Concert Season!!!!

Watch out world!  Hong Kong has hit 53.6 degrees Fahrenheit (12 degrees Celsius) and that means that it is time to issue the Cold Weather Warning from the Hong Kong Observatory.  For those of us from the Northern United States and Canada, this seems like such a ridiculous thing to do, but when we consider the fact that most buildings in Hong Kong are designed to be cool (temp wise :) ) and do not contain any sort of heating system, 53.6 at night might be a little bit on the nippy side - especially with a humid wind from the ocean.  Still the warnings with earnest language like "under no circumstances," "avoid prolonged exposure at all costs," and "don't light fires indoors" make us chuckle.

Swarovski Crystal Christmas Tree

What you don't know is that she is wearing shorts and a tank top while drinking this hot chocolate!!

We have not been able to blog for a while because as it is for music teachers and musicians everywhere, December is the month of MANY Winter/Holiday/Christmas concerts.  Tim had three concerts in a row one week and Christine had three concerts with three different ensembles spread out over ten days.  Holiday and Christmastime performance expectations are the same all over the world :)

Christine and "Saxy Santa":)

The Christmas season here has been beautiful and calm.  It is almost cool enough to justify hot chocolate on the porch but we haven't quite gotten there yet.  The malls and promenades are all bedecked in lights and sculptures and the shops are all putting out their red and green and Santa and Christmas related materials and sales.  We had the annual staff Christmas party last week and the school has been filled with sounds and sights related to Christmas and the Christmas season.

Christmas Explosion!!!- Sham Shui Po

We wish each and every one of you a safe and rest-filled Winter/Holiday/Christmas Break this year.       Please spend time with your friends and family and do things that you have been waiting to do and make you a better person.  Take time to listen and share (but maybe focus on the listening part :) ) and make sure that you let the people you love know that you love them.

Hugs and love,

Tim and Christine

"Merry Christmas- Big Event" :)

Tokyo...and BEYOND!!!! :)

Read through the blog and find out the big Baumann news at the end!!! (It does not involve having a baby.  Sorry.)

Every now and again, an international traveler will find themselves asking "Why does my culture do things like that?" and "Why on earth would they think to make this in this fashion?"  These questions may be provoked by even the smallest of events or sightings and can really create a fabulous new lens to look through the world.  It is through this lens that Christine and I most recently enjoyed our first ever American Thanksgiving Fried Rice :)

Thanksgiving here in Hong Kong was an event for the memory books.  With both of us teaching a bit in the middle school, we helped out with the middle school Thanksgiving lunch and supervised the buffet tables.  It was the COOLEST spread of food for Thanksgiving that I may ever have seen.

For the remainder of our Thanksgiving evening, we used those rusty trusty Disney passes and enjoyed an iced chocolate in 60 F temps, rode around on a flying elephant, and saved the galaxy a few times on Space Mountain.  Our T-day dinner was the yellow lentil meal at one of the restaurants and we relaxed to the fireworks show to conclude the day.

Buddhist Temple/Market

The next morning we flew to Tokyo, Japan to visit friends Wendy and John Rudd who had just relocated there a week earlier.  The city is absolutely beautiful and struck a resemblance in many ways to the Magnificent Mile in Chicago. (but mile after mile...:) While sporting a huge day time population of around 35 million people, most of the city clears out to the suburbs on weekends, evenings, and public holidays.  Our three day trip happened to land on all of those!  Wendy and John were fabulous hosts and took us to all sorts of tourist destinations and authentic, local experiences.  I would highly recommend a Wendy and John anywhere that you may travel :)

One of the high points (literally and figuratively) was a trip to the Park Hyatt Hotel.  At more than 50 stories at the top, it holds a stunning view of the city at night and was home to sizable chunk of the movie "Lost In Translation." It starred Bill Murray, Scarlett Johanssen, and the breathtaking views of the New York Bar on floor 54.  Whilst up on said floor 54, a 4.8 magnitude EARTHQUAKE struck Tokyo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  Oddly enough, we barely felt it at our table, just enough to make one think "Am I on a boat?" The scariest part was Wendy making sure that she got our attention to let us know that this was a real, live earthquake:)  Tokyo is prone to regular earthquakes, so before any foundation can be built, it must first have in it's blueprints a double basement, complete with cement layer, large boulder layer, and then basement.  The rocks absorb all the shock and turn terror and panic into a "gentle sway."

