So we flew in from Singapore on the 31st of August and had no problems in the HK airport as we are seasoned veterans there. We hopped on the MTR from the Airport to Central, and the Trains and buses here have free wifi, take notes calgary. Oh and they cost a fraction of what the trains and buses cost in Calgary. Typically the fares are under a dollar and they have these sweet octopus cards that you don’t have to take out of your wallet (or money clip if you are a minimalist contemporary man like myself) you just place it on the receiver and GO. Anyway they are sweet and once I get my student octopus card I’ll pay like 30 cents per ride. That’s right 30 cents like 2.5 hong kong dollars, also the price of one MacDonald’s ice cream cone, YUMMMM.
So anyway after surfing our way to Central station we grabbed a taxi, and met up with Jimmy(I'm betting not his real name) at our Apartment to let us in.
Our Apartment- Literally is fifteen feet by seven feet. I’m sitting writing this and I can reach Cami laying in bed sleeping, our one dresser, the door, the fridge, our hot plate and if I stretch I could reach our one sink that we use for everything. Our whole walking space can be stepped across in one large step. I was slightly relived when I saw our place (as you never know exactly what you are going to get from pictures), but it kind of took Cami’s breath away to realize how small it was. But four or five days later now and it’s home. We have a small tv over the bed that gets HBO, star movies and Discovery Channel, it also has a dvd player. The internet connection is pretty good and I use my macbook pro as a router and share the internet to our other devices and Cami has been rocking the Hot Plate. She’s made us yummy oatmeal, grilled sandwiches, stir fries and all sorts of yummy stuff. Oh and Biscuits. Her biscuits were delicious.
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| This is a picture of the Apt. but they switched out the table chair and sheets for older ripped ones, oh well... |
So we went to sleep in our stiff, less than double bed, after sleeping in cushy King Sized beds all month, but it was just fine and woke up to a tasty oatmeal breakfast. I had class, so we walked down to the University (After stopping by the park behind our house for some photo ops).
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| Hollywood Park - named for the forest of Holly trees and not for the Californian Movie centre |
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| Hollywood Turtle for my Mommy dearest - she likes turtles - |
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| Funny signs everywhere in HK |
And when I mean walked down I mean walked up.... waaaay up. Like stairs everywhere up. The University is a twenty minute walk, but practically all up hill. So good exercise right.
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| The first of many hills - the flat part wayyy in the background is where our Apt. would be |
Cami decided to come with and she hung out while I was in class. The only class I had this week was Law and Literature taught by Marco Wan - The class is all about the intersections of law and literature and I think it is going to be really interesting. We went through the syllabus and then read a parable by Kafka about the law, or the messed up version of what Kafka thought the law was like. The link for all of those nerds out there Anyway my schedule in case I haven't mentioned it is fantastic.
Wed. 2-5pm - Intellectual Property Law in the People's Republic of China, 6-9pm Regulation of Financial Markets
Thursday 2-5 Law and Literature 6-9 Introduction to Chinese Law and Legal System
Also there is another canadian guy from Kelowna and Western that has all of the same classes as I do. Crazy right.
So anyway, after class we went back to the apt. and Cami made a yummy rice stirfry on the hot plate - It was delicious!!!
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| YUMMMM |
So the next morning we decided to go for a run. I searched out some running routes online and found one that looked like it would be like 7-8km through some wooded areas. It looked fun and nice. Turns out it goes up to the PEAK!!! Who Knew?, not me. Anyway, so we start out and we knew it was going to be a climb for a bit of the way, but it wasn't so so bad. Then we got into this cool park area and found some trails, where no one was around. It was like being in the middle of the Jungle. So cool. So as we are running through the jungle, we come up on a paved road, then around the corner and there is a huge Mall. Weird. But it turns out this is the Peak Mall, that most people take the tram to get up to, but not us. So stinky and sweaty - like really sweaty, Cami's shorts felt like she had just gotten out of a pool or something, - we went up and checked out the view. It's been pretty cloudy, but it was cool to get up there and look around. Then we started the run down.
It was steep, but everything was fine until we made a left at some park and started running/walking through this slope maintenance trail. Because everything is built on the side of a mountain in Hong Kong they have these Slope Maintenance trails to set up fences to prevent boulders and such from rolling down the mountain and taking out buildings, but you aren't supposed to run down them.
So it seemed like a nice trail at first, then everything was fenced off. so after 20mins of walking we finally found steps down, and a weird access path, with more steep steep steps, then a ladder, like a maintenance ladder that has the circles around them and that goes down into a shed. Luckily this one wasn't locked and we made it out. It's always adventures when I plan what we are doing...
After coming back from our run we took a shower, and had a nap, then went to IFC Mall - also there are no regular malls in HK, they are all Rodeo drive, with Gucci, Prada, etc. but it is cool to walk around. IFC mall is only like a fifteen minute walk, so it was fun to walk around with fancy shmancy people. And the view from there across the harbour is really pretty.
Next day was Saturday - we went for a nice shorter, less-strenuous Harbour run, and then decided to go hop on the train to go somewhere - we decided to go to Causeway Bay and again ran into a million super nice malls. And this crazy street protest, claiming that the Communist Party in China is killing prisoners for their organs, I don't know if it's legit or not, but crazy regardless.
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| Crazy Street Protest - he wasn't really doing surgery, but we initially thought he was |
We ran into some cool stairs from the Olympics in Beijing
A sweet Mercedes Dealership
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| Cami Posing it out beside a SLS AMG 3.5Million HKD |
Also cool streets with lots of pretty lights.
The best mall was Times Square mall, but we also had a yummy chocolate Banana thing, and a taro bubble milk yummy drink before we got to Times Square Mall.
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| Times Square |
I bought Cami some lipstick that she fell in love with and it was cool just to see all of the hustle and bustle that is Hong Kong. It's kind of nice because we are so near all of these busy areas, but where we are in Sheung Wan is mostly full of locals and isn't as commercialized. Well not americanized commercialism anyway, like there are spice shops and dehydrated fish shops and such, but no fancy malls. But there was some nice looking cars right outside of our place.
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| My new ride outside of our place |
So Sunday we went to Church. We took the train to Wan Chai and ran into some missionaries that told us how to get to it, as we might have gotten lost otherwise.
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| Cami outside of Church |
It is a cool building with chapels on every couple floors. It even has a small gym and it's big enough it could be a ward. The members were super friendly and all in all it was a good time. Cami and I got invited to go for Dinner when she was in Relief Society and I met some guys, mostly lawyers and bankers, in Priesthood. When we were all done church it was raining and we had no umbrella, so we booked it to the MTR through the rain, went home for a bit and then tried to take a bus to our Dinner date.
Except buses in HK don't have transfers and the bus driver don't speak english and this one scowled at us when we tried to communicate. There also aren't any obvious ways of getting the bus driver to stop so anyway we missed our stop and then ended up taking a cab instead. But we were on a double decker bus which was cool.
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| On the double decker BUS - I brought an umbrella this time |
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| They are mostly all double deckers |
So we went up into the hills and our Cab stopped at these huge towers. We went up the 17th floor and there place was practically as big as our house back in Calgary with a 12 person table and we had homemade pizza and chatted the night away. We got some tips on living in Hong Kong and we talked about running -as one of the guys there was big into running- wakeboarding -they had taken the young men out wake boarding the day before - also the Relief Society gets together all the time and goes on outings and it was pretty fun. Super nice people.
Anyway, that is all for now! Peace out and send us some posts!!!
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