18 Things I Bet You Have Never Seen In Your Life

Dear Incredible People,
Sorry I am a little late this week, but I spent the last four days in China on a school mission trip and I am just now finding the time.  The group that goes on these trips to China call themselves Glow In The Dark, as Jesus is often referred to as light in the darkness.  The kids are led by a teacher named King Yu who has been at CAIS for almost forever, but did start out in North Dakota and New Jersey where, because he is Chinese, he really stood out.  Eventually he found himself back home in Hong Kong.  King Yu and his group of grade 10-12 kids are all quite excellent and what they do is put on a program for local churches in China.  So they sing, dance, and act out gospel songs and stories.  I came along to help King ride herd on the kids and I also was coerced to sing a few songs with them.  My voice, like my physique, cough, cough, blended in nicely with the numbers presented.  After the program is done the kids, and most of them know Chinese, tell other kids who have shown up for the program about the Lord and many decide to become followers.  It is all very real, sweet, and beautiful to witness even though I don't understand a word, but the kids often translate so that helps.

Any way I have titled this edition 18 Things I Bet You Have Never Seen In Your Life because I saw some very interesting things on this trip, which by the way included the city of Keiping, and the villages of Ma Gon, Chek Hum and the San Cheun Church in Keiping.  I am sure you can google the locations.  Ok where was I?  Oh yeah if you have seen five of the things I am about to present or more you are pretty cool, if not don't worry I still think you are cool.  And just to make sure you know that I am not making some of this stuff up I have included photo evidence.

1.  Crowd at the border between Hong Kong and Shenzen, China.  Lots of people.  Lots and lots.
2.  Urine district.  Thats what the sign said at the Chinese restroom.  Really.
3.  Over the urinal were the words Close Easy and Close To Civilization.  Ok whatever you say.  I love Chinglish!
4.  A Bamboo pipe.
5.  Chinese Bible
6.  Old people sorting out Lychi nuts on a street corner.
7.  Majong games.  Kinda like rummy.
8.  Fireworks in front of a restaurant that had a million motorbikes, preferred method of transportation for many Chinese, in front of it.
9.  Chickens pecking at garbage on a street corner.
10.  Kids from a variety of Asian countries singing English gospel songs to Chinese people.
11.  Visible minority standing amongst real Chinese junior high girls.  I was a rock star for a moment.
12.  Kids riding with umbrellas to ward off the sun.
13.  Narrow "road," in rural Chinese village.
14.  Chinese Coca Cola.  Its the real thing!
15.  Kid eating a chicken head.  I understand the comb of a chicken is quite tasty.
16.  Europe meets Asia.  All great.
17.  Empty street with cool buildings.  In Chek Hum.
18.  Great Kids.  I am sure everyone got this one.  At least I hope so.

Have a great week,

Catch you next time,

Love Adios and Peng On,

Dirk

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

Big Wave Bay

Hello Great People,
Big Wave Bay (BWB) is great.  It is a small village with a splendid, well maintained beach and like its name suggests, there are days when the waves are big and fun to ride. On Saturday I took the girls, Elsie and Noelle to BWB and they loved it. The journey to BWB is rather fun too.  First there is a 15 minute hike through the neighbourhood to the Kowloon Bay pier.  The older buildings in my neighborhood were only allowed to be built to a certain height due to their proximity to the old airport.  Once that was shut down and the airport moved to Lantau island new buildings like my Skytower were built and they tower over the old pre new airport relics like  redwoods to pieces of grass.

After getting to the Kowloon pier we hopped on a ferry for a 12 minute ride across Victoria Bay to Hong Kong.  Once there you have to pass through a fish market. It is very interesting if you can stand the smell.  After a four stop subway ride you alight onto a bus terminus and grab the number 9 for a harrowing ride on an impossibly narrow road that winds along the edge of a jungle covered cliff.  Then the bus plunges down to sea level where you alight on a lovely tree lined road.  After a pleasant 15 minute hike one finally alights onto the beach of Big Wave Bay.  After setting up base camp and renting a body board for about 20 dollars Hong Kong about 2 bucks Canadian you are ready to ride the surf.  Great fun.

On a random note the next day we went for a bike ride and encountered Woody, Buzz Light Year, and little Aliens.  Pixar has a show going on at the Heritage museum.  Typical Hong Kong.  Expect the unexpected and bizarre.

Till Next Time,

Love Adios and Peng On

Dirk   

Amah Rock

Hello Great People,
The rainy season is upon us.  It has been raining every day for a week.  It can come down pretty hard, but it is really warm, like a luke warm shower.  Today was torrential.  In fact it was a red rain.  The weather bureau ranks the amount of rain that comes down by colors.  Red is pretty bad, you go out in that and you are drenched instantly, while black rain is pretty, pretty bad.  Actually really pretty bad in fact.  Black rain causes flash floods and it is best to stay inside.  Have not experienced black rain yet, but I have heard the legends.

It stopped raining for a while this afternoon so I took the girls, my daughter Elsie and her friend Noelle, on a hike up to Amah rock overlooking Shatin.  We then walked on over the mountain back home to Kowloon.  It takes about two hours and walking through a semi tropical jungle after a rain storm is pretty nice.  It smells nice, but is awfully humid.  The girls saw their first wild monkeys.  They were frolicking up in the trees, one jumped from branch to branch.  Looked like fun.

We clambered down through the jungle as it was getting dark and took some good night shots as bats flitted unnervingly around our heads.

When we get into Kowloon we saw a Sheltie puppy and of course Elsie and I swooned as we thought of Lady.  Elsie gave the pup plenty of pets.

Elsie and Noelle are certainly enjoying Hong Kong.  They love the food, the swing dancing, and are awed by the sights and sounds.  They both managed to get an English tutoring job on Saturday and have a few more interviews next week.  So it looks like their little holiday is coming to a close, but that is ok.  I am sure they will still find plenty of play time.

It is great to have company again and things are going good.

Love, Adios and Peng On

Dirk