As normal as it gets…

In this post I want to give you a broad overview about my daily life; especially my work at the Pok Fu Lam campus of the German Swiss International School. My work consists of authoring teaching materials, assisting the teacher in class, break duty, bus duty,extra tutoring for weak or strong students, PE lessons and an afternoon activity at the Peak campus.

Generally I get up at 6am or earlier, if my body comes to an agreement with my mind that it is a good idea to push my heart rate by accelerating my legs to a fast pace. Either way, I need to have breakfast and shower until 6:35am to leave the flat and shift to the next bus stop.

The following 25 minutes are mostly used to chit chat with colleagues on the bus or to repeat some Chinese vocabulary by audio guide. At school I can still enjoy 5 to 10 minutes of silence until the children arrive by bus. As we have close to 300 students ranging from three to six years of age, a mornings bus duty is no bed of roses. I have to help every single student to depart from the bus, whereas some of them just learnt to walk recently. After my bus duty I have a long breakfast break in which I mostly do research on the Internet, write blog-posts, private mail as well as work mail.  I do look forward to the day where my have-to-do-list is blank.

After the break I have five lessons and two playground duties following the regular German Schedule of two lessons, break...At the moment there are still many office wise things to complete so I do not work with the kids as regularly as I would like to since they are mostly exceptional cute and have good manners. Some are only really cute and behave nicely though, screw them ; )

Playground duty is still stressful hence the new kids do not know about the rules and it is not easy to keep an eye on all of the kids around me. Tidying up the toys after the break is another point where there is still a need of improvement

After the 6^th lesson the whole fun starts again as all of the kids have to get onto their bus again. To ensure a smooth flow, all of the kids gather at their bus location in the gym and wait for their bus to arrive. Depending on the bus number, one has to shepherd the children for 5 to 30 minutes.  After the children are gone I have my second break of the day.

Later on, afternoon activities, private tutoring or, if neither of these apply to my schedule, office hours begin and last till 3:20pm. Normally I would be allowed to leave at that time but I generally stay longer as there is still stuff to be done. My free time activities after work (yes I still have a life over here outside of school) will follow in the next days.

FINALLY, my registration got approved and I will be a regular Hong Kong resident soon :))))

Learning by heart at the language exchange group over a German Meisel!

An important note at the end: If you send me your home address or a post card, you will get at least one post card back from me for each one of the two. It does not matter if I know you in person.