Seafood and Kites

Hello Great People,
The school year is winding down and I am in my annual downward spiral from high to low stress.  Hard to think anymore so I am doing a lot of cleaning.  This week was highlighted with Elsie's birthday on Tuesday, June 21.  Elsie turned 21 and I took her and Noelle to Sai Kung to celebrate at one of the great seafood restaurants there.  They are very unique in that they keep all their food live and thus fresh in outdoor tanks and aquariums.  You choose what you want and a guy/girl starts gathering from the tanks/aquariums and within half an hour you have a great meal.  We had lobster, crab, shell fish, fish, oysters, and clams.  It was messy, it was tasty, it was great.  Few of us can say we celebrated our 21st in Hong Kong and I know Elsie will remember her 21st for always.
On Thursday Noelle headed back to the states so my apartment seems a little bigger now.  On Saturday Elsie and I rented bikes and headed to Tai Po Waterfront Park.  It is an amazing place with great plant life, a rose garden, an insect house, and observation tower.  There is also a big field where many people fly kites.  Elsie and I laid on the grass for half an hour and watched the kites dance in the sky.  Some of the kites were incredibly high.
As usual I am looking forward to summer and I am planning to explore the Hong Kong territory more in depth, spend time at the pool, and do plenty of nothing.  Next week Elsie and I are in China on a mission trip so the blog will be a little late, but don't despair I'll get something on as soon as I can.  Till then God bless you all and enjoy your week.

Love adios and peng on

Dirk

Hoi Ha is Great

Hello Great People,
Some highlights of another interesting week:
1.  It rained so bad one day that when I was crossing a street water underneath it was pushing a manhole cover about five inches up.  Sorry no photo evidence, but it was amazing.
2.  Ate a grand seafood meal with the girls.  Fried Squid, boiled frog legs, boiled eel, Oyster pancake, shellfish, and prawns.  Sorry no photo evidence, but it was amazing.
3.  Pancake breakfast for Father's Day.  Thank you Elsie and Noelle.  That was so wonderful.  Got some nice knock off polo shirts as well as a Ritter Sport, which was made in Germany, with California almonds sold to a Canadian in Hong Kong and devoured by a German Canadian.  Definitely no photo evidence here.
4.  Kindergarten grad.  Very cute.  Very funny.  They spoke English and sang a song in Manderin.  Amazing,
5.  Hoi Ha.  Quaint mini village in Sai Kung Country Park.  Its beautiful, has a beach and is home to a marine park.  So we snorkled and checked out fish and coral for a few hours before collapsing on the beach.  We all got burned a bit, but it was fun.  Great to be at the sea and in the jungle.  Check out photo evidence.

So that is it.  Thank you for your Skype times, emails, and prayers.  Don't ever stop.  God is using your encouragement to help me get through the lonely times and coping with this strange and different land.

Love, adios and peng on,

Dirk  

Hockey Morning in Hong Kong, Sushi, and Swing Dancing

Hello Great People,
I have said this pretty well in every blog I have posted.  Hong Kong is a strange and weird place.  This week nothing has dissuaded me from this analysis.  On Wednesday and Friday morning me and a fellow PE teacher took a bunch of grade tens to the eighth floor of a mall to go ice skating.  The rink, appropriately named The Sky Rink was actually familiar to me.  I received a book several Christmases ago called the Tropics of Hockey or something like that.  It was a story about a guy who spent several months travelling to exotic places around the world to observe and play hockey.  Sky Rink was his first stop.  The rink, about a third the size of a normal rink was actually ok, despite the fog rising up from the ice due to the heat and humidity of Hong Kong.  While the kids were putting on their blades I took a few shots, on skates, it felt so good. Next year I am playing in a rec league on a regulation sized rink near my place at a department store called Mega Box.  The rink at that place is on the tenth floor of the Mega Box with a great view of Kowloon Bay.  Surreal.  Any way back to The Sky Rink.  To add to the absurdness of the rink on the 8th floor it also had a roller coaster track going through it.  Look at the picture.  I kid you not.  The roller coaster is defunct now, maybe someone shot a puck at the roller coaster when it was going, I don't know, but it is weird.

On Friday night I took the girls to a sushi bar.  This one had a conveyer belt loaded with food.  So you would grab what you wanted and depending on the color of the plate that is what you would pay.  Cool. We also had Chinese ice cream.  Not recommended.  Elsie had shredded green tea ice; I had Mango ice cream mixed in geletin rice covered in chocolate sauce; and Noelle had a Strawberry jello thing.  Stick with Hagen Daz if you come to China.

Finally, to finish off the weekend of weird, Elsie and Noelle dressed as garish 1980's girls and I went to a swing dancing party.  Hong Kong has a pretty good swing dancing scene made of expats and a few Chinese.  I lasted about 10 minutes before I headed back home.  Was interesting though.

Finally I have found an excellent church called the Vine.  The church will be moving into their new home soon; a converted five story theatre that will have cement vine branches "growing" on the sides.  Full of expats it is like the United Nations.  Yet, it is a good place, people seem to be genuine and God is in the house.  But the building suits Hong Kong.  Weird.

Have a great week and I will check in next Sunday.

Love, Adios, and Peng On!

Dirk  

Boat Culture

Hello Great People,
One of the big cultural differences between Hong Kong and Alberta is the thriving boat culture here.  Mainly expats rent boats, "rent a junk," is an actual company here, on the weekends and travel to a nearby beach where they spend the day swimming, waterskiing or doing other water sports.  Lunch is also included in the deal.  On Saturday I went with Elsie and Noel and a good chunk of the CAIS staff on a boat ride from Kowloon to Clearwater Bay.  It was about an hour boat trip.  It was lovely.  Lots of sun, good conversation, and play in the water.  There were several other party boats anchored near ours and it all created a very relaxed, California vibe.  After an eight hour day on the water we headed back to Kowloon and ended the day with a steak.  Not bad at all.

The next morning I went and watched a hockey game.  As I have mentioned many times before I have learned to expect the unexpected here in Hong Kong.  While it was Saturday night in Vancouver and the second game of the NHL Stanley Cup final was in full gear it was Sunday morning here.  That did not deter about 100 expat and Canadian Chinese to gather at 8 am on Sunday morning at a simulated driving place.  In other words this place had about 20 little plastic cars.  Each had a tv screen in front of it.  Normally you pretend to drive a car while reacting to the road that the tv screen shows you.  Yet on Sunday morning the tvs were tuned to the hockey game, Canucks vrs. Bruins.  There were about 10 other big tvs and a bar that was going full bore.  Most of the people wore Vancouver jerseys and from what I gathered most had either been born there or lived there for a while, especially after 1996.  No wonder Vancouver is sometimes called Hong couver.  It was all kind of surreal cheering for Vancouver sitting in a little plastic car, surrounded by fans sipping on beer at 8:00 am.  Nevertheless it was interesting.  The right team won and there was great cheering, but it was all rather strange.  I am a big hockey fan, but I think next time I will go to church like I usually do.  Yet, it will be something I will never forget.

Love adios and peng on,

Dirk