash. They also got a kick out of watching me eat my slimy (and unruly, according to me) vegetables with my chop sticks.
After eating we asked them how to say some important phrases in Mandarin. As they were giving me a tutorial (which wasn't going that great, but not because of them) Marco had an idea. He said we should write out what we wanted to say and they would translate it into Chinese characters. So now we have a sheet that will hopefully help us out when we get into an language-pickle.

The students helped us to the local MTR train station, where we had them help us put more money on our "Octopus Card" since we had an embarrassing tourist moment on the bus earlier that morning. We exchanged e-mail addresses and presented them with Brooklyn tote bags and "I <3 NYC" keychains. When we asked Ludy if she liked her bag, she responded, "OF COURSE!"
It was very exciting to make the global Brooklyn-Hong Kong connection from student-to-student, it's a small world after all!