Hong Kong (Part I)

We decided to take a trip to Hong Kong for 10 days. We have some wonderful friends who have been there for a while, and we planned on staying with them. Growing up, my family and their family spent lots of good times together, camping, having Sunday dinners, and spending holidays together. New Years Eve was our big one. We always said we wanted to be related, so I am grateful to my brother Jack and my now sister in law Sarah for making that a reality :) Unfortunately, due to a death in their family, we weren't able to meet together like we planned. They left for the States a few days before we got there, and they returned to Hong Kong about 16 hours before we left. So this adventure REALLY turned into an adventure as Ken and I tried our hand at touring in a country where we didn't understand a word and didn't really know much about! Lucky for us, our friends left us the BEST lists of things to do, places to eat, and gave us a fantastic place to stay. 

Like all good adventures, it began at the airport, in Hong Kong (the flight could be included, but I'd rather gloss over those long hours trying to entertain a 10 month old in a small enclosed space, with nothing but a seat belt buckle, some goldfish, and random toys the stewardesses gave us. It aint pretty.)

These next two pictures were one of the first couple things we saw as we made our way to the apartment. We knew then, it was going to be AWESOME!

(at the grocery store, when we stopped to pick up a couple things)

That first morning, we tested out the paddle boats near the house, and fed some fish and turtles. It was amazing how green everything looked! Even Tyler commented on it.

And there were mountains! Hailey's comment upon seeing this was "Wow! That is a huge sand dune!" I see the resemblance, definitely?

Victoria Harbour. True story - we were cold! I'm not even joking when I say that we were freezing our booties off those first couple days. It was around 60 degrees (well, that is what the thermometer said, but I'm pretty sure it was about 30 degrees) 

Great. Suddenly I'm one of those people pulling out winter coats when it isn't really that cold! I scrounged together any winter clothing I could find. 

When I packed up our belonging in the States, I remember thinking "surely we wont visit anywhere cold during the winter. Why would we need these?" and packing most of our winter clothes in storage.

Owen & Will were fine due to all of the hand me downs in our bins. We had to be more creative with Tyler and Hailey. 

So if it looks like I'm wearing the same stuff in all my pictures, it's cause I did! And I managed to forget my tennis shoes, so my options for all hikes were flip flops :) Cool dragon fountain!

"Hey, Tyler got to do it, so should we!" I could just see me having to take a sudden swim in some not so awesome looking water as Hailey toppled off the side. So could Will apparently :)

 As you can see, we got to be pros at riding the metro

We loved seeing all the cool ancient temples and pagodas. 

Everything in these temples is ornate and decorated, even the doors.

Ken will be a talented professor one day. Right now, he practices on the kids, and they are amazingly receptive to him. Even Hailey would dash out of my arms and yell "I have to go hear what Dad is saying!" when she would see Ken go into professor mode at all the sites. Owen doesn't QUITE feel the same way just yet, but he will, I guarantee it :)

For some reason, I wasn't feeling that adventuresome when it came to food in Hong Kong, so Ken put himself in charge of making sure we tried all kinds of things. Our kids (and me :) were willing to try almost anything once.

Will, giving it the thumbs up. After he had eaten about 4 of these rice rolls, he remarked "You know, I don't really even like these that much." That was our secret: just keep them hungry. Or maybe we just brought a bunch of PBJs to each site, for after they tried things and didn't want to eat them...

The view from "our" apartment. Impressive!