We haven't blogged in a while because you know - you get in the daily grind and no matter where you live everyday life becomes pretty much the same. Now that we've had a week of spring break I have more to talk about. No, we didn't go anywhere this spring break. Next year we'll be going to Phuket, Thailand. There's this conference called EARCOS (I forget what it stands for but it's an education thing) and our school plans spring break in conjunction with the conference and gives you money toward getting there. We'll have this years money and next year's money and so we'll be able to go for pretty much nothing. So that will be fun. We're going home for Christmas for about 2 weeks and we might shoot over to Taiwan this summer between visitors and teaching summer school. Good thing we'll be here for 3 years because we have other trips we want to take too!
But about this spring break. Ernie and I have had a lot of fun together. On Monday we took this amazing hike up to this waterfall. It was really the only sunny and nice day we've had this spring break so we jumped on it. It was a challenging hike over large boulders and through viney jungly forest that was damp and moist. For my readers who know what it's like to climb Elmore Mountain - it was kind of reminiscent of that in a way. Only much more challenging. Sometimes I had to push Ernie up a slippery rock and then he had to pull me. Sometimes it took us a full five minutes to puzzle over how to get me up or down a certain way because either I couldn't reach or stretch as far as Ernie could. I was sore the whole rest of the week after that hike but it was so much fun! The waterfall was beautiful and the rocks were cool and the sun was warm. It was so nice. Again, my fellow Vermonters, it reminded me of days at Grants Hole or the Gorge. And we only saw three things that would classify as wildlife - a butterfly, a spider and a lizard. Considering Ernie saw a cobra on a golf course here once that was pretty brave of me. But they are still in hibernation I guess or I don't know but it was fine. The thought of snakes was never far from my mind but once we got going it was like hiking back in VT and I wasn't too concerned. We certainly made enough noise I'm sure we scared most everything away!
Tuesday I went shopping in the markets with a friend named Renee. We went and looked at cheap toy stores for me to fill my treasure box and then she took me through the ladies market and I had my first experience of haggling on my own. You see - in that particular market you can haggle. Hard to know when and where you can but I said I live here and wasn't going to pay that price for what I bought. I haggled twice and was quite happy with the result. I have to admit - Renee helped play it with me. So that was fun. Then we went to Fa Yuen Street. That isn't as much a touristy spot - but a great place to shop for cheap clothes. We had checked out a few Salvation Army's earlier because I wanted to experience thrift stores in Hong Kong but they were small and uninteresting. I did get a few books but that's all. So this Fa Yuen St. was more like digging through thrift stores for a find. All the clothes were new but there was pretty much only one of everything so you had to search for things that you liked and was your size. Then - so funny - it was brand name stuff but they cut or alter the tags so you "can't tell" but you can totally tell. It's kind of like Nordstroms Rack but more diverse and so much cheaper then the malls. I got a whole bunch of summer stuff. You can't try it on so you shop smart and know what will probably work. I only bought one pair of bottoms and they fit - yay. I got mostly tops but new pajamas and a robe and a dress. It all fit fine when I got home. So that was fun but exhausting (as is everything here)!
Wednesday I was lazy in the morning - I slept, I layed aroud and enjoyed my coffee, I worked on some art projects. I have to say I think I might really be liking this paperclay. I've done a lot of research on it and it's non-toxic, extremely durable when dry and sealed and you can sand it, carve it when it's still sort of wet, add to it over time. It can have a finish not unlike porcelain and is a respectable doll making medium. I am enjoying it and I like how my project is coming out. I'll post pictures later. It's a process over time. I'm also attempting to make my own beads for a necklace. It's extremely hard finding craft supplies here. I think Asian people don't have time to be crafty and they don't think outside the box a lot. So I'm having to adapt and be even more creative which can be a fun challenge but also frustrating. I finally found some sand paper yesterday for smoothing my work. Then I took a nap in the middle of the day. Ernie had gone on a run so he had a nap too. It was nice. I'm going to miss naps next week.
