Xmas in Wellington was great - Tom joined us and it went pretty quickly. Weather has been glorious. Yesterday we arrived at Tongariro National Perk in the middle of the North Island with snow capped volcanos and great walking. We are here for another day then to Taupo and Rotaruo thermal springs before flying to Christchurch and then Queenstown for the New Year. New Zealanders are extremely relaxed and casual - so getting our bookings mixed up was treated as quite natural and nothing to worry about - and so it turned out! Here is an example of what we encountered on our mountain tramp today.

A good 2-day multilevel workshop earlier this week which included several school heads and teachers. Gave a seminar to the HK exams authority yesterday and looks like we will have a collaboration next year.
Anyway - here is the machine I've been searching for the last 20 years!

This was our Sunday outing with Magdalena and Chung Law (ex student at IOE now a school principal). Currently halfway through a workshop withabout 40 participants, with Barbara off talking to schools about teaching English.
Have been buying up DVDs of operas and classic films for almost nothing: HK is still amazingly cheap for all that kind of thing.
We also visited the border with China - Canton. The view shows just the last 20 years development in the region.

So far have given one 2.5 hour talk on performance indicators (DVD available next year!) and a 1-day multilevel workshop to 60 people: the 2-day one next week will have about 50 participants. Hard work! Here is the poster for it:

A lot going on in HK with the WTO talks but up in the new territories we are rather isolated so have missed much of the excitement and protests.

Most of the time seems to be banquets such as this in a local Thai restaurant:


Left to right

Noel Tang, Sammy Leung, Magdalena Mok, Barbara Goldstein, Trevor Bond, Harvey Goldstein

Wednesday 14th. Arrived in HK on time and settling into a beautiful lodge on the Education Institute campus in the new territories. This is Prof Magdalena Mok welcoming us and a view from the balcony.