Easter in Hong Kong

Easter Sunday was perfect. We got up for mass and the church was beautiful. The funniest thing about a Catholic mass in China was during the offering of bread and wine at the end of service, what I've seen in the past was an orderly procession of one row of pews at a time. All of a sudden, everyone in the church stood up and bottle-necked into the aisles. Mare whispered, "Here comes the Chinese fire-drill" and I almost cracked up. Afterwards it was fun to see some of the faces I recognized during my first trip.

After the service we went back for a lovely traditional Easter brunch. Mare did an excellent job with the meal and the setting; all the delicious foods that I had been missing since last Easter. Afterwards, I went on a search in the apartment for my Easter basket! Of course I looked everywhere and couldn't find it, so we had to resort to playing 'hot and cold.' It was in the dishwasher and I felt like a kid again. It was great.

That afternoon we went to the Space Museum (my request, of course) and even though the museum itself was a little outdated, it was still fun. I was surprised (but not really) that the majority of the first part of the museum was about rockets and the Chinese innovations with gun powder. I even got rigged up to a harness that was supposed to feel similar to what walking on the moon was like. The reality is they hook you up to this harness in a glass box and hold you just above the ground so your feet can't touch the ground. Not really what I imagine the moon to be, more just a sick joke in which the people running the harness get to hover helpless folks over the ground and laugh to themselves. Either way, we had a good time even though nothing in the museum had been updated for a decade or so.

That evening sums up exactly what I was hoping for in my trip to Hong Kong. We hung out in the living room eating cheese and fruit, drinking wine, and ended the night with a game of Scrabble. Couldn't ask for a better night, even though Mare beat us pretty bad a Scrabble because of the word 'ox.'

Jack & Rose

Before I continue the sequence of events in Hong Kong, I do have to tell a quick story from work today. I'm teaching 13 and 14 year-olds who are as rambunctious as they are adorable. For a game to end the lesson, I divided the class into two teams to play charades. I asked the first team what they want their 'team name' to be. "jsdfkhs" is what I heard, so often times when I can't understand them, I say, "Ok. Can you spell that for me please?" I hold the marker up to the board and wait. "J-a-c-k-a-double-s," one student says. When I look up at what I wrote, I start to laugh and realize that I should have let them spell it first rather than write as they spell a naughty word to me. I let it slide because I do know it's (unfortunately) the name of a popular singing group in Thailand. I ask the other team what their team name is. "Roses!" They say. Great!, I write it on the board. "No, no! R-o-s-e-a-double-s." The two teams were Jackass and Roseass. Super. I do have some control over my classroom, I swear. This is certainly funny at first glance, but I really lost control when I realized this was a play on the main characters of Titanic. I was nearly in tears and then these cute little kids start screaming, "I never let go, Jackass, I never let go!!"

Hong Kong Arrival and Lamma Island

I just happen to be the lucky girl who went to Hong Kong last week. I've been awful at keeping up with my life via the internet, so here is my big chance to catch up.

The flight to Hong Kong was pretty straightforward - I stepped on the plane with my hearing in tact, and stepped off the plane deaf. At immigration they check and stamp the ol' passport and since the identification photo gods were on my side one day, my passport picture is halfway attractive (ironically I was hungover the day it was taken, another story) but anyhow I was not looking so attractive when I stepped off the plane. So the immigration officer took a look at the photo and took a long hard look at me. 'I know I know, you think it's not the same person right?,' I thought. "What's your full name?," he says in an authoritative tone. "Huh?!!" (mind you I'm still deaf). He let me through. I couldn't even blame it on the jet lag.

Mare was on the other side of baggage claim to greet me smiling. We went back to the apartment, and since this was my second trip to the city, everything felt familiar. It was a good feeling. That first night I arrived pretty late and it was great to hang out with Mare and Doug, eat some of Mare's specialty soup and catch up a bit. I took a glorious bubble bath that I'd been dreaming about for days, maybe weeks, prior. Bathtubs are few and far between in Chiang Mai so before I left I told my friends that I was going to Hong Kong to spend Easter week with my aunt and uncle AND I was going to take bubble baths. "Wow! Lucky!," they'd say.

The next morning we took a ferry out to Lamma island, which is about a half hour away by boat. You better believe I slept the whole way. Before getting on the ferry Mare asked if I get seasick. Remembering my long ferry ride out to Koh Phi Phi island in Thailand last year, I said I don't get sick at all. As soon as we got on the upper deck of the ferry, we were nowhere near any windows, the boat was a rockin' and I started to feel queasy immediately. Boy did I feel dumb. I honestly thought for most of the initial ride that we were propelling backwards and going in circles like a car trying to parallel park. To cope, I pictured myself in a baby's crib rocking to sleep and all of a sudden I was out. I wasn't sick at all, just confused.

Lamma island was great! It feels like a small town with lots of Hong Kong tourists marching through. For some reason I thought it would be a quiet desolate island, but I should have known from the line that snaked around the block to get on the ferry that we wouldn't be the only ones there. It's a very cute place, with a scenic beach and an even more scenic factory beside the beach. One of my favorite moments was coming around a corner in a small residential part where there was a shack of a house with two huge speakers bigger than my TV that were blaring music. The irony of it killed me but Doug beat me to it: "Ya think those speakers are worth more than the house?" We hiked up and over the mountain to the other side where all the seafood restaurants are. We ate at a place called Rainbow Seafood and they have a Rainbow painted ferry that took us home after our meal. We were stuffed and out of commission for the rest of the night.

We watched The Dark Knight before bed and I just have to emphasize how cool it was to watch the scene when Batman jumps off the tall IFC tower and crashes into the small IFC tower. The real IFC towers were glowing through the living room window out of the corner of my eye, along with the rest of the skyline. Did I mention their view is amazing?