Adults should be allowed to have daily nap time...anyway, then I told Ernie I wanted to go to Central (a journey in itself) to check out this store called 360. It' a more expensive, whole food, more western type of grocery store and I wanted to see if I could find the spelt flour there. Also, they have a real juice bar there and I wanted a smoothie. So...off we went. I found what I needed and the we decided to walk over to Soho and have dinner. We were on our way up the travelator (the largest escalator in the world) and we spotted a place called The Gourmet Burger Union. Someone had told me before that it was good so we went. It was so NOT good. Let me preface it by saying it's not because I'm in Hong Kong because I've had some pretty darn good burgers here. No, this place just sucked! You walk in and there's a huge wall menu where you can "build your own burger." It's boasts "Grass fed beef" and looks all swanky like that. It looked really promising. You pick the size of meat, then the cheese, then it says pick 4 toppings, then a sauce and then whatever extra's. You could get it in the bun or in a bowl. So Ernie orders a pretty simple burger - 1/4 pound for the meat, lettuce, onion, cheddar cheese (Old English Aged Cheddar the menu says) mustard on a bun. I order the 1/4 (smallest they have), in a bowl, cheddar and then it says 4 toppings but the guy is telling me I can only have two. ????? What I am trying to order is the "lettuce mix," tomato, roasted red pepper and pepperoncinis. When I'm done I'm not even sure what I ordered. He gives us the buzzer thing and says when our order is up it will go off. So it does. Then Ernie brings to the table two burgers, in buns. One is a tiny patty stacked up on all this iceberg lettuce with what looked like gravy all over it. We finally determine the other burger is mine. It's in a bun. Okay, so he brings the other one back and they say oops and proceed to prepare him another burger. I get some silverware but it looks dirty so I just decide to eat it bun and all (no specific reason why I didn't want the bun really). Then Ernie gets his. He gets a bowl of iceberg lettuce (the special "lettuce mix") and on top a really small hamburger patty with a little square of cheese and some dijon mustard on the side. He really wanted a bun and got none. Huh. It was so riduculous that we just had to laugh. At this point he's like whatever and just ate it. Some "gourmet burger." He ended up going home and having a sandwhich. We'll never go back there!
On the flip side - the next day I took a trek down to Wan Chai downtown on HK Island with my friend Jen Grobeck and we went to a french restaurant called La Creperie. Very quaint and the manager was so nice and from France. She and Jen spoke french together (Jen is the french teacher at ICS but is from the USA) and I could actually understand the gist of what they were talking about. 4 years of high school french and an 11 day trip to France paid off a little I guess. The food was amazing!!!! So that made up for my burger incident totally.
On Saturday we went apartment hunting with the Koch family (also new teachers on the 7th floor here). They have two small children so they need a slightly bigger place but we're feeling the same about how much we want to spend and the area we like. You have to find a realtor and they take you around because there are no "complexes" per se. There are high rise buildings called "Ocean View" or "Mountain Shore" but the apartments are individually owned. Landlords can charge what they want and change the rent so you can live in an apartment for a year and when you go to sign a new lease rent could go up. It's crazy. Housing is at a premium here because space is so tight. Anyway, we found a few places we wanted to look at just to see what they were like. And they were tiny! And of course he showed us places on the 22nd floor or something similar. None of us can handle living that high up. I'd go nuts. You could feel the building sway. The apartments we looked at were between 400-600 square feet approximately. TINY!!! The bedrooms (if you could call them that) made me wonder if you could even fit a full size bed in there and if you could there would be no room left over - at all. My principal Tim said that you wouldn't believe the large families that squeeze into apartments like that because that's what there is. And for an apartment like that it's approx. $1500-1800 US dollars a month. Really! Luckily we get a housing allowance but it won't get us anything bigger then 600 square feet...so the search continues. It's only 2 more years right? So glad that it's not my permanent future. I'd go nuts I'm sure. After such abundant space in the US it's hard to adjust. Our apartment in the school is small but very spacious compared to what's out there...in one of the smaller ones we saw the bedroom was comparable size to our current bathroom which, to be fair, is unusally spacious for a bathroom but still! And Chinese people are smaller too so the tubs and beds are quite small...it's definitely interesting! And that brings me to the end of our spring break unfortunately. We had some fun times with some couples - our principals and their families - The Wongs and The Van Tassels and our friends the Kochs, Jen Grobeck and our course Ernie and I had a blast with each other. Until next time - if you've read this far great - God bless!
