Monday, January 18, 2010

Ms of Hong Kong

Jen here. My sister requested to see more photos, so here are a few more from our tourist adventure to the Peak. The landscape photo is of HK Island (buildings near) and "Kowloon side" as we call it, which is still part of Hong Kong, but is connected to the mainland. The other photo is of a fancy building on top of the peak, shaped like a half-moon. It has a mall inside and an observation deck on the roof. We ate at Bubba Gump's inside this building and looked out at the view through the windows you can see.

The other day I was inspired to write a post listing words beginning with "m" and explain the importance of each word, if necessary. Here goes:


Ms of Hong Kong

Muggy -weather from April - October
Moisture -all over our windows in the winter
Mold -trying to pretend like HK is WA, mold popping up on window sills and outer walls
McDonald’s -first time in many years that I want to eat at McD’s. I am a frequent customer at its McCafe (fruit frappe goes great with nuggets!)
M goi -means “thank you” and “excuse me” in Cantonese. Use it all the time.
Millions -stairs we climb to get to our apartment (~150) from the street
Marriage -God is using this time to refine our relationship, how we treat one another, how we communicate and to teach us to treasure one another’s presence
Multi-cultural -we’ve encountered people from HK, China, the Philippines, Pakistan, India, the UK, France, Malaysia, Australia and Canada(lots of people from Canada)!
Mangos -available fresh in stores; also, there are some dessert places that specialize in desserts full of mango. The other day I had mango pudding with sago (tapioca beads), topped with fresh mango, pomelo and strawberries. Mmm..

Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Tourists

Jen here. Though we may stand out in Hong Kong in more than one way (blonde hair, blue eyes, definitely American in appearance and language), since we moved here we haven't truly been "tourists". We haven't rode the double-decker, open-top Rickshaw Tour bus; we haven't gone to Ocean Park. We haven't wandered around taking pictures of things, until now.

A few weeks ago, we picked up a travel-sized Monopoly game. Upon inspecting it, we realized it was Hong Kong Monopoly! How sweet! Instead of Park Place, there's Repulse Bay. Instead of St. Charles, there's Mong Kok. Wouldn't this be cool to have as a keepsake from HK, we thought. So we bought it, and played it that night.

On the topic of tourists, we realized that we need to get out more in HK. We need to venture beyond HK Island and all that is familiar (which is mostly just HK Island...). And we shall use the Monopoly game as our itinerary! Every Thursday we plan to go to one of the spots featured in the game. Last Thursday we went up to Victoria Peak, which is on HK Island. But this time, we were tourists. We rode "The Peak Tram" to the top. We looked around in classic tourist gift shops. We took tons of photos of the view from the Peak, etc. It was an evening of fun. :)

As Roy is busy, I get the pleasure of choosing where we'll go. Not sure what we'll do this Thursday, but we may go across the harbor to Kowloon...who knows!

Tuesday, January 5, 2010

Christmas Day

Jen here. As promised, here are some details of our Christmas day.

I don't remember the exact sequence of events, but here goes. I made cinnamon rolls like my mom does, except I don't have her recipe (which uses a bread machine...don't have that either), so I improvised. I used Mom Almasy's recipe for rolls and transformed them into cinnamon rolls with some added butter, sugar and cinnamon. They turned out...all right. Roy said (and I agree) a glaze would have helped.

So we ate cinnamon rolls, drank hot chocolate and Roy read aloud the nativity story in Matthew. We're celebrating God's grace to us in coming to be human--God with us.

Next we opened presents. We got many prizes, and were sure to take photos along the way. It was fun. And there we were relaxing and looking at our presents...and we checked the time: 1:00pm. WHAT? Oh no! We have a guest arriving at 2pm and a supposed ham dinner to be served at 3pm. AH!

Roy cleaned up and helped me discern what food things to work on first (I had to wash dishes too!)...and I washed dishes and worked on the cooking. Long story short, dinner was an hour late (not to worry, for we had cheese, crackers and pickles out for snacks), and I forgot to make: 1. Rolls, and 2. Gravy. Oops. :) Good thing we had garlic mashed potatoes (butter already added), and a flavorful, moist pre-cooked ham. :)

After the lovely dinner, we chatted and played a few games with our guest, Virlu. She is from California and works for ActiveKids this year as well. It was fun having company and great to just chat the evening away.

That evening, as well as during the next day, we relaxed, snacked on leftovers and Skyped with family. How fun it was! I hope you all had a wonderful holiday!