I will update with more from Easter weekend, the rest of the week, and more photos soon!

Don't Let the Jaws of Life Get You Down

Today I had lunch at a cafe that has an outdoor area that resembles a small jungle with wood lounge chairs and picnic tables. I was alone except for a stray kitten sitting in the chair next to me. Just as I was about to take the first bite of my lunch, another kitten trots past proudly. It had a limp pigeon hanging from it's mouth. The pigeon was bigger than the kitten. It was too disturbing to start my lunch, but intriguing enough not to look away. I guess I've never seen a kitten with quite the catch in real life. The sleeping kitten next to me jumped out of the chair and joined the other, both ready to tear the poor thing apart. I really wanted to not see this and eat my lunch, but it was like rubbernecking a car wreck. The kitten dropped the bird on the ground and started licking it's paws in preparation like a Tom and Jerry cartoon. It might as well twisted it's evil whisker mustache. Then the bird flew away. The biggest 'booya' I've ever seen in my life. I laughed alone at these two kittens who watched their lunch fly away, left with nothing but a few stray feathers floating around them like they just had a pillow fight.

The lesson: some may feel like they are clamped within the unforgiving jaws of life. Don't worry. Just when you think it can't get any worse, you'll be spit on the ground. That's your chance to turn the tables. Do it! Don't let the seemingly sweet kitty of life devour you like some sad diseased pigeon. Be the surprise! Some unsuspecting onlooker will really appreciate it and may even say, "What the...."

*There is no Thai translation for 'booya' - it's a universal language in itself.

Cheeky Kid

I have a student in my upper level class who is just too cool for school. He doesn't bring his text books, and he sits way too relaxed in the chair. He's a bit older and has the bad boy charm with the tats and the converse high tops and perfectly spiked hair (when he's not wearing his white ship captain's cap.. I kid you not on that one). The problem is, he's really sharp. Best vocabulary and fluency in the class. Not really a problem to have a bright student, only he uses his language skills in questionable ways. First of all, his confidence and charm causes all the girls to giggle like little school girls, which they are, I guess, but still. One gal who is normally quite good turns into mush if they have to practice speaking together, and he knows it. Her hand goes over her mouth and she can't get a word out over silent giggles. It looks like a disease...or choking. Speaking of these conversation exercises, he seems to turn any conversation topic (from travel to types of transportation to food preferences) into a way to practice pick up lines. No matter what, by the end of the conversation he is saying, "So you will come home with me tonight? We can get a room?" I think I might be the only other one who knows what he's saying. Today the students had to write a one page travel blog and post it on the wall for all to read. His was about spending time at the beach sharing coconut flavored drinks with a former political leader, picking up women, and contracting HIV by the end of the trip. Completely out of bounds. It upsets me more that his writing has near perfect grammar. I say 'near perfect' because during a group activity, he was sitting aside drawing a tattoo on his wrist in black ink with skulls and hearts with a banner: "Love Suck." I didn't have the heart to correct him.

Karaoke

Never gets old. There are a few karaoke places near my apartment, and we shopped around a bit for the one we like. The one we went to last time mysteriously went out of business, so it was just a big glass window with an empty space inside, with nothing left but a dusty table with a huge (gallon) empty bottle of Jack Daniels. It was a sad sight. So we went to the one next door and we were led to a small room with race car wallpaper and red couches. We thought we'd get our motorbike helmets to really get into character. Then the waiter said it was a two dish minimum. We came to sing! Not to eat! Who wants to do karaoke while eating anyway? We left. One last chance, and we found a good, but plain little place. They had decent (farang) music. We belted straight for two hours. My voice was shattered. We danced the whole time too, and our feet were sore. The servers kept walking by our little booth to peek in at what nonsense we were up to every few minutes. We'd wave through the little window and they'd duck away. Walking out, exhausted, we peeked in other rooms and everyone else was sitting looking half conscious, how boring. They were probably having a crappy time because they were stuck next to our obnoxious booth.

It's a Constant Game

I explained to someone today that teaching English is like a constant game called "Let's Understand Each Other!" The winner is the one who can use their words to best describe what they mean. Sounds simple, right? Extra points are for the person who can explain what they mean to say without using hand gestures. I lose at that part. I use my hands when I don't need to, waving them around as if that will make the student understand the meaning of the phrase "pretty much" (which, by the way, is more difficult to explain than you'd think).

I played an extreme game of that today with a student. She is the ultimate sweetheart. I asked her to express her opinion on motorbikes in Chiang Mai. I asked her to talk about the advantages and disadvantages. After talking about the advantages she said, "They will be to steal you." I said, "Do you mean they could steal the bike? They could steal your bag out of the basket?" She said, "They will be to steal you." I explained that if the object is 'you,' it means that the person is stolen, not the object. With the shake of her head... let the games begin. Through a series of short phrases, and gestures and sound effects, she won the game. Her intended meaning was starting to surface from the depths of my deductive sentences. "So you mean a man is driving a motorbike with a woman on the back.. then a bad guy comes up behind them and hits the man and then grabs the woman off the back of the bike and kidnaps her?!" She nods with glee and says "Kidnap! Kidnap her!" She writes 'kidnap' in her vocabulary book. Then she says, "What is the word for the bad man does some bad things with the woman?" I hesitate to say it.."Rape?" She nods and writes it down. I said, "Does that really happen?!" But I think what I really meant was 'did this whole conversation just happen?'

I played the same game with another student last week but he definitely lost because when he couldn't think of a proper word to use he would randomly throw in the word 'dominated.' As in 'My friend was so confused and... dominated.' This just made me laugh to myself and let him carry on. So I guess I lost that one too.