Thursday, July 25, 2013

Halfway Done

Yup, my once giant summer holiday is halfway over. I think that ever since being a child, I’ve been programmed to want summer to go on forever and hence feel a tinge of sadness seeing so much of it in the rear view mirror. I love the flexibility and freedom to do so many things I want to do, as opposed to the dreaded responsibilities of work life. Still, stability is good and I’m sure by late August, I’ll be ready to get back into the routine. I do miss the kids for sure.

But between now and then, I’ll be going to Europe for the first time! As I said in the last post, it’s rather silly to write very much about this when I’ll be blogging about it extensively after I’m back. So let it suffice to say that I’m very excited to be exploring Ireland, England and Scotland for the majority of August! And with my girlfriend and parents no less.

In other news, many of you might have seen what I posted on Facebook about my new postgraduate program that I expect to start in the fall. To provide a few more details, it’s essentially a part-time primary (elementary) teaching certification program at the Hong Kong Institute of Education that will get me a diploma by June of 2015. Many of the specifics aren’t crystal clear at this point, but the gist is that I’ll go to lectures a couple nights a week, write some papers and arrange my six weeks of student-teaching at my current job in the spring. This whole thing was fairly last minute however—only applied on June 23rd—and even now, I’m still not even 100% enrolled. Sometime during the Europe trip, I expect to get my registration information and will sign up for classes on my return to HK. And I'll start attending those classes just a week or two later, if all goes according to plan.

I’d been deliberating over post-graduate plans for some time now, as I’ve always known that my Bachelor’s degree wasn’t the end of my student days. Even after this program, I half expect to return to a university one day to get a Masters in something. For this current degree, I’ve gone back and forth in my mind countless times between music, education and music education. And have also deliberated over going back in the US or here in HK. In the end, I chose this because being a teaching assistant at a primary school, I’m in a perfect position to do go after a diploma of this nature. Having full-time income makes the whole thing more financially doable and my current work environment makes it easy to put what I learn into practice without being overwhelmed by the responsibility of being a lead teacher. Let’s just hope I don’t come back and read this a few months down the road stressed and busy out of my mind…


So after four weeks of relaxed days filled with movies, badminton, tutoring and Skyping friends, I’m off to the UK and Ireland for 19 days. After that, busy times ahead as a teaching assistant, library coordinator and part-time student here in Hong Kong. Next post will have real-life Irish and Brits in it, the latter of whom will probably still be all excited about baby George’s first this and first that.