Here we are, we finally made it! I am now in China after a long, long plane ride. If you combine all three of our flights I think it was about 16 hours all together. It was long but thankfully because of sleeping pills we (Kim, Emily, Gen and I) slept through 8 hours of the 12 hour flight. It was amazing to get that much sleep and made it fly by! We got fed three times on the China airlines which seemed kinda weird but we just went with it and enjoyed! We were happy we didn't have to keep buying food at each airport we got to. Once we finally got to the Hong Kong airport we loaded ALL of our luggage, which was a ton of stuff, into a mini semi and we hopped into our tour bus and headed to the hotel we were staying at. That day we had to ourselves so we went out and found ourselves some great restaurant food where one of the girls we went with ordered OX TONGUE. Yes, tongue of the ox. It was disgusting. When the food was brought to us I couldn't believe it. It stunk and had a bunch of pieces of tongue on top of the spaghetti! Wow, is all I can say. I was honestly having to look away as most of the rest of the girls on the table examined it and tried a piece. It was making me sick, its making me sick right now thinking about it haha. It really looked exactly like a tongue and they were just eatin it...with their own tongues! YUCK! haha anyways enough of that. We definitely didn't eat there again much to mine and Emily's relief. She tasted it (psycho) and almost died but was trying not to show it since she didn't want to offend them. Later that day a few people from my group walked to this park a few blocks away called Kings Park. It was pretty cool. It was a very tropical but smaller and hilly version of Central Park in New York. Its just weird to see a park like that in the middle of all these booming buildings that they can't find enough room to fit everything. It was only about the size of a block but it really was on a huge hill and in this humidity we were ready to head back to the hotel pronto. We went out to dinner a while later at you won't guess it...McDonalds. haha. Yes I know we were supposed to be trying new things but we had already had three Chinese meals before we even touched the ground in Hong Kong so we were ready for it. I've been pretty content with the food since in the next couple days but those first two or three in Hong Kong and on the plane just weren't my favorite! Anyways, at 8 that night we went to the harbor of Kowloon peninsula which faces Hong Kong Island (it is all considered Hong Kong) and watched a light show which they have from the tops of the skyscrapers. I really just loved the view more than the actual lightshow, it was just breathtaking. By the time we got back to the hotel after the show we crashed! We had been awake since 2 am Hong Kong time and didn't take a nap or sleep at all until 9:30. But, it really did help us adjust to the time difference so much. The next day we went on a tour of Hong Kong. We went to Victoria Peak which is the top of Hong Kong Island and the view was amazing. We also went to the fishermen's village called Aberdeen and went on a boat ride to see their lifestyle. It was mind boggling to realize the lives they live. They live on their boats all the time and have other boats that they actually fish on. It was interesting because we were out there looking at these wood boats that are their homes and then as we went in closer to shore there are these huge white boats in the dock that are most likely vacation boats for those that can do more than just afford that. They had jet skiis sitting on the back of them and all sorts of high class stuff. There were just such extremes living right next to each other, even in the apartments there would be some apts that are 200 sq. feet total for a family which could be as many as ten people verses some right across town that are 2,000 US dollars per sq. foot and the whole floor is one apt.
It really was so cool to see all the different sides of Hong Kong. We also went to Stanley Market and looked around there for a while and went to a jewelry factory and saw how the factory runs. It actually wasn't as big as I was expecting it to be but it was very neat. After the tour we luckily had the opportunity to go to the LDS temple and do baptisms for the dead. It was so neat! I don't think Hong Kong Temple usually sees that big of groups and especially ones that are so tall haha. But there were probably 22 or so of us that participated and it was a great experience. The rest of the day was just relaxed, we went out to dinner in a small group and went swimming on top of the hotel which was pretty cool. We saw a little bit of the light show from the pool! All in all Hong Kong was a great vacation that we were all glad we got to enjoy.
Since then we took a ferry to get to mainland China and after almost loosing two people to having too high of a temperature at Customs we made it to our bus and into the beautiful city of Zhongshan. Its amazing! There's an awesome park that the city is known for that we drove by and will eventually have to go see but for the few days we've been here we've been to our school (right across the street from our apartments) to prep for classes and get situated and just a couple miles up the street. We really do already feel at home for the most part. Its hard to say that when I see a cockroach in the hallway but I'll just keep praying I never have too close of an encounter with one personally. It is a great city and we are very excited to get teaching next week and to meet all the kids!