Another great moment was our time in the authentic karaoke room.  According to friends, it can be pronounced "care-ee-okeey" as well as "car-a-okay" as it has been passed from Japan to America and now back to Japan.  Seven of us rented a karoke room for two hours and sang our hearts out to our favorites tunes, from yesterday and today.  They even included two tambourines.  It was EPIC!!! :)

Karaoke Room Screen

Imperial Gardens

Buddhist Temple

We also saw a Buddhist Temple and Shinto Shrine.   The Shinto Shrine was in a gorgeous wooded area just off a train stop and for a several moments one could forget that you were in the middle of one of the densest cities on earth.   There were two weddings there while we walked through and we were able to see the traditional kimono and formal wear.  It is very regal looking. We also visited the Imperial Gardens, just outside the Emperor's estate.  There are only two days in the year that anyone is allowed into the estate!   The trip was rounded with some time in the electronics and gaming district, known for every kind of electronic device you could imagine!

Young child in formal kimono

Exhibit A

One oddity was exceptionally noteworthy.  Japan, being a non-Christian based nation, does not celebrate the religious element of Christmas.  Culturally, it is a meant to be a commercial holiday celebrating love, like Valentine's Day in the US.  KFC (yes, fried chicken) decided to get in on the action and created an idea that all Americans eat KFC on Christmas.  So many people in the densely populated Japan now celebrate Christmas with a Christmas meal of KFC.  Ingenious! See Exhibit A.

And now for the big news:  Christine and I have recently been named Camp Directors of the International Music Camp in the International Peace Gardens between Manitoba and North Dakota.  The job is one of two full time positions offered by the camp and will require us to move to Minot, ND where the year round office is based.  While we are sad to be saying farewell to our Hong Kong family and the city itself, we are honored and ecstatic to be serving a place and people that mean so much to us.  Here is a link to the camp's website if you are interested: http://www.internationalmusiccamp.com.  It is a beautiful place that does such awesome things for young people and adults alike.  Heck, just look at us (exhibit B) :) :) :)  In all seriousness though, we are so honored.

Exhibit B :)

I'd like to close by sharing a few quotes with you.  These were given to me by 1st grade parents at a luncheon that they sponsored for the elementary school teachers.  The author, Dr. Suess, always seemed have deep wisdom and levity in his most simple of verses.  I hope that today they will inspire you to stop and think about life and our everyday moments.  Know that you are loved and thought of and please go out and do all the good you can for whoever you can in your life today.

"If things start happening, don't worry; just go along and you'll start happening too!"

"Don't cry because it is over; Smile because it happened."

"We are all a little weird and life is a little weird and when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours we join up and fall in mutual weirdness and call it love."

Tim and Christine

Indo Trip!

Oh my goodness it has been awhile.  There has been a LOT going on lately - more updates on that coming soon!  I finally got my Indo pics on facebook last night and I figured tonight I would update on that trip :)  Click on any picture to make it larger! :)

At the school where Tim and I teach, the high school and middle school each take one week (HS in the spring, MS in November) off of regular classes and go do something else.  There are quite a few adventure trips (abroad and local) and service trips (abroad and local) to choose from.  Students are required to participate in something for Week Without Walls (WWW).  They are also required to do a service trip twice during their time here - once in middle school and once in high school.  Teachers end up chaperoning the trips.  :)  At the beginning of the school year the principal asked all of the teachers who were not assigned a trip yet (I am based in the middle school) what they wanted to do.  One of the options was going to Indonesia.  Since my aunt and uncle lived in Indonesia and I thought it would be cool to see, I jumped at the chance to go.

The under the plane camera! :)

There was a total of 24 students who went on the trip.  The Indo trip is a service trip.  We had two days where we worked in a village and the third day was spent teaching English lessons to the students at the school in the village.  They only spoke VERY limited English and we had some translators to help us out for the week.  Here is a recap of how the week went.  It all started with one full day of travel:

Longboats in Indonesia

On Sunday I went downstairs at 3:30am to go check on the taxi that would go around and pick myself and the other three adults up and take us to the airport.  It was EARLY and Tim was a trooper.  He came downstairs to say goodbye :)  We got to the airport by 5am and everyone was there within 15 minutes.  It was AWESOME not having to run through the airport to catch the plane.  The airlines let the 28 of us (24 students and 4 adults) get on the plane first.  We were at the back of the plane and the flight ended up not being full at all.  Everyone was able to spread out over the back and that was really nice :)  After the flight to Singapore we took a bus about 45 minutes to get to the ferry terminal.  Thankfully there was a mall with lots of stuff to look at while we waited for the ferry to Batam, Indonesia.  After the 45 minute to an hour long boat ride (it was a fast ferry like the ones to Macau so it was really smooth) we got off the boat in Indonesia (but we were not done with travel yet).  We piled our suitcases and ourselves into longboats and rode for almost two hours to get to where we were staying.

