Chinese New Year celebrations

I have so many photos I could post today! Of course, it is not quite Chinese New Year yet - it is next week - but we celebrated it yesterday at school, as next week we are on holidays.

To start with, the whole school dressed in beautiful Chinese outfits. The kids looked gorgeous! The Chinese team put on an assembly involving hundreds of the kids, and it was a mega-production. You can sometimes forget our school is in a part of China, considering we have kids from so many parts of the world, and we teach in English, so it was wonderful to have so much thought and effort put into celebrating Chinese New Year.

Then came my favourite part - a lion dance on the playground. I'm so glad I videoed it! I hope I can figure out how to add a video to the blog.

After school I wandered down into a more "Chinese" part of town down the road to see the shops selling all the CNY decorations. The photos don't show you how intricate the decorations are, but at least it shows the colours.

The other thing that appears everywhere at CNY is tangerine trees! The streets are full of them. This photo is of the lane next to my building. There must be thousands and thousands of them! I was wondering why no one is picking the fruit off the bushes (like they would in Australia) but apparently it is bad luck.

Australia Day

I didn't write my Australia Day post yesterday as I was very busy at a party. Yes Amanda, I went to a party and stayed out late on a school night!

Anyway that must be the first time I've worked on Australia Day instead of having a bbq somewhere. But the Aussies at school pulled together a very Aussie morning tea with lamingtons and vegemite and tim tams etc. Yum!

I got to wear the lovely (?) Australian scarf that was a farewell present from the Wanniassa crowd, and hang up the big Australian flag that they also gave me. They must have known it would come in handy eventually. Thanks guys :-)

And the party, well it actually wasn't an Australia Day party. It was Aylish's birthday but it was lots of fun and there were lots of Aussies - I even met another teacher who grew up in Cooma! What a small world!

A Terrible photo of a beautiful city

It has been fun having Simon and Mitchell here! They have been on the go all week, cramming in all the things they wanted to do and see. We had a great night out at Soho on Saturday, where they met lots of people from school, had a great dinner, and Chris took them out partying till all hours. A taste of life here in Hong Kong.

It was nice to go and meet the boys to watch the light show from Kowloon on their last night in Honkers. I love the light show, and even though it was quite smoggy, it was better than normal with the fantastic Chinese New Lights all over the buildings.

I tried and tried to get a good photo of some of these buildings, but my camera just won't do night shots. If you look really carefully you can see the big rabbit all lit up!

And one of the boys in front of a Year of the Rabbit display.

Thanks for visiting, Simon and Mitch! I'm glad you had a good time :-) Now you can go home and convince other people to come and visit!!

Playing tour guide

Yay! My lovely friends Simon and Mitchell have come to visit Honkers! They are here for a week, which they have found goes SO FAST when there are so many things to see and do. It's a bummer that I can't do some touristy stuff with them during the day (eg. I wish I could have gone to Disneyland with them today) but still have a list of cool places to go after work and on the weekend.

Visitors are a great excuse to go and do all your favourite things again.

Things that still surprise me

1. I'm cold!

2. We had clear weather on the weekend. I had forgotten that above all that cloud and smog there is a sun and a moon... and I saw both on the weekend for what seems like the first time in months.

3. Walking down my street in amongst the shoppers was a man pushing his trolley - with 2 massive dead pigs on it! You just don't see that in Canberra. Wish I had my camera.

4. The effort put into decorating Hong Kong is amazing. Chinese New Year - the year of the rabbit - is coming up and the city has turned red and gold.

The moon shot was taken when I was at a staff party. I don't actually see that much sky from my place! The photo of the sun coming into my apartment was just because it is so rare! And the year of the rabbit decorations are just down my street where all the amahs go to sing and dance on a Sunday. It's really pretty at night, all decorated with fairy lights.

My new purchase! I know some people will think I'm stupid for buying a sewing machine when I am only here for 2 years, and should be spending every minute exploring Hong Kong and Asia and enjoying all these new experiences...

Who cares what they think! I brought my sewing gear with me because I like it. I've been doing a little bit of handsewing (a really, really little bit) but I have a quilt I'd like to finish for my bed, and I want to finish it while this cold weather is still hanging around. And for that I needed a machine.

I'm taking bets on how long I'll take to finish it. Odds are it will come back to Australia still in pieces...

Staff meeting with a difference

Some of us teachers are so nerdy, and when Chris asked if any of us wanted to go to the Stationery Fair with him, we jumped at the chance!

It was actually 3 trade fairs - stationery, toys and games, and baby stuff. We were so excited!

But even though I loved seeing all the fantastic new bits and pieces of fun stationery (as well as lots of cool stuff for the library), it was very frustrating not being able to buy the things on display. Der, I forgot that trade fairs are just for showing businesses what is available. On the bright side it saved me a lot of money.

It was also my first time in the Hong Kong Convention Centre - what a huge, amazing place.

I did NOT expect this...

I bought a heater. Huh? Here in Hong Kong? When I'm used to Canberra winters?

Yep, it has been 12-15 degrees all this week and is quite cool in my little apartment. It hasn't been too bad - I just put on pj's and a jumper when I get home, but today I gave in.

They say it's going to be this temperature until mid Feb. I'm not going to go out and buy myself a padded bulky jacket as is the fashion here, but I think my heater is going to make my little place much cosier for the next few weeks.

Time for a hot milo and a good DVD... that will make me feel right at home :-)

Am I a local now?

It was really weird going back to work, instead of having the whole of January as a holiday! As I thought, it was busy enough this week to make Christmas feel like it was 6 months ago.

I'm writing this at 10.00 at night and there is a jackhammer doing lots of noisy jackhammering right next to my building. I feel like I must have adjusted to life in Hong Kong, because the noise isn't bothering me as much anymore. If it was this noisy late at night back home I probably would have rung the police by now!

The other thing that is making me feel like a local is... I've hired a cleaner! I finally gave in, after discovering I was the only person in the whole of Hong Kong who didn't have one. I swear. And I am so excited about not having to clean the bathroom again for at least 18 months :-) Yes I know it is very lazy of me and a waste of money... but I don't care. I call it adjusting to my new culture.

This photo is of the best bakery in Hong Kong, where they make such beautiful egg tarts (a little like custard tarts but not so sweet) that last time I passed it I counted 21 people lined up outside the shop. Tonight when I passed it I was giggling at the girl standing in the doorway having her photo taken. People take photos of anything and everything over here, so I thought I'd join them!

Happy New Year!

I just realised there were only 2 December posts... that's not a very good record of my Hong Kong adventure! But really, December was pretty busy at school and there was not much adventuring to be done.

I'm just about at the end of my 2 week Christmas holiday. It was so good to be home - it felt like I had been on an awesome 5 month holiday and had just arrived home, so it is quite odd to think that I'm leaving Australia again tomorrow. I guess this year won't feel quite as much like a holiday in Hong Kong, but I still plan on plenty of exploring. I already have trips planned for Shanghai, Beijing and Bali.

Meanwhile I have crammed in lots of time with Matthew. We had some quality time together watching Harry Potter movies (yes I know his eyes are closed, but I'm sure he really enjoyed it!). And of course we all enjoyed having a new baby around for Christmas, especially Nanna!

Anyway, back to Honkers tomorrow, and looking forward to some cooler weather again! I'm not enjoying the 37 degree heat here today.