The Big Buddha

On Sunday, we woke up, had breakfast and began to get ready for church. I was met with resistance all along the way- the girls didn't want to cooperate with eating, getting dressed, getting their hair done, etc. and I was getting very frustrated.

To get to church on time, we need to leave our flat at 8:45 at the latest, and hurry to the bus stop, where hopefully we can get on a bus quickly. Then... we have no control of how long it might take to get through all the traffic since there is an area before the bridge to HK Island that is a bottleneck, so we sit on the bus watching the time and hope that we make it on time. Once we get there, we wait in line for an elevator and take it to the 9th floor. It's a chaotic busy place, and we print out name tags for the girls from an automated machine and take them to a main classroom where there is half an hour of singing. So far, they won't let us leave them there, so either both of us or just I stay until they are dismissed to their classes. Annika goes to hers (but is very shy in the class), but it usually takes Leila a while until she's comfortable with me leaving, and two Sundays she hasn't gone to her class at all. Finally, I can take the elevator back down to the second floor, and by then the sermon has already started, so I have yet to actually be there for the worship singing.

So, on this particular Sunday when it was apparent that we were definitely going to be late no matter what, it just didn't seem worth it, especially since I would end up sitting in church feeling bad about how our morning had gone.

After we regrouped and were finally dressed and ready, we decided to get in touch with our inner Buddha (haha... JUST KIDDING!) and take a cable car ride to Ngong Ping village. It's located on Lantau Island (home of the airport, Pui O beach and Disneyland), and features a long cable car ride up a mountain to a "Chinese-style village that encapsulates the cultural integrity of the Ngong Ping area" (as says our brochure).

The girls had no idea what we were talking about when we told them what we would be doing, but once on the cable car, they both kept exclaiming "I love this ride!". Leila said "I want to ride this all day!"

The first glimpse of the big Buddha.

A cable car created just as a photo op.

And more places to have your picture taken. The girls are happy to oblige.

There was some kind of a bubble-mania show happening, so to advertise for it, there were bubble machines pumping out bubbles everywhere. It was great fun for all!

Annie was mesmerized by a lady doing yoga.

Leaving Ngong Ping village and heading towards the Buddha. Somewhere there is the very tree under which Siddhartha mediated and eventually attained enlightenment before becoming Buddha.
It was no biggie for Annie and Mike to climb the stairs up to the Buddha since Annie's classroom is on the third floor and Mike's is on the fourth. They spend their days going up and down flights of stairs.

This was the view one of the directions from the top of where the Buddha was. I love how so many areas in Hong Kong are along the coast. It's so pretty!

We convinced the girls to climb the stairs with the promise of ice cream.

This is at the beginning of "Wisdom Path" which is a 15 minute walk that we've heard is worth doing. We just weren't sure what 15 minutes would translate into for us, and we didn't have bug spray and I've discovered that sand flies LOVE me and their bites are much more unpleasant than mosquito bites. We decided to save it for next time (with company?) and bring the stroller along.
The sun was shining on the way down, and the view was spectacular! We shared our cable car with another international school teacher and her parents who were visiting from New Zealand. We struck up conversation with them when we noticed that her dad was wearing a t-shirt that said "Banff". It turns out they had just visited Canada last year. And the teacher had also moved to Hong Kong in August, but she was coming from three years of teaching in Dubai.

Well, Mike just finished assembling a shoe-storage unit we bought from Ikea. Time to fill it!

A country club and a monkey mountain

Each year the same gentleman who treated the new teachers to snails and cooking utensils also hosts an evening of golf and recreation at a country club followed by a dinner for the staff at CAIS and their families. We took a big chartered bus right from the school and then drove about an hour to the north part of Hong Kong- almost to the China border. You could either golf or hang out by the pool. It was actually a bit chilly to swim since pools here aren't heated, but that didn't stop the girls! Annika was over-the-moon excited about the whole thing. Her teacher, her classroom EA, her friend Olivia, her friend Rachel, her music teacher, and her computer teacher (I didn't actually know until yesterday that she had a computer teacher) were all on the bus and at "the restaurant". She kept giggling nervously whenever she saw any of them.

(playing in the pool with her pal, Olivia)

Annie and her teacher, Mrs. G. Annika told her that she had looked forward all week to seeing her here. She is such a good teacher, and so perfect for Annika. I'm sure after teaching kindergarten all week there was nothing she'd rather do than listen to Annie chatter to her all evening!
Mike was part of music number with some other staff. They sang "He who began a good work in you". The food was a buffet, and even though we didn't eat until seven and had some starving kids (we were hungry too!) it was worth it because it was really good! I had such a moment when we were trying to find a place to sit where I badly missed the teachers at LWCA. We had some great times at awkward staff functions and I wished for a moment that I could sit at a table with Mike's old staff!

Today we went to Monkey Mountain. We've heard about it, but it's a bit elusive because we couldn't even figure out how to get there! Basically it's just a mountain in Hong Kong where lots of monkeys live. The girls have been watching a Hong Kong cartoon that we get called "Ming the Minibus" and on one episode they go to Monkey Mountain, so they were interested in going. At the staff dinner, Jocelyn offered to take us there today, so we figured why not? She said to make sure to bring an pointy umbrella so we'd have something to ward off the monkeys in case they swarmed us (!) and also no food or drinks.

