In Search of Clean Underwear!?!?!
My teammate Molly's suitcase did not make it to Hong Kong at the same time she did. So the night of our arrival, we decided to go out and buy the essentials. As you know, my hotel is located inside a mall that boasts 700+ stores. Well, in Michigan, that all sounded fantastic! In the real world, it is a virtual nightmare. A happy nightmare but a nightmare non the less.
I mean, I have been to some of the world's largest malls but this one takes the cake. I am guessing it probably takes up a couple-three city blocks and connects several large skyscrapers and office buildings together.
The mall is called Harbor City and it is subdivided into different departments. Every department (like childrens, sports, youth, etc) has a gazillion stores and it is about the size of a football field. it took us almost 30 minutes to even find the lady's department so we could buy underwear. We kept getting turned around, asking for directions and then getting turned around again and again. The hardest part was trying to stay focused on the pursuit of the underwear....there was merchandise calling me left and right...making it impossible to keep my eyes on the prize....what a nightmare!!!
It was almost a full hour+ before Molly actually purchased the underthings dang it!

The mall even had several harbor outlets so huge cruise ships like this one could dock right on the side of the mall and let tourists in....!?!?!

Watch the in search for undies videos 1 (left) and 2 (right)

Hong Kong Tid Bit
by Nick Mulder, World History 2nd hr.

Hong Kong is a city in China made up of 235 islands and a section of mainland called Kowloon. Settlement in Hong Kong began during the Paleolithic era. It was occupied by England in 1841. Durring the first half of the 20^th century Hong Kong was a free port. Hong Kong has similar government to us with three branches. Hong Kong is made up of territories and districts. About 95 % of Hong Kong’s population is of Chinese descent.

It takes up about 426 square miles of land. 4.6 % of the area is covered in water. The land is very mountainous. The average yearly temperature is between 65 and 85 degrees F. Summers in Hong Kong are similar to Michigan summers. The population in 2008 is about 6,985,200 people.

Nick has earned 10 Cantonese points toward his Unit #3 test. Thanx for playin', Nick!

Meet Molly B.

Molly is the most important half of the American delegation to the Innovative Teacher forum. She is definately the "structure" to my "fluff & hype". She is, like, super accomplished, has her own education consulting company and works as a course developer and virtual soc. teacher @ Michigan Virtual University.
We have been working together for the Microsoft CareerForward project for a couple of years now. Last year, after months of development, we took the show on the road and traveled all over the state of Michigan training trainers (mostly education Information Specialist and Technicians) how to teach this course to teachers. Now CareerForward has been released nationally and it is free to all students in the US that care to take it. Hopefully, after HK we will be working on the International launch of this very cool, very useful course.
We plan to work hard all year to create CareerForward 2 (Urban Edition) and enter the project in next year's National Microsoft Innovative Teacher Forum in Seatle to see if we get selected again to go to the next International Competition. Yeah...we are pretty addicted!!!

Ok, I promised myself I would not take any videos of the very spicy Honk Kong night life for obvious reasons but I heard the first 2 bars of this song....I ran as fast as I could into this basement club, pushed people out of the way so that I could record this cover band play this song....Small world isn't it?
This all Chinese band is a great example of the ethnic diversity in Honk Kong.

The Dried Foods Market part 3

There was so much to see in this market that there is obviously no way to show u everything.

I loved playing with all the dehydrated shtuff!!! mmmh I wonder what this one tastes like.

wow! I saw a ton of dehydrated animals. The poultry was the most amazing because ancient travelers could eat duck soup any time the decided to boil these dried up ducks in a pot. If you click on the picture, you can see a lot of detail....including the duck bill
In the picture below, you can see that they even dried up lizards and sea horses.

Congratulations USA!!!
"Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek".

- Barack Obama

What are you willing to do to change yourself, your home life, your school, your community? No more blaming others or making poor excuses for the state of our country. Get Involved....Here is how

The Dried Food Market part 2

The purpose of our trip to the Dried Food Market, was to help us understand HK's traditional history. Today, we were to keep to our theme of OLD AND NEW and try to find inspiration for our next international collaborative project here. We also visited new areas of HK that I will share with you in future posts.

This is a very, very extravagantly expensive box of Bird's Nest. Bird's Nest is not really the nest of a bird but close. This delicacy is composed of the dried spittle that birds use to build their nest and other obvious proteins. A bird can only produce a few announces of spit in its entire life time so it takes a lot of birds and a ton of spit to come up with this amount of Bird's Nest.
This is considered to be very restorative and a cure for a variety of ailments.

Playing with my new Indonesian friend in the market. Indonesia has the world's largest population of Muslims.

The Dried Foods Market part 1

Today we went on an organized tour of the city of Hong Kong. We were first taken to the Hong Kong dried foods market which represents a part of Hong Kong Ancient history. In the olden days people in Hong Kong used many forms of dehydration to preserve their food.

One of the many reasons I love Asian food is because of the dietary variety. Asians not only take advantage of the obvious regional produce and resources but also tend to find nutritional value in just about anything from the sea, the earth and the sky.

Historically, this has been a clue about how people from different geographical regions of the world have dealt with hunger and famine. Hong Kong has seen its fair share of wars, regional conflicts and terrible dictatorships. During the Chinese Cultural Revolution under Mao Zedong, people in Hong Kong died by the hundreds of thousands because of hunger and poor food distribution. Thus, they found food where most wouldn't and came up with innovative ways of storing, transporting and distributing a ridiculously huge variety of food.

Be the first one in your class to make a short (2 min) presentation about the Chinese Cultural Revolution and earn 8 extra credit point toward your next test!! Simply email me your intentions before you begin your research to claim you spot. Good Luck!

In the two pictures above, you see a jar of pickled jelly fish and a barrel of of smoked sardines.

For 80 Hong Kong Dollars (HKD), you can walk away with one pound of these tiny guppies. These are a delicacy where I come from (Spain) as well. In Spain we call them chanquetes. They are ridiculously good and when deep fried, they taste like really tasty french fries with a slight fish after taste. Here in HK, these are used as fish broth or soup base.

Here is a picture of a variety of sea creatures that most of us would simply pass up in our search for food. There are a couple of different sea sponges and two varieties of the famous sea cucumber. These 3-5 inch long varieties of sea cucumbers grow to about a foot and a half when rehydrated. Although they do not taste like much, they do provide very high levels of protein and folic acids that are fat free and cholesterol free. They are very ugly...down right rude looking...