Secrecy Thoughts Of A Senior Student 🤫

I had interviewed my house captain, a S5 student and pried her secrecy thoughts about her school life. Check out the video and get inside her mind. Hope you enjoy it.

XXX Bernadette 

— Heidi Fung from S5 (Suukyi’s House Captain)

Samantha's Guide to Explore the school

Our campus is so big that is a U shaped building, which has 7 floors including Ground Floor. Now let me talk about several campus amenities.

G/F

Here is the Tuck Shop in our school, which you will have lunch and buy snacks and drinks during recess time. The tuck shop has a lot of delicious food, which me and my friends always go there usually in recess time.

This is the Nature Trail behind the school’s building. There are a lot of fragrant plants in the trail, and also several different kinds of insects. Some boys like to go there to discover the insects there, take pictures of them and upload them to their Instagram account!

Here is the Amphitheater in our school. Sometimes there is no enough space for all the students and teachers together for some activities, the Amphitheater is the most suitable place for all of us. The school have held some activities in here for 3 times since the year starts already.

1/F

This is the Drama Room in our school, you will have Drama lessons in this room. There are lots of props in the room that you will always use in lessons. The Drama Room is such a comfortable place to have your lessons since it has enough room to practice your plays.

Here is the Staff Room in the school, since there are a lot of teachers in our school, you need to find the teachers by going in the Staff Room is so hard. But by using the phone outside the Staff Room, you just need to press a certain number to call the teacher you would like to find, which is much more convenient and faster.

2/F

This is the T&L Room, which you will have your T&L lessons here. There are lots of tools for you to learn how 

to make some delicious food, such as cheese balls, tofu salad. During the open day, you can even taste cheese tarts and cookies made by senior form students! Yum!

3/F

Apart from the S2 classrooms, this is the School Hall. You will have assemblies and some other talks here, the hall is also used for choir practices and some big assessments and examinations. You can even watch the Inter-house King Ball Competition here yearly!

This is the lower floor of the library, which there are 2 floors in the library. There are lot of books here, which you can borrow 6 books at a time. You may also sit on the soft couches to read your favourite fantastic fiction. As well, there is a printer in the library which you can print your documents. There are computers for you to search and read articles, or doing research for your homework additionally.

4/F

This is the upper floor of the library, you may see a lot of tables here because this is another place for you to complete your homework. You can do your homework on your own or with your friends, since some tables can only include 1 person, some can include 4 people. It is a good environment for you to concentrate to do your work because the librarian is so strict and always require you to be quiet, this can let me concentrate if I want to do my homework faster.

6/F

This is the last place to talk about --- the Basketball Court. It is the place for you to have PE lessons, and if you are like playing basketball, you can go here to play basketball and practise your shooting skills!

Pictures from http://www2.hkugac.edu.hk/en_us/aboutus/affair/installation.html?parent_id=217

Bernadette’s Master Getaway Plan

In our school, there are four breaks (excluding Summer vacation) in total.

The first break of the whole school year is the Term Break, which happens at mid October. It last about a week. (Well, to be honest, I am a kind of person who loves to have a getaway from all the stress and pressure.) Therefore, I listed a few ideas for you to do during Term break.

1. Host a party (Invite your friends to relax and go crazy. Forget all about school)
2. Go to Japan (Who doesn't want to see the beautiful view in Japan during Fall?)
3. Have a small get together with your friends (Just chill out and hang)
4. Go out, take pictures and post them on Instagram (Now, there is something you can brag about)

Second Break -- CHRISTMAS! Friendly reminder, there will be an epic party before your Christmas Break. Your class committee will help you plan for the party. I was one of them and the party the class committee and I planned was epic! We had played dodge ball, killer and charades. We also listened to top hits of 2017 while we devoured our scrumptious snacks. A few ideas that you can do during your three-week break. 

1. Travel abroad (especially places that snow)
2. Play Secret Santa with your friends
3. Hang out with your friends (Starbucks will be highly recommended since there is hot chocolate)
4. Watch Netflix non-stop

Third Break -- Chinese New Year. Time to fill your empty wallets. Let me give you a few ideas of what you should do.         

