Hello from Hong Kong

Hello from foggy, windy Hong Kong!

It's Friday morning here, and we've had an adventurous 48 hours.  We've been on planes, trains, subways, taxis, buses, trams, cable cars, elevators and escalators.  In other words, it's guaranteed that we have already come in contact with EVERY.SINGLE.GERM that Hong Kong has to offer.  Poor Gianna seems to have already come down with some sniffles, but so far, it's not stopping her.

In short, our last 2 days:  The plane ride was great.  It was really smooth, with only about an hour of knicker-staining turbulence over Japan.  The girls were awesome!  They read, did homework, played with stickers, watched movies, and slept.  Evie sat next to a tiny old woman, and while she only spoke Chinese and Evie only spoke English, they entertained each other for hours.  They played Play Doh and the woman helped Evie practice her letters in her workbook.  Adorable.

Me?  Oh, I did my usual careful monitoring the Moving Map for 15 hours straight.  I know the pilot counts on me to keep careful track of the altitude, head winds, speed, nearest land masses, and exit strategies.   I love my job, and I think I'm good at it.

 

 

We had to wake the girls up when we were landing, but they rallied and were great.  We got to our hotel, showered up and went to bed around 9pm here.  We awoke at 2am (Evie, Nathan and me), 3am (Camille), and 4am (Gianna).  I think it best to get on local time as soon as possible, so I cruelly made the girls lie in bed until 5am. 

Once we got up, we knew we had to make the most of our day since we really only have a day and a half here.  It was really foggy, but we took a chance and rode the Peak Tram up to Victoria Peak in hopes that the fog would clear later and we could get a nice view.  No dice.  This was the best we got on our way up, then it got foggier. 

 

I asked the girls if they were getting tired.  Of course, the answer was "NO!" from the little born adventurers.  So we decided to take the trip out to Lantau Island to see the Big Buddha and Po Lin Monastery.  We rode the cable car out there.  Normally, I don't like that kind of thing but knew Nathan and the girls would enjoy it, so I decided to woman up.  But this time, it was SO windy going over the bay and then through the hills of Lantau that I really thought I was going to puke.  As soon as we got off of the FOUR MILE RIDE OF DEATH, we went straight to the ticket window at the other end to see if we could get a refund for our return trip on the cable car and just take a bus back.  (The Aussie girl who was in the cable car with us beat us to the ticket window to ask the same question!)  Anyway, it was still incredibly windy on the ground, but we had fun touring the beautiful monastery and grounds.  The girls all walked the 268 stairs up to Buddha and back down, and even Evie needed no help.

 

 

 

 

Girls in the Po Lin Monastery:

 

 

Bottom:

 

 

Top:

 

 

Check out these pots on the monastery grounds.  If the wind was strong enough on the ground to knock these huge heavy things over and break them, imagine our ride suspended high up in the cable car!

 

 

 

So remember that bus ride we decided to take to be "safer"?  Well, in the words of Camille, "I think he (the bus driver) was dreaming about being a race car driver!"  I'll let the pictures tell the rest of the story.

 

"My head just hit the window!"

 

But, we made it through it all alive and were still smiling on our last subway ride at the end of a very long day.  So proud of my girls for holding up their end of the bargain and doing their best to get over jet lag with no complaints!  Now if they would just stopping touching, caressing and mouthing every damn surface in sight...

 

 

Today we are catching a train to Guangzhou, about 2 hours away on the mainland.  We're sorry to be leaving HK so soon, but we have an early flight tomorrow to Lanzhou.  I'll probly try to post once more quickly tonight just to make sure that this site is still working there in China.  We had some issues with it even here in HK.  If for some reason I cannot get this site to work there, I will go back to the old one at www.burrorfourplustwomore.shutterfly.com , so you can check there if you don't find me here.  The password there is pinkorblue.

 

Two days until Tallulah Day!!!!