Well, today was a beautiful day, and we had been thinking about going to the beach, but we decided to do this instead. The area was really pretty, but as soon as we saw the monkeys, little Rachel started crying and was not happy to be at Monkey Mountain. So Jocelyn decided that she should take her back home, but to catch the bus, we had to take a footbridge and cross the busy street. We needed to cross it as well to get to where the monkeys were, but as we climbed the stairs and walked across we got closer to monkeys than any of us really wanted to.

There were signs that warned against feeding them, provoking them, and one warning said not to make eye contact with them, which is practically impossible since they always seem to be looking right at you. I wasn't expecting that I would get so panicky about being near them-My heart was pounding out of my chest! I think it was partially because of the warnings, and also because Mike and I have been reading The Hunger Games, and I also suddenly remembered the story of Joel's co-worker who got attacked by a monkey when they were in Thailand. In any case, I wanted to scream and cry like Rachel was doing and knew that I did not want to stay any longer. Mike and the girls agreed. There were lots of people and lots of monkeys in this parking lot, but we weren't brave enough to even make it that far!

I swear this monkey bared it's teeth at us while we made direct eye contact with it! Annika told us later that she was sure the monkey was going to eat her, but she was very brave and kept that to herself.
It was too bad we were such chickens because there were walking trails that looked so scenic and it was a beautiful day with bright blue skies. It's been very rainy and cloudy lately, so it seemed like we should be taking advantage of such nice weather.
So we took the bus back to an area called Mong Kok, and Jocelyn showed us the "fish market" which is a big strip of stores selling fish, turtles, aquariums, etc.

(busy street in Mong Kok)

So... Monkey Mountain... been there, done that. And lived to tell about it!

a few sights around hong kong

(chopstick fun)

(it's very common to see little altars set up with incense and little offerings to the gods)

(many buildings have laundry hanging out of windows. we're not allowed to do that in our building, but I can see why people do it as our clothes rarely come out of the machine dry)

(we take these green minibuses for short distances. Big double-decker buses for longer distances)

(China may be communist, but there are signs of Christianity all around Hong Kong)

(Mike and Annika's school. The McD's is frequented by staff and students)

*credit to Mae for the first two pictures*

weekend highlights

Some highlights of our weekend:

- we went to a lovely park called Nan Lian Garden. My friend Jocelyn showed it to me the day we went swimming, and I wanted to come back and see it again. There's also Chi Lin nunnery attached to it that held many many Buddas. It's a really nice place to walk around. In fact, when I was there was Jocelyn, we met a man from Wisconsin who was on a six week tour of Asia. He was lagging behind the rest of the tour group taking pictures. We asked him what the best thing had been (this was his last day of the tour), so he thought about it for a bit and said that he thought this garden was the best thing he saw. I don't personally think this garden ranks over something like the Great Wall of China, but to each their own, I guess. It is pretty nice!

- Saturday was a national holiday, which is why we chose to go to Disneyland the Saturday before Annika's birthday rather than the one after. We were told it would be extra busy. It didn't seem overly busy when we were out and about, but maybe Disneyland still would have been. Anyway, that evening, we went over to our friend's place who live close to us. Their flat is on the 36 floor, so they had a great view of the fireworks that commemorated this holiday. Honestly, i'm not even sure what the holiday even was! The girls have both been scared of fireworks ever since Canada Day, but hopefully this helped change that because we were far away and they weren't noisy at all. Just really spectacular- who knows how much money had been spent on them.

- on Sunday we were feeling pretty good that we had made really good time getting out the door to go to church. We thought we'd even get there on time! Mike and Annie were sitting in the very last row on the top floor of the bus, and Leila and I were sitting in the seats in front of them. Suddenly we heard (and felt) a loud bang, and as it turns out a truck had rear-ended our bus. There was a bit of confusion, and eventually it was clear that we had to get off the bus and figure out alternate transportation. So we ended up hopping into a taxi, and then actually got to church early! I always thought the driving was crazy and wondered if accidents happen very often, so now it's a bit unnerving to know that yes, they do! We'll just hope our guardian angels will protect us while the girls take a big hiatus from being in carseats!

- a downside of the weekend (for me) was running into the leg of our couch and badly stubbing my little toe. It has since turned purple and a good part of my foot is bruised. I will spare you a picture of it, because I don't ever enjoy seeing pictures of feet. It left me limping a bit on Sunday, but it feels better already even though it still doesn't look very nice.
- we went to a mall that was beside Nan Lian Garden, and there was some kind of a big event going on. It involved babies racing each other by crawling. There seemed to be different legs of the race. We wondered if the spectators were placing bets on which baby would win? So funny!
- and finally, another typhoon has rolled in. On Sunday, level 1 was hoisted, and we were hoping it would either stay that way, or go to an 8 which would mean that school would be closed. We didn't want it to be a three, because that means that only Annie misses school, and she didn't want that. But this morning we checked, and it was a level 3. The strange thing is, the weather doesn't seem bad at all! It's overcast and breezy and that's about it! It's so strange to me that kindergarten would be cancelled, but maybe there was danger that it would get worse? Anyway, we are hoping that it will all blow over because Wednesday is another national holiday and Mike and Annie will have the day off. We'd like to do something that day, and don't want to be stuck inside with a typhoon! I guess we'll see...