Laura and I left Melbourne at 7am Thursday morning, flew from Orlando to Newark, then onward to Hong Kong. The Hong Kong flight was a greuling 16 hours, and I only managed to sleep 2 hours since leaving my house. Our flight from Newark was delayed an hour, so we flew into HK right after the sun had gone down and got to see fireworks from the plane. The landing was as impressive as I was foretold, scooping around mountains onto the runway.
We arrived around 8pm (HK-time....12 hr difference) and came to our "home". We live in a school; I share a (class)room with three other girls (Laura, Catherine, Kristen), and our team leader family lives in the room next door. The boys are on another floor. I slept on a tiny bed last night, but now I've permanently traded beds with Tayt next door that fits more my size. I love everyone here already and feel at "home" with them.
There's so much to say, so I'm just going to skip to the fun stuff. We met some important people in the HK synod and went to lunch with them today. We were taken to a ridic fancy restaurant and ate so much amazing Chinese food (yet to use a fork). Eating-etiquette was REALLY different from Western etiquette, like seniority at the table and offering food to others before you grab your own. The whole experience was fabulous and I wish it had never ended. Later in the day we went to the supermarket and grabbed some groceries, then walked around Butterfly Beach. We then met up with Roper for dinner and experienced a Hot Pot. We sat around a table with a couple of hot plates with pots on top. Both pots had water, but one had tomatoes and the other had curry spices. Then the waiter kept bringing raw foods over, and we learned that we had to put the food into the water to boil and cook. It was the strangest thing!!! In the back of the restaurant were large fishtanks (like in Red Lobster) with fish, etc....then I saw a guy take a huge net and pull out a HUGE LIVE FISH! Plenty of "see"food. I took a picture of the raw shrimp on our table which prompted all the non-whites in the restaurant to stare and laugh at us. We cooked the shrimp, and then were told to break off the heads, then the legs, then the shell....and it was delish. Other fun foods: frog legs, oysters, and some things we couldn't identify. I guess that's a good thing!
