CUHK

As I mentioned previously, I went to a conference in Hong Kong on Wednesday, and just got back a few hours ago.  It was at Chinese University of Hong Kong - arguably the best university in HK.  The purpose of the meeting was the General Education program that was implemented this year at the University of Macau.  CUHK has been doing a GE curriculum for ages and so they invited some teachers from our school to come over and learn about their methods. 

It was interesting, especially since I knew almost nothing about the GE program before the meeting.  I realized while I was there that many of the teachers in the English Centre feel that it doesn't make sense to include our courses in the GE program, since we obviously teach a specific skill and the whole idea of a GE curriculum is to promote critical thinking and interdisciplinary cooperation and get away from a specific skills-type focus.  So, the point is, their program sounded great, but I have to agree that our classes shouldn't really be included.  In other words, it was interesting to learn about, but not very applicable to my daily life. 

However, the accomodations and food were excellent, and it gave me a good opportunity to hang out and chat with some of my colleagues, which is always nice.  Usually we're all running around doing a million things and never have time for a real conversation.

So first, the hotel.  We stayed at the Hyatt Regency, definitely one of the nicest hotels I've ever stayed at.  I had a little trouble initially, because you have to put your room keycard in this little slot to make the lights come on in the room.  This would probably be obvious to most people but it took me a minute to realize what to do and then another couple minutes to realize that I had to leave the key in there or the lights would turn off again in two minutes.

Isn't it swanky?  I LOVE this bathroom setup. Every bathtub should have a window on the other side.  (Or be in an open space.)

I took a nice long bubblebath and read magazines before bed.  There are very few things I enjoy more than reading in the tub.  I read the latest about Occupy Wallstreet and also about The Rum Diary - Johnny Depp's new movie based on the play by Hunter S. Thompson, who was a good friend of his.  That was in Newsweek.  I also perused a photo homage to Ansel Adams in National Geographic.  Definitely the best hour I've spent doing anything in quite some time.

The food was also incredibly good.  I opted for the vegetarian meal, since there is a dearth of veggies in most of my meals here. Doesn't this salad look fantastic?  It was!

The main course was eggplant with a delicious sauce, mashed potatoes and the other perfectly steamed veggies you see.  Asparagus is so good, isn't it?  They brought me a fruit plate for dessert, which was delish, but my coworkers felt sorry for me and insisted I try a bit of their tiramisu as well.  It was amazingly good.  I have tried tiramisu in many different places and most of the time I am disappointed by it.  Not this one.  I was enjoying it too much to get a photo - so sorry.

This was the view out of my window.  It turned out kinda cool because of the reflection, eh?

I slept well and went down to meet Kim and Teresa and Janice for breakfast.  It was one of those big fancy buffets.  YUM!!!  Again, I was enjoying it so much I forgot to document until I was leaving, so this is admittedly not the best photo.  Sorry!  I had bread and cheese and fruit and a chocolate croissant and juice and tea.  They also had the omelet station, the congee station, the coldcuts station, tons of pastries....  Needless to say, I was sad to leave this hotel.

They also treated us very well at CUHK - they drove us all over the enormous campus in a shuttle bus and there were many staff on hand to look after us.  At our first talk of the day we were in a big meeting room and each had a microphone and name placard and an agenda and a cup of hot tea waiting.  Nice!

We had dim sum for lunch and that's always good and there's always too much food and I'm always sad to have to go and leave it behind.   Especially since there were great veggies here!  I was really tempted to wrap some up in my bag.

Above you can see some of our delicious selections, starting on the left and going clockwise, we have roast duck with bok choy and mushrooms; then tea eggs with various meats; then snow peas with sausage; and bok choy in garlic.  Later there was fried rice and noodles and fish cakes - way too much food and all amazingly good with a complex array of flavorings.  They know how to treat their company, I'll say that for sure.  The people you see are Lily (she teaches Portuguese at UMAC) and Janice and Teresa from the ELC.

We went back to the hotel to get our bags before we left and I was admiring the centerpieces on the tables in the lobby.  It's just moss growing on something in a dish.  Cool, huh?  I took this for Mom, and am sure she'll dig it.

After all that good food I was kind of ashamed to do it, but by the time we finished our meetings and picked up our bags and got to the ferry terminal, I was hungry again and wanted something fast so I could get on my way.  I went to KFC and it was actually not bad.  I got these little spicy chicken nugget type things and a honey biscuit and an egg tart.  Hard to go wrong with that combo.  :)

I'm sure if Angie had been there she'd give me her usual line: "Are you eating again?"