Hong Kong Island

Friday's rainy view!

We had dim sum for brunch. It was super crowded, possibly because of the heavy rain. It was delicious! And I ate everything -- with chopsticks!! 

King's Yellow Bun -- My favorite! 

That day we headed onto Hong Kong Island and did some shopping on Ladies Street. It was still raining but fun. I got some great stuff & Cass did a great job bartering!

A super tall LDS church building in HK. There's a ward that meets here 
which has sacrament services every day of the week in order to accommodate
the folks who all have different days of the week as their day off.  

Lunch! 

The Trolley

That evening we rode the World Famous Star Ferry! From the other side, we were able to see the awesome skyline. 

World Famous Star Ferry

On the Star Ferry!

The Clock Tower

formerly tallest building in the world

current tallest building - hidden by the clouds!

skyline

Hong Kong: New Territories

Thursday was New Territories day. We ate some new exciting fruit and Cass was able to show me Fanling, his first area on his mission. We also went out to look at the border from Hong Kong to Shenzen in mainland China. And the best part of Fanling? The super delicious street waffles!

Shenzen, across the mainland border

Delicious!

That afternoon we walked up to the to 1000 Buddhas. When we started up on the trail, this man dressed as a monk approached us. He rubbed a small circle on Cass's forehead three times and tapped it, put a bracelet on his wrist, and gave him like a little hug, again with the three pats. He repeated the process on me and then held out a wooden bowl with money in it. Cass pulled out 20HK (about $2 or $3) and started to say that that was all we had. Then the man was all, "No, 100" and then pointed at me, "100 for her." Cass handed him the money and we walked away. I was like, "What just happened??" Cass shook his head. "I don't even know." A few minutes up the grueling trail we saw a sign: "Real Monks will not ask you for food or money. Please report begging behavior."  Oops! Ripped off! 

After 1000 Buddhas, we headed over to the Hong Kong Heritage Museum. They had a Picasso exhibit, but I guess something big was happening that night and we weren't allowed to see all of the museum.  We did get to see some really cool exhibits on Cantonese Opera and New Territories Heritage with some great stuff on Costal Defense, Fisherman's Life, Village Life, and British Rule. They also had an exhibit on Roman Tam, Hong Kong Cantonpop Singer who was inspired by the Beatles. Some of  his costumes were reminiscent of Michael Jackson or Elvis. We had a great day!

Hong Kong Heritage Museum

what I would look like as a Cantonese Opera Singer

just singin with Roman Tam

Hong Kong: Lantau

Jousan! 

We took off for Hong Kong Monday the 14th, and arrived Tuesday at midnight. As you can see, the whole area of Hong Kong is huge! We stayed in an apartment in Tsing Yi, which you can see right in the middle of the map. 

view from the 27th floor in Tsing Yi 

We fell right asleep & felt basically no jet lag the whole trip. We woke up and fell asleep earlier than we would have in the states, I may have woken up at six on my own a few times, but they also don't have daylight savings, so it was lighter earlier in the morning. Wednesday was our first fun day, and we did some things on the Lantau island.

As I mentioned, umbrellas were one of our very first purchases, because it was raining when we left that morning. We took a long, winding bus ride up to the Tian Tan Big Buddha. However, the rain wasn't really a downer, and it was nice to not be so crowded. We weren't the only people up there, but it was nice. 

warrior for the year of the rabbit

warrior for year of the dragon

The Big Buddha! 
(which was disappointingly  only made a few years back as a tourist draw!)

At the top!

Po Lin Monastery

The Wishing Tree in the Ngong Ping Village. 
Folklore says any wish made under the tree will come true. 

Lunch! Delicious! 

Eventually the rain stopped, so we were able to take the Ngong Ping 360, a cable car, 

for the ride down, which was a much more pleasant ride!

so excited for the Ngong Ping 360! 
(yes, that's Buddha in the background!)

Ngong Ping 360

view from the cable car

After the cable car we took another bus ride over to the Tai O  fishing village.  They have stilt houses built right in the water & a little market with fresh fish, dried fish, ready to cook fish . . . as well as other treats and souvenirs. It was fun to walk around. There was also an old police station up from the village that they are renovating into a hotel, so we went up to see what that looked like. 

British Police Station being turned into a hotel 

the diagonal lift!

boats

stilt houses

Pink Dolphins!!!

Pink Dolphins are only found two places in the world, the Amazon and Hong Kong. 

The ones in Hong Kong are pink because of over developed blood vessels. They're really shy because the boats' propellers can hurt them, so they're really hard to spot. They barely come out of the water for air, not at all like the friendly, performing dolphins the media has trained us to expect, so I didn't see them at all the first time we went on the boat. The second time we went out, after walking around the village for a while, we saw the above momma dolphin and calf multiple times as they swam along side our ship, coming up for air every so often. It was so cool to see them! Easily the highlight of our day on Lantau!

Top Ten Things I Learned in Hong Kong

(in no particular order as we wait in the Taipei airport)

1. "Alight" means exit
2. No theme park can top Disney
3. "Modest is hottest" -- literally!!!!
4. Just because your husband served his mission there doesn't mean he knows his way around; we spent lots of time looking at maps! (as he's looking over my shoulder, I should add that he says it's because he tried to be a good missionary and didn't do the tourist stuff :) )
5. Dim sum is delicious!
6. My lotion (probably) smells delicious to whatever bugs ate up my calves.
7. People dressed as monks can still scam ya.
8. Always carry water!
9. An umbrella will most likely be your first purchase.
10. Pack extra socks when you leave for the day-- walking around in wet socks is no bueno!

3 Lives

I'm being a bit of procrastinator with the packing, and Cassidy is still in bed, so I thought I'd do a little book post. It's a little book-report-y, 

but I hope you enjoy it! 

"Three Lives, more radically than any other work of the time [1909] in English, brought the language back to life. . . . life as it was lived by everybody living in the century, the average or normal life as the naturalists had seen it" -- Donald Sutherland, in Gertrude Stein: A Biography of Her Work

Madame Cezanne portrait that inspired Stein's Three Lives

Three Lives was the first published work of Stein, and consists of the stories, or studies, of three women: "The Good Anna" is a kind but authoritative German servingwoman; "Melanctha" is an uneducated but sensitive black (or mulatto) girl; and "The Gentle Lena" is a pathetically feebleminded young German maid. Overall, the writing style, straightforward and sometimes repetitive, really reminded me of Joyce, which is inline with critics who call Three Lives an American Ulysses. 

"Melanctha", the longest of the three, has given me much more to talk about than the other three. It was a little racist and Stein used many antiquated terms, but was it racist for the early 1900s when Three Lives was published? I don't know. But it does include many stereotypes. It's also interesting to note that she has no adjective to her name as the other women do. Not only about race, "Melantha" is also about depression and the role of women. She considers suicide multiple times throughout. It really was the most memorable for me. 

Overall, I liked Three Lives. it took some time to get used to the writing style, both of Stein and the vernacular of the early 1900s, and to adjust to the higher literary level of the novel versus the majority of today's. Once I got used to it though, I really did enjoy the story. It  was interesting to see how their lives were so different from ours today, but women problems are still women problems. The characters were fairly relate-able and memorable. It was a very literary endeavor, but well worth the undertaking. 

Long Time No See!

Forgive me, bloggers, for I have sinned. It has been almost three months since my last post! I would say I've been busy, but mostly I've just been lazy! So here's the quick catch up on my life! 

Cassidy finally had his sixth birthday!

{Grandpa, Aunt Kathleen, Ed}

Grandpa also had a big birthday this year;

Ed and Kathleen even came up from California to surprise him! 

Jordyn is still a silly goose & loves me!

I gave Cassidy a haircut for the first time. 

This was halfway through-- and now I do a great job! :) 

Dance has been going great. We went to two competitions this year; one in St George and one here in town. Some of the girls got a little nervous but they did great! I've also been brainstorming a whole ton of fun dance ideas for summer and next year. I can't wait to do some more choreography!

Reading, of course, has been taking up a lot of my time, so that's been great. I've read a bunch of books that I've really liked, so look forward to those posts! 

Work at the middle school has been going just swimmingly. I took on some more hours working with an aggressive student in the mornings, so I've definitely been practicing my patience! Other than that, it's been pretty chill. The students have been doing end of level testing and a few end of year projects. Nothing to crazy has been going on. 

And best of all -- we leave for Hong Kong on Monday! We'll be staying with some of family in Vegas Sunday night, so that'll be a great help in getting us to the airport on time. 

I'm so excited!!