Telunas

The place where we were based for the week is called Telunas Beach.  It is a "resort" where you can either stay and sit on the beach all day, but the resort also works with villages to help them fill their communities needs such as prenatal care, education and more.  They host groups year round and the groups go to work in about 20 different villages.  Mike the guy in charge said that the village we visited only gets foreign visitors about two to three times a year!

The Welcome Drink at Telunas Beach

When we arrived we were given a delicious welcome drink made from super fresh orange juice, pineapple juice, sprite and ice blended together.  It was SO tasty!!  It was then time for a delicious dinner and then on to the evening activity.  We had a cultural briefing that night which included how to say hello in the local language (selmat pagi!), how NOT to react when going into a village and what is considered polite and impolite (eating with the right hand is good, pointing with your whole hand or thumb is good, eating with your left hand is bad, pointing with a finger is bad, etc).  Everyone then went to bed wiped from a very full day of travel.

The group with some of the students :)

Monday we headed to the village and we were greeted at the pier by all of the school children with hand drums and clapping.  They led us up the hill to the school where some of them performed some martial arts moves before the welcoming ceremony began.  The teachers welcomed us and then students brought us fresh doughnuts (the best I have EVER had) and some sweet tea that puts southern sweet tea to shame.  It was absolutely delicious and so nice of them to do.

Doughnuts and Tea!!! :)

After the welcoming ceremony our students got to work painting and working on planting some flowers and trees to help make the school a more beautiful and welcoming place.  It was pretty funny seeing the middle school students do some manual labor.  I am glad that they kept going instead of giving up.  There was a girl that came up to me towards the end of the day and taught me how to play the clapping game that she and her friends were doing.  While neither one of us spoke the other's language the pattern of the rhythms and speech was enough to be able to do it together.  :)  I realized later on that it was the same girl that I was with in the group picture above that we took right before getting to work (so we didn't forget to take a group shot).  We headed back with a few hours left in the day for free time and dinner.  I was able to take a walk on the beach and I found a fully intact sand dollar :)  The weather was not too hot and the sunset that night was absolutely beautiful :)

Baby Sand Dollar!

:)

On Tuesday we headed back to the village a little bit later (thanks to a crazy thunderstorm).  It was the same work as the day before - finishing planting, working on stripping paint from a wall and then painting other sections of the school.  We finished early and our students played in the yard with their students before we left :)  It was another really nice day in the village :)

My friend and I

On Wednesday we went to teach English lessons in the village.  The students there were very willing to learn and were super well behaved and patient with our students and the process of our kids describing a task and the translator translating for them.  It was fun to see my students transform from awkward teachers to pretty competent ones by the end of the morning.  It was all pretty basic English - numbers, letters, simple words, but the students that my group had seemed to be engaged the entire time.  Afterwards there was some play time and then there was a closing ceremony where the teachers presented my school with a boat which is a replica of the racing boats that they have at Teluk Bakau.  It was a really cool thing.  I hope that if a school comes to visit my school we can be just as hospitable to them!

The local students before being dismissed to their classrooms

The boat for ICS

 After the closing ceremony there were lots of tears both by our students and their students.  It was a really cool moment seeing our middle school students' lives be touched by the experience.  My friend found me right before we left and we played the clapping game one more time before we boarded the boat.  She was so sweet.  I just wonder what her future holds for her - I hope she will get to be one of the kids who will get to go to middle school and high school (on another island).

:)

One of the high school students (she attends classes on another island)

Walking down the pier to leave the village

 We boarded the boats and lots of the students ran down to the houses by the pier to wave goodbye.  I feel very lucky that they allowed us to come into their village with their customs and allowed us to see what their life is like.  I hope we were not too much of a burden to them.

Saying Goodbye

On Thursday we got to do a hike in the jungle!  It was so awesome to move and get some walking in  and just go.  I tried to stay by our guide Mike and I got to hear all about the jungle.  I tried jungle blueberries, watched kids eat termites, found the biggest nastiest spider ever, saw rubber being harvested from a tree, saw pitcher plants, wild boar tracks and wild monkeys.  :)  We hiked to a waterfall and got in the water which was sooo cool and refreshing :)  Lots of students jumped in (with the supervision of the Telunas folks).

The Waterfall!

