Arrived in Hong Kong

I have arrived in Hong Kong safely! I started work on monday. been pretty busy at work. The new staff come in this monday so I am working on getting the training going and then we have a bunch of camps in march which i have been planning. Things are going good so far.

The weather is perfect. It is in the mid 70's and not very humid. No waves on the beach yet though.

Shawn and I went to Sai Kung, Big Wave Bay for a surf this weekend. It was amazing. It is clear on the other side of Hong Kong, takes about 4-5 hours to get there from where I live. From where I live we have to take a bus to the ferry then the subway then a bus then a taxi. The taxi drops you off at the top of a mountain where there is a hiking trail, then you have to hike about 1 3/4 hours to the beach. Unless you rent a speed boat for $80US thats the only way to get there. There is a little villiage called Ham Tim there and there is a restaurant that also rents boards and stuff. The waves were cranking! They were so big and strong, two of my surfer friends camp with us and they said they haven't seen waves that strong there before. The one beach where the waves are usaully a lot bigger Shawn and I couldn't even get passed the wave break, we just kept getting pounded and smashed by the waves, so we went over to the other beach just a 5 min walk away. The waves there were still huge and strong, but I was able to get up on a few. Had a few really nice rides. It was the coldest weekend yet... Only about 50-55 degres, and we were out in the water for a few hours. Everyone else had wetsuits, Shawn, Kristian, and I didn't. It was kinds cold. It got into the mid 40's at night when we were camping.

My flight to Thailand was canceled. So Shawn and I are looking for somewhere else to go.

Shawn arrived on Thursday morning (Thanksgiving). It was perfect timing for everything. We had a big camp going on that week, but on Thursday the kids went with their teachers to the Ng Ping and Tai O, so they were gone the entire day. Shawn and I arrived back to my work around 12:30, and my boss bought us Turkeys, and some of us prepared some dishes and we had a huge Thanksgiving meal for everyone at work. I made the green bean dish I like so much, but they don't sell the crunchy onions here, so I used dry stuffing and it worked great! There were a lot of people who never had Thanksgiving or the type of food we are for it, so it was nice to introduce it to people. After lunch we all hung out on the beach and played American Football (Shawn and mine team won of course). The weather was beautiful and we had a great time. Although we did not have home made pie; mom, I missed your apple pie.

I showed Shawn around the city and cheung chau a bit. We also went out to the bars on saturday. It was a good time. We had 2 BBQ's since he has been here, one on our roof and the other at Franz's house. Franz is the South African who is really intense and a crazy outdoor man. We had to walk through a jungle just to get to his house! It was awesome.

This weekend Shawn and I are going to Sai Kung and doing some surfing and camping on the beach! I can't wait, I haven't surfed in like 2 months, i miss it!

I was looking at plane tickets today for either the Philippines or Thailand. I am leaning more towards the Philippines, but after talking to some people I found out that Manila isn't the best place to travel, and Bangkok would be better. My bos also suggested taking a train ride to Laos, it leaves at night and get there first thing in the morning and private sleeper bunks in the train are only $20US. Sounds pretty sweet. So I bought tickets for Shawn and I to Thailand. We go the 15th and come back the 20th.

We have a camp in this week and we did an adventure race today. I was stationed in the speed boat so I collected kids in the boat when they came down from repelling off a cliff and then brought them over to kayaks that they had to take back to Treasure Island.It was pretty chilly for the kids and me, it was about 60 and I was getting wet all day... But other than that is was great.

The Monday Night Bills game finished about 12:30pm our time, so I got to get the live news feed on ESPN website. I was so angry..... So much for them having a really good season, they have been losing a lot lately..... wish I could actually see a game tho.

The weather has finally started to change here. The humidity is way down, and the air is crisp. It got down to 60 degrees over the past 2 days and with the wind it feel pretty chilly. It is the type of weather where the sun is still hot, but the air is cold, so when your in the sun you feel really warm, but once in the shade you want to put on along sleeves. The nights are chilly, last night I slept with my window open and this morning I was very cold and did not want to get out from under the covers. There is no heating in any houses here, so although the weather does not get too cold, when it gets into the 50's there will be just a constant chill... I am planning on buying some more sweaters here.

What a great week it was. Celebrations all over the world for Obama. I was very surprised at the amount of people in Hong Kong who took great interest in the US Election. The kids at camp this week asked us about every half hour on Election Day who won, and they also were really informed about all of it, they were 12 years old. I was on the small island of Cheung Chau on election day and I was worried that I would not be able to get updates because the island is very Chinese and no one speaks English, but in every shop that had a tv the news about the election was on; In Cantonese, but it had a graph and the number of votes so it worked. My French boss Philippe gave the Americans a really nice French bottle of champagne and even though we were at camp, once the kids went to bed we could have it to celebrate. I do not think I ran into one disanointed person in Hong Kong about the turn out of the election. I did hear a lot of comments about how impressed they were that so many Americans voted for Obama.