Celebrate Good Times, Come On!

Unfortunately, here in Hong Kong there are not many holidays celebrated during this semester to have classes off. My luck, the two holidays that are celebrated are on a Thursday and then the next week on a Friday. The bummer part is I do not have classes on Thursdays or Fridays! However, since I do have Thursdays off that means I will be making some dishes for Thanksgiving and wont have to skip class. Everything is going great over here and the weather is getting cooler and cooler. I was hoping for a typhoon to hit but they kept going around us. The closest we got was a T-3 signal and it was just winds and rain. Hong Kong still holding true to the climate and weather of southeast Texas with warm temperatures and high humidity. Later in the month it is supposed to feel much better in the lower 70's. Classes are going great; I just finished with mid-terms, the only tests so far. I am learning more and more how to speak conversational Cantonese but it is difficult for me due to the much easier structure to the sentences. I still want to put correct grammar and sentence structure and the professor keeps telling me "no, don't worry." I am still excising every other day with my American friends, Liam, Sam, and Sarah. They have been great supporters and showing me how to work-out and huge encouragements every time we go to the gym. It is great to have a support system! Since September 1st I have been working out and have lost around 15 pounds. I have also joined a Judo class that meets twice a week, and let me tell you that my sides hurt! I was able to talk my friend Johanna to join me; she is from Texas as well. I still cannot believe that I am able to do all of this for not being able to for so long. God is amazing and heals with time and this is living proof of His mercy and love! I am also helping out with the youth group for KIBC with Ellison. The kids are fantastic and it is great to watch them grow in their spiritual journey. I had mom send me some silly bands since it seems to only really be in the States although they are made in China... but then again what isn't. I had a great time with some other Americans in the search for MEXICAN food! We found a place here called Soho that reminds me of New Orleans or Austin that has multiple restaurants that offer a wide variety of foods. To get to Soho you must take the world's longest escalator. It is pretty neat to take but after all it's just moving stairs... The Mexican food was from a place called Tequila's; with a name like that it had to be good! Malcolm, Johanna, and I had a blast but were a bit disappointed that the chips and salsa was not free refills.  

The first holiday that I experienced was the Mid-Autumn Festival. This holiday is widely celebrated with paper lanterns and moon cakes.The Mid-Autumn Festival is held on the 15th day of the eighth month in the Chinese calendar, which is in September or early October in the Gregorian calendar. It is a date that parallels the autumnal equinox of the solar calendar, when the moon is at its fullest and roundest. Farmers celebrate the end of the summer harvesting season on this date. Traditionally on this day, Chinese family members and friends will gather to admire the bright mid-autumn harvest moon, and eat moon cakes and pomelos under the moon together. Accompanying the celebration, there are additional cultural or regional customs, such as: carrying brightly lit lanterns, lighting lanterns on towers, or floating sky lanterns. The night before the holiday, my floor mates and the girls from the seventh floor joined and made moon cakes similar to the snowey moon cakes. The traditional moon cakes taste chalky to me and just are not appetizing. That seems to be the overall verdict among many of my local friends and they prefer the snowey ones as well. The snowey moon cakes are frozen and are made differently. They remind me more of ice cream sandwiches. My friend, Protein, was nice enough to buy some snowey moon cakes for me after our art class; the snowey brand is more expensive than the traditional. The Tsang family invited me over for the family dinner that is held for the holiday. We ate many traditional dishes and had a great time laughing and having fellowship. When I arrived back to campus later that night my floor tutor and a few of my local friends invited me out for some traditional Mid-autumn festivities. We walked to the local super market and purchased some juice and more snowey moon cakes. We meet up with some of the girls that we made moon cakes the night before out at the public park to burn the lanterns and play some local card games. As we set outside, several of the flying lanterns went over us.

The next week we celebrated National Day for mainland China. The Peoples Republic of China flags are seen flown all over the place and there is a celebration of fireworks at the harbor. I was invited by my German friends to go to the harbor to watch the show that night. I tried to explain that it was going to be very packed since I had experienced New Year's Eve the previous year. However, they insisted that we try to get seats at the harbor. We ventured out there and there were so many mainlanders there. We decided to grab dinner there at the McDonalds by the ferry. I have never in my entire life thought that you would have to have crowd control for a Mickey-Ds! Well my friends, we waited about fifteen minutes outside before we were let inside. Once inside, I could not believe the lines of people! We spent about forty-five minutes to get a dang double cheeseburger meal!!! We then left and walked across the street to fight the crowd to find a good spot to sit. Of course there was no such spot so we settled for an area that we could partially see the view and sit in an area that no one would fall or trample us. We waited for about an hour and a half there until the show began. Overall, the fireworks were great and well organized. I personally think that the New Year's Eve performance was much better.

I am still walking my friend's dogs from time to time and love being able to play with them! He had a business trip to Mainland and I was able to house sit again. When you have a kitchen that is available to you all you want to do is cook those delicious meals form back home! The only problem is that it can get expensive buying all the ingredients. I chose to cook our family's recipe for chicken and dumplings. Of course I made the dumplings from scratch! I also had to use our family's two favorite ingredients... butter and creme! I had several of my French friends over as well as Cassy and Turner. After three bowls, I had to push the pot away from myself. There is nothing compared to home cooking that is for sure! I am a little saddened that I will not be home to cook with Aunt Mackie and Candi as usual but that means I will just have to make some of those dishes over here.

I went with the university group, at the church I help with the youth group, on a boat trip to an island. I wished that I had my fishing pole with me! The beaches here are guarded by shark nets to reduce the shark attacks. Yes, there have been several shark attacks in the past couple of years! I was a "life saver," as they called it, for the group. The water was so salty but the temperature was AMAZING! It felt so nice to jump off of a boat and swim to shore. We had a great lunch that was catered on the boat; there was chicken and REAL salad. I missed the green leafy vegetables so much. The chocolate cake was really good as well... I had to have several pieces. The views of the water and islands were very pretty and the sunset was amazing as usual. I still cannot believe that I am on the other side of the world!