1. Go to your relatives' house and get red packets
2. Eat Chinese New Year's special food until you become a fat pig
3. Shopping (since there is a sale)

Fourth Break -- Easter Holiday! Time to dress up as a bunny and hunt for Easter eggs, just joking. I got a few wicked ideas that you should do during your one week and half days off.

1. Go camping (I went kayaking and the weather is just perfect)
2. Travel abroad (especially England)
3.  Full your mouth with CHOCOLATE (FYI, I am obsessed with chocolate)

Here are the few ideas that I have in mind for you to spend your holiday    --Bernadette:-)

BONUS:
Summer vacation time! Don’t know what to do??? Don’t think! Hit the beach and get ice cream. Make sure to get a tan before you see your classmates again!

Bernadette’s S1 Learning Trip VOL.2

Part 2 of the learning trip... 

On Friday, we went to Macau for our Humanities research of The Role Of Money in both Macau and Hong Kong. We did the Hong Kong research the day before and I am not planning to mention it. Anywho, we went to Macau and did our research. The goal was to get 60 surveys done. We were rushing to different places and interviewing different kinds of local people. Some of the, were happy to help, and some of them were, let’s just say not THAT helpful. My group finished early so we went to get ice cream to celebrate our 60-surveys success!

Bernadette’s S1 Learning Trip VOL.1

S1 Learning Trip  

For our S1 Learning Trip, we went to Don. Bosco Camp in Cheung Chau for three days. We all had loads of fun and the journey was filled of laughs. Let go and see the trip I had. #Bernadtte’s Learning Trip

19th March #First day of camp

On the first day of camp, we rode the ferry to Cheung Chau and walked into the camp. After some boring briefings about dos and don’ts, it was time to get the party started. (We literally had a party, tell you later). We settled down in our rooms. I was living in a 6-people room, so we got a private bathroom! That means we don’t have to wait and share the public bathrooms downstairs. We played some group activities that would help us sharpen our collaboration skills. We also created our team name and decorated our team flag. Our team name was called Dump CL since we are in the class CL. Dump didn’t really had a meaning but it just made us laugh so why not? Our team mascot was Bernie (our class mascot — it is a green dinosaur with pink, purple tail and long gills on his cheeks. It’s cute if you had to know...) in a rubbish camp. He was cute enough, but when he was inside a trash can, it made him even cuter!!!  \\(=^0^=)// Dinner was...tolerable. But the thing that is definitely UNACCEPTABLE is kitchen duty. After dinner, we had to clean up the mess and do the dishes. I am a fast dish washer (as I say so myself), but the whole stack of dishes were a nightmare for me. We washed them non-stop. Even though we are energetic teenagers, we were all feeling exhausted in the end. We played some games that trained our teamwork to end the day.

Remember the party I mentioned just now? Well, let me tell you the story. 20th March is the day of our class teacher’s birthday. We planned a surprise party for him so that he could remember his birthday not as a boring day of watching us at a camp, instead a wonderful birthday party his lovely, (cough, cough) students planned for him. That night, my two classmates and I sneaked over to the other side of the camp rooms where the party was being held. To be honest, three girls walking through a road filled with trees and stuff was kind of creepy. As a prankster like me, of course I needed to have some fun. On the way to the other side of camp, I was leading with a flashlight in my hand. The two followed me but we had some distance. I, then used this opportunity, turned myself around, and light shinning onto my hair which was covering my face and yelled BOO. One of my classmates got so scared, she screamed as I laughed hysterically at her. Her face was priceless! When it was about a quarter to midnight, we called in out master plan (smirks). We set up the room, not really. We only out a brownie cake, a birthday card and a present box onto the table. But, hey, that took work too. It was so hard for us to resist that irresistible smell the brownie let out, we all just wanted to lick that so bad, and I mean so bad. We called in our secret agent — a teacher who would tell our class teacher that one of the student was sick. Therefore, we could lure him into the room. At about 11:50, our VIP had arrived, shocked when he saw a cake and the wonderful surprise. Although we planned to strike at midnight, the party ended early at 11:55. But, who cares if a birthday party is 5 minutes earlier than the exact birthday? I CARE! I was one of the brains who planned this... and now the plan isn’t on midnight?! Did you know how hard is it for me to sneak a birthday cake into the camp, freeze it and not being suspicious?! I’ll tell you. IT. IS. VERY. HARD.

20th March #Day 2 of Camp 

 That morning, we had a little activity that we did — The Sea Adventure. Yup, that’s right an adventure in the middle of the sea. We rode the private boat that Don. Bosco Camp. We played a game that we would have a hard time forgetting about it. There was a bridge outside the boat, and as you probably had guessed, we had to walk on that shaky bridge. Of course, you could take a swim in the cold (refreshing?) water, but I won’t advice you to do that. You had to walk on that bridge and come back to the boat without falling into the water. P.S.The bridge is in a letter ‘n’ shape. This was related to the topic of self-confidence. Luckily, nobody in our class got wet, but the other class wasn’t so fortunate... Moving on, we spent the rest of the day doing other kind of activities related to thinking, working as a team and communicating with others. This is a picture of me walking the three 'dos' bridge.

The most unforgettable thing of this day is that after dinner, we got to make a lantern. We made a big lantern and wrote our future dreams and wishes on it. It is forbidden to fly lantern since it could be very dangerous. Therefore, instead of installing a fire setup inside the lantern, we used some heat and air to make it float. When the lanterns were all up in the air, the view was magnificent. This was my first time to fly a lantern, so it was an mind-blowing experience for me.

21st March #Day 3 of Camp 

In the morning, we had do to some orienteering. We had to plan our own routine and retrieve all the answers of the questions in time. I was the one who planned the routine. My group members and I kept on running throughout the whole orienteering. We almost ran across most of Cheung Chau, from the top to the left end. It was really exhausting.

After lunch, we had make a catapult. When we finished making the catapult, we needed to catch the water balloons we fired using the catapult. My group caught none but we did have a great time, goofing around. Before we leave the camp, the instructors handed all of us a water balloon. They told us to fire them into the air. Luckily, I didn't get wet. It was a great way too end the camp, if you ask me. This is a photo of all the students and me throwing the water balloons into the air.

Bernadette’s Guide on How To Make Friends

Making Friends 101

I have come from another primary school and there are a lot of people in my class, or better yet, the grade that I don’t know on my first day of school. Making friends are really simple and easy, the rules I write below can guide you to make new friends. P.S. This is only for your reference!

Rule 1: Approach to a person with a smile and introduce yourself.

Rule 2: Start some conversations. (You can ask  about questions about their hobbies or what they did during the summer vacation)

Rule 3: Be yourself. Don’t try to be someone else, be true to them and yourself, let them love who you are. Nobody likes a big fake.

Rule 4: Be a loyal, understanding and good listener. Don’t push them to tell you all their secrets. However, try to be there for them when they are in trouble, need or misery. 
Friends are really important throughout the years of your school life. Friends are always there for you to help and support you. Therefore, picking good friends are really important, especially best friends! But, don’t sweat on looking for a best friend, they will always appear in time (wink).

Peace out, my friends!       XOXO, Bernadette 

How To Balance Your School Life 101

Teacher: The One And Only Bernadette


School, the place filled with boring talks and homework. Well, time to change things around here. What can you do during your free time at school? Want to find out? Keep reading...

One, having a snack during recess with your friends. Talk about the latest movies or songs while munching on fishballs or fries. That will probably get you hyped up to survive two more lessons.

Two, lunch. The bell finally rang and you got to rush to get lunch. Sit with your friends at the cafeteria tables, eat your lunch and tell jokes. (Jokes can include your thoughts on teachers. Not the good ones, the bad ones.) Get back to the classroom. Wait! First, take a walk at the back of the school -- the Natural Trail, or you could just go back to the classroom and hang out (if you prefer).

Home sweet home. Finally finished your homework and you are about to die because of boredom??? Well, let me teach you how to have fun during your free time. But remember, finish your homework first, or else detention will be your next play date.

The easiest solution: watching TV

The second solution: reading books

The third solution: cooking or baking

The fourth solution: play games on phone or scroll through social media

The fifth solution: make slime

The sixth solution: listen to music

The seventh solution: playing sports

See there is a lot of choices you can choose to relax! No worries, XXXX Bernadette

Homework Requirement
(by Samantha & Bernadette)

Samantha:Everybody hates homework, fortunately this school doesn’t have a lot of homework. Usually we need to do projects which requires teamwork and collaborations. Most of the schools involve some facts and reciting stuff in their homework, but we don’t. Since P.I. let us learn some critical thinking skills, our work involves more about how we judge about the case and our explanations and examples. We need to talk about do you agree in or not in some cases, or what idea will you use to solve the problem. This can let ourselves develop a critical thinking mind and can think at a different point of view.

Bernadette: Homework? Not really my strong suit. However, this school has a ...fair... amount of homework. Tips for you: mark down your homework onto the calendar 📆 so that you won’t forget the submission date. Or else, you have to pay for the consequences.

DRAMA QUEEN IN THE DRAMA CLUB👸🏻

ELAs

(by Bernadette)

Drama Queen also needs drama lessons...

There are a lot of choices in ELAs at HKUGA College, like sports, music, science… I had joined the Drama ELA (a.k.a. Drama Club) and I would like to share my experiences in the Drama ELA. The teacher —Mr. Wilkinson is British, he is very understanding and will tell jokes. In the beginning of the lessons, we would play games to train and sharpen our skills like our improvisation, focus, etc. The Drama team members are really hilarious and friendly. They say puns and act dramatic which makes all of us crack up (we’ll most of us... some students are really ...serious...), which makes us (the newcomers) feel fit in. In the Drama ELA, we had loads of fun, we get to act in plays, fool around and chill out. I am honoured to be in the Drama team. If you attend HKUGA College, I would highly recommend you to join the Drama club. *Drama club is so fun, you can’t wait to share it with your family and friends! If you want to join the Drama club, one tip — be as dramatic as you can be, the more dramatic, the better.

If you want to know all the ELAs in our school, go visit the website below.
http://www2.hkugac.edu.hk/img/p/ela/en_us/2017-18/2nd_ELA_Detail_1718_v2.pdf

ELA Options...

In our school, you must join at most three ELAs and at least one ELA. You can choose in academics, sports, culture & interests and services. Thank me for giving you all the details... NOT.  —Bernadette

Academics

Advanced Robotic Arm Programming and Assembly 

Chinese History Association

City Focus

English Debate

Mathematics Club

Maths IMO

Public Speaking

STEM Team

STEAMaker 101

Young Architects 

(Things in Chinese which I am forbidden to write.)

Culture & Interest

Android App and Unity Game Design Team

Art Club

Battle of the Books

Bridge and Chess Club

Business Club

Choir

Create 3D Animation Using Minecraft

Dance Team

Drum Team

Editorial Board

English Drama

JA Company Programme

Network Security: Whitehat Hacker Workshop 

Orchestra 

Robotics Team

Seeking The Possibility Of VR In Education 

Japanese & Korean Culture Exploration Club  

Services 

Air Cadet Corps

Scout

St. John Ambulance

Hospitality Team

Learn and Service (Handmade Little Things or Leather Craft or Magic Trick)

Prime Production 

Sports

Archery 

Athletics Team (Throwing or Jumping or Track)

Badminton Team

Basketball Team

Fencing Team

Football Team

Handball

Rope Skipping Team

Rugby Team

Table Tennis Team

Tennis Team

Volleyball Team

Guide of the Entertaining Subjects

SUBJECT  
(by Samantha)

Like most of the colleges, our school have some new subjects that you might not have in your primary school life. Such as Drama,Technology & Living, Chinese History etc. My favorite subject is Science, which is something related to nature like living things, water, the universe. It is so fun because you can do a lot of cool and new experiments. Also our school wants the students to elaborate more about their opinions, so we will have Philosophy Inquiry (as known as P.I.) discussions. We will sit in a circle and there are some great topics to discuss, if we have any opinions to talk about, we will hold a ball and express our opinions. Anyone can show your agreement or disagreement, for the statement. Ok, let’s stop at these boring introductions and get “behind the scenes”.

CLASS TATTLETALES 🤭🤭🤭

THE CLASS TATTLETALES SERIES                                                     

CHINESE (by Bernadette)

I am in the top set class for a reason… There will be homework, dictation and tests. Miss Yeung (the teacher) is nice and hilarious but not when you are the victim who she punishes. The punishments are fun, creative and interesting. You can laugh every time you are in her class. The only thing that sucks is when others are being naughty and the whole class gets extra workload, you won’t find it funny. But most of the times, it is simple entertainment to watch those punishment... except when you are the one who is getting punished.

ENGLISH (by Bernadette)

One of my favourite subjects is English. I am lucky to be in my class since we got an understanding, kind teacher. She got short grey hair, with just a bit of golden hair left. Her name is Ms Wilson and a lot of cool and funny things happens in this classroom. Let me ask you some questions, do you like pizza? Well, Ms Wilson has this rule, which is new and different, that is if we speak Chinese or inappropriate things, she will add pizza points into our pizza points record. What is a pizza points record, you may ask? It is pretty simple, let me explain it to you. At the end of the semester, we will have a pizza party (yes, it is true, we get to eat pizza) and the people who have pizza points will have to pay. How much? They need to pay the same amount of pizza points they got in the first semester. The rest of the budget will eat up Ms Wilson’s wallet.

Another funny thing is that, Ms Wilson is kind of old (she will be retiring next year, sniff, sniff) and she is always trying to catch up with the advanced technology, all the trendy things. One time, when we were having a lesson, somehow, it brought up the topic -- hippie words that are popular right now. She said that “sick” was kind of a cool word to represent the word “cool”. One of my classmate told her that it was like a yesterday thing. She then asked us what words can represent “cool”.  We gave her some ideas and laughed since it was funny to watch a teacher to try to catch up with these things. 

MATHS(by Samantha)

Apart from Science, my favorite subject is Maths. I’m great to be in the class who is taught 
by Mr Lam, he is funny and smart. He always uses jokes to teach us a lot of Maths concepts and some thinking skills about Maths, such as d reasoning. He also let us ask questions during recess or lunch if we do not understand what is he teaching. The only thing he will be mad at us is if we submit our homework late. But most of the time, 
Maths is such an entertaining lesson for most of us.

SCIENCE (by Bernadette)

Our teacher is Mr. Battle Mui (a.k.a. Mr. Squirtle). Here is a picture of a squirtle (if you are wondering what a Squirtle is...): 

He is a really nice teacher, to be honest. We had a lot of fun in class with tons of cool experiments. Safety is always number one in Science when you got a lot of variety of cool experiments! You can’t get away without using a Bunsen burner, which is why we got lessons that teach us how to use the fire extinguisher. I remembered when I used the fire extinguisher. It is as heavy as an elephant and when I released the cap, I touched the white, foggy gas released from the jar. It was cool compared to a rather hot school day. You can try to do it but friendly reminder, don’t freeze your hand since the gas is really really, and I mean extremely cold! 

HUMANITIES (by Samantha)

In our Humanities lesson, we always have a lot of discussion and group work to do. We always have some project to do and P.I. lessons in Humanities, for example the use of technology and talking about how important is our identity. We also need to do some project about introducing an app for educational purposes for the classmates, to show the benefits of it. We are now currently doing a Macau research for our learning trip two weeks later. It is a lot of work if you ask me since we need to plan the proposal which involves a lot of words.