While working on the village was awesome and an amazing experience, hiking in the jungle was another that was just as cool but in different ways.  I don't know that I would get tired of that hike.  It was such a neat way to experience the environment around us and see what is just beyond the mangroves :)

The path back to the boat

 We got back to the boats (you had to take a boat everywhere) and went back through the mangrove forest to get back to Telunas.  The mangroves are so fascinating - its a place where plants must be able to handle both fresh water and salt water - its where the river meets the sea.  When they picked us up they only had one longboat and one smaller fiberglass speed boat.  It worked out that I was on the little speedboat and that was exhilarating!  We went so fast and it was soooo fun!

The mangroves and a long boat

One of the things I appreciated the most about being there was that the environment had such an impact on daily life.  You were more connected to nature.  Certain activities (piers to use, shrimping and where you could jump off of the deck) depended on the tides and we only used the boats when the thunderstorms died down (because we could delay going to the village - I am really thankful it didn't happen when we were on the way to the airport!!).  It was so nice being able to be outside more during the day.  It was sort of like camp and that made me smile :)  I really appreciated the killer sunset on the last night.  It was sooooo breathtaking - especially for about five minutes :)

Best Sunset on the Last Night :)

On Friday we repeated the travel process, just in reverse order.  We started with the longboats, went to the ferry, took the bus to the airport, and then got to the airport.  Tim came to the airport to meet me and we hopped on the next bus that dropped off near home :)

One of the longboats on the final morning

Overall it was a fantastic trip with super responsible students (they were always in the right places!) and other teachers who were very easy to be with and fun to be around.  I loved getting to experience another culture and being able to see the jungle on the hike.  It was just wonderful :)  I am very thankful for the chance to go :)

There has been lots of other stuff going on - we will update on that and our Tokyo trip another night :) <3 Christine

Life since Disney

Life since Disney has been quite busy.  We had parent teacher conferences, a dinner trip to Sai Kung with our neighbor's aunt and uncle (and our neighbors too:), Halloween and getting ready for the pre visit by the accreditation crew to school.  I found a harpist for the Christmas concert (for Fantasia on Greensleeves by Vaughan Williams), and have been getting ready to go to Indonesia next week for Week Without Walls (I'll come back to that).

On Halloween all of the 7th floor folks got together and we had trick or treating for the kids and a pizza party for everyone.  Tim and I dressed up as Hogwarts Students (thanks to a friend from Chippewa and fellow grad student of mine).  It was so nice getting everyone together :)  We even had halloween music playing in the background thanks to Pandora and my vpn.

Happy Halloween!

Decorations!  They were awesome :)

This past weekend was a really nice one.  We had a Pilates class on Saturday morning, hung out and read at Pacific Coffee in the afternoon before dinner.  On Sunday we went to church, sung in the choir, had another wonderful lunch there and then headed to the Peak to walk the Peak Trail and hang out on the little outdoor patio of Pacific Coffee at the peak.  :)  Here are some Peak pics - the last time we went we were thwarted from the trail by crazy rainstorms.  Sections of the peak trail were built around 1913 and it consists of this concrete path held up by pillars.  You can see some of the original iron and concrete work in the pics below :)  Click on any of the pictures to make them larger :)

A statue in front of a house on the Peak Trail

Original Railings on the Peak Trail

Hong Kong Island by Day

As promised from earlier - Week Without Walls is when the entire middle school empties and goes elsewhere for class for the week.  There are local service and adventure groups as well as groups traveling internationally for service and adventure trips.  I am one of the chaperones for the Indonesia service trip and I am looking forward to traveling there and seeing it :)  We will be building volleyball courts, teaching English lessons and who knows what else.  I'll have an update on that when I am back.

Even with the craziness that is going on in life right now things are really good.  I decided to do the thankful thing every day this month.  I find that some days the crazy starts to take over and feel really overwhelming.  It is nice to force myself to remember that I do have a lot to be thankful for.  There is a song that I can't stop listening to lately.  If you haven't heard it go ahead and check it out.  Its quite clever but the point of the song helps me remember to not become an almost 30 fuddy duddy when I find myself tempted to do so when I can be a slightly over 25 fun loving adventure seeking person.

Keep Your Heart Young by Brandi Carlile

"You gotta keep your heart young

Don't go growing old before your time has come.

You can't take back what you have done

You gotta keep your heart young."

Hong Kong Island by Night

Love,

Christine and Tim

The Most Magical Place On Earth!!!!!!!:)

MTR train to Disneyland!!!

Well...After many months of being responsible adults and taking care of personal affairs and moving half way across the world, Christine and I finally indulged the "big kid" in both of us.  We are now the proud owners of yearlong passes to Hong Kong Disneyland, the most magical place