Days 17 – 21 – “I love Hong Kong!”

The last entry of my trip will cover five days and be relatively short.  I should probably get back to updating in ‘real time’ and stop living in the past! 🙂

For the next few days I was with the FOC teachers from all over China.  We met in Hong Kong for a retreat (which we later named ‘Attack’ because retreat sounds too wimpy–after all, they keep telling us we are on the ‘front line’ in China) and had an amazing time.  It was fun to hang out with all the other teachers from the other cities and get to know them.  It was during the retreat that we were energized in THE WORD.  We had a number of speakers (professors from ALS and others) talk to us about Fellowship, personal B study time, other pertinent information.  It was interesting to hear about the other cities and how they do things and be able to share what we do in our city. 

We had some down time in the city also.  I met up with my German friend for dinner one night and met some of his friends.  I took a bus up to the peak to see this view:

The ride up to the peak was interesting (which means scary) but the view was incredible! I was hoping to see the sky on a clear night. It was still pretty!

The same evening that I met Tom for dinner I also watched the light show from the ‘mainland’ side of Hong Kong. (That’s not the side that I took the previous picture from.)

The light show was not great. I was actually a little disappointed. 🙁 Oh, well...

Most of the time was spent attending the sessions and hanging out with people.  One day I took the ferry across the harbor. It was very foggy and rainy that day:

Hong Kong has these long, semi-enclosed, elevated side-walks which are really handy when you want to be outside on a rainy day without an umbrella and not get wet. If you recall from a post from last year, I have a similar photo with the sunset. 🙂 Also: for all of you Batman fans out there...Yes, that is the building that the Bat was perched on in one scene of The Dark Knight.

After traveling for three weeks, I was ready to be home.  I had a ticket for a 2:25 train back to Beijing.  First we had to go through customs and walk across the border.  It was AMAZING the transformation that took place.  In Hong Kong, it looks like China and there are Chinese people walking around everywhere, but everything is so ORDERLY!  (people wait for the light to change to cross the street, people wait in line in general, etc.)  As soon as we crossed into the mainland, people were cutting in line and pushing.  UNREAL! 

The train we were on was supposed to take 24 hours to get to Beijing so, I had a lot of time.  I was going to read…didn’t do that.  I did get quite a bit of sleep and watched two movies with Hannah on her computer.  Basically, we wasted a day of our lives.  The train ride wasn’t horrible.  I’m starting to perfer the upper bunk of a six-bed compartment because no one can just sit on your bed.  Most of the noise and commotion stays down below.  It wasn’t too hard to try to ignore it because I don’t understand most of it! 🙂 

We arrived back in the capital city and I was back home by a little after 3 pm.  What an awesome adventure!

My “types-of-transportation” count is up to 12!

taxi, bus, airplane, minibus, canoe, horse, bicycle, feet, train, bamboo raft, rickshaw, and ferry.  (and if you want to add ‘moving sidewalk’ and ‘escalator’ to the list that would make it 15.) 🙂