I was right, it was a whirlwind of a trip! I'll give you a quick rundown of our schedule in Hong Kong first: leave school on Friday at noon. Fly from Taichung to Hong Kong and land at around 4 p.m. There is a lady from the host school waiting to pick us up and we get on the shuttle train into the city. Another staff member greets us at the terminal and the kids leave for their homestays. I stick with the two ladies who picked me up and they take me to my hotel. Drinks, dinner, sleep. At 10 a.m. on Saturday I see my kids again (still alive! Whoo hoo!) and the competition starts. They work all day and I work all day grading the competition papers (yuck). At least there were cookies.
After the closing ceremonies, we pile back onto a bus and head to the airport. Get some noodles and some duty free shopping in, then board a plane at a little before 9 and land in Taichung at 10:20 or so. Parents are at the gate to pick everyone up and I go home! Whoa, was that an international trip or did I just blink and miss something?
Alright, that was exhausting just recapping all of that! In all actuality though, it was a really fun 36 hours in Hong Kong and we literally had no problems. There was one, maybe two, stressful moments, but nothing I couldn't handle. Which was a good thing seeing as how I was the only adult on the trip which made me nervous. Ok, so there was one moment when I freaked out a little bit.
I did get completely separated from them by customs because they had convinced me they didn't need an arrival card for Hong Kong since they were R.O.C. citizens. I believed them since most of them had been to Hong Kong before and just filled one out for myself. As soon as I was through customs, I look over to see the officer telling one of the kids that they need a card, and all of them panicked. I tried to help them, but I of course was already cleared through so I needed to keep walking. I was very anxious for the next five minutes, but sure enough they all figured it out and made it through. Thank goodness these kids are somewhat used to international travel!
As far as the math goes, it wasn't our best showing. Out of nine teams, we only took sixth. I was disappointed of course, and they were initially devastated, but I gave them my best teacher pep-talk: "there will always be that 'one' team who is going to beat you. It's sort of a fact of life, so all you can do is try your best and improve upon what you are capable of doing. I'm really proud of all of you! I don't care that we didn't get first! We had fun, right?"
So when that inevitably didn't work, I took them to Starbucks and there were finally smiles again. I think all in all, they had a great time and I really did too. It's not often that you can take a team of kids to a different country to compete in a math competition. By my standards, that's pretty cool!
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