Christmas Eve

Jen here. Two weeks before Christmas, Roy and I intentionally planned for Christmas. This is our first year celebrating Christmas "away from home" (far from Ohio and Michigan, the base camps for our family). We didn't want it to slip by unnoticed or just doing whatever. We want to set a precedent for each Christmas to come, so that someday when we have a little Roy Jr, we'll already have God-honoring traditions for this awesome holiday.

So we made a plan: Christmas eve we would dress up and eat out at a nice restaurant (a romantic evening as husband and wife), a tradition we hope to continue even when we have kids and when we're old! After the meal, we planned to ride the Star Ferry to Kowloon side and look at the lights on the Skyscrapers, enjoying a quiet evening on the harbor. Aww...










Before I continue with our plan, I'll tell you how Christmas eve really played out. As the days until Christmas decreased, each check at a nice restaurant left us thinking, "What is up with HK at Christmas?" It seems that all nice restaurants throw their "a la carte menu" out the door and charge you mega $ per person for a set meal. Hmm... We decided to eat in (Roy offered to cook a delicious Jenny-meal). Roy whipped up an amazing dinner with broccoli, pasta and chicken. We had a candlelight dinner on the roof (lest I exaggerate the evening, I'll let you know that earlier that day I was grumpy and irritable toward Roy, which hurt him, but he still made dinner...and our candle wouldn't stay lit...so Roy had to tend to it to keep it going...but God is gracious, even in my sin, to reconcile us in time).







After dinner, we got ready and headed for the Star Ferry via a little green mini-bus. I wore a dress and a coat with flipflops...and later on had to take off my coat. The weather was warm! Near the ferry we encountered a Harmonica band comprised of six 20-somethings playing all different sized harmonicas to the tunes of Christmas music(see the first picture above). How fun!










From the ferry, we gazed at the lights on the buildings (see photos). Pretty neat...not as awe-inspiring as Richmond Beach Park's ocean and mountains in Washington, but it'll do. On the other side, we encountered thousands of people! Literally, thousands! We planned to sit along the quiet, peaceful harbor and gaze at the lights (notice I didn't say stars, but lights on the buildings), but it was swarming with people! See photo...and know it was like that all over. I guess that's what you get with 7 million people and two days of public holiday.

In short, we made plans...and deviated from some of them, but still managed to have a nice evening enjoying HK and the many people who live in it.
Ciao!