Beginnings in HK

Greetings! How are you? Because Jesus is amazing I am able to share with you our adventures in Hong Kong. This is Jenny writing…Roy and I will both write entries for the blog.

Well, we arrived! Flew into Hong Kong and landed at 6:30pm on Thursday, August 27th. An hour later we exited through security and customs safe and without hassle. There were a variety of people in line waiting to get through customs, including a group of adults from, I believe, Russia. Their passports were maroon (ours are navy blue). One of the Chinese men stamping passports asked every person who came through his line, “How long are you going to stay in Hong Kong? What are you here for?” I wasn’t nervous for answering that question--I wasn’t our spokesperson, Roy was. J I ran through answers Roy might say in my mind, “Oh, we’re here for at least a few months…we’re here to see Hong Kong and play chess”…oh, that is a half-truth. Hmm…”We’re here until we get our work visa from the government. And no, we don’t have return flight tickets…” I did not know what we would say or how it would go. By God’s providence and mercy, we were directed to a woman who took our passports, looked at mine, said some words in Cantonese to her co-workers again and again. What was she saying? She didn’t say anything to us in English--I suspect she didn’t know it very well, or maybe she was a woman of few words. Either way, after a few minutes of sweating, she handed our passports back and pointed us to the exit. YES! We made it, and we didn’t lie! J Haha…

We brought six suitcases with us; we have WAY too much stuff (mostly my clothes…), and this isn’t even the half of it. We praise Jesus for generous people who gave us their garage space (Thanks Scott and Jill and Elliott‘s parents!) and who dropped us off at the airport and took care of a few loose ends for us (Thanks Collin!). Our stuff is now nicely divided between Ohio, Michigan, Washington and Hong Kong. How many other places can we deposit our stuff?

We have now officially learned how to take the MTR (the subway), the tram (open air street car), and the bus (to Stanley, at least). We also purchased one octopus card for each of us; I am so excited about this! An octopus card is like a debit card: you put money on it and then can use it on most public transportation, at McDonald’s (yes!) and a few other stores. It is sweet…you just wave it in front of a machine and it reads it, no magnetic strip. Now I don’t have to worry about digging out exact change for the tram, or about buying tickets for the MTR; I just wave and go!

Saturday, August 29th- the day of American Food

I feel like a wimp, but today I desired American food. What did we do? We asked our concierge where the nearest McDonald's is. Oh yeah. :) We walked down the street, and sat down to eat our chicken nuggets, big mac and fillet-o-fish...only this is what we saw out the window-->

What is it, you ask? See that long, slender thing hanging in the doorway of the shop across the street? That is a dead pig. Yes, dead pig. Mmm...

Photos from a grocery store...in which I saw a cockroach on the floor, mmm.... and a polite woman explained to us what a few of the strange-looking fruits were and how to eat them. We plan to eat the produce here, but plan to wait a few weeks. Enjoy!