Arrival weekend

After a fairly long flight overnight for the British contingent, and much shorter one for the ESU Malaysian contingent, we all arrived safely in Hong Kong late afternoon on Saturday. After crashing for a while, we headed out to check out the local area. We had a dinner in a nice Thai restaurant, and then wandered around the Mid-levels/Central area that is close to our hotel. Our walk down the steep hills of Hong Kong was much easier on the way back thanks to the Central-Mid-levels escalators, the largest outdoor covered escalator system in the world (covering over 800 meters of hilly Hong Kong Island). It was an exciting and vibrant area, and Hong Kong already seems to have so much to offer!

Sunday saw us meet Verner, our contact at ESU HK and the trip. We took a ferry with him out to Discovery Bay, an area of Lantau Island (the largest Island in Hong Kong). Discovery Bay is a beautiful area, set amongst the striking Hills of the Island, and with a view to nearby Islands out to sea. It is also all the very peaceful due to the ban on private cars in the area, with only golf buggys and the extensive bus network allowed on the roads. We went for a great meal with Verner and his wife Gillian at a beautiful club on the Island, overlooking

the sea. This gave us a chance to talk through our workshop programme with Verner. We are going to be teaching groups of students from different schools across Hong Kong every evening, and some mornings will also be taking groups of teachers through a workshop on how to use debating in the classroom. After prepping together back at the hotel, we're looking forward to getting stuck in to our first session tomorrow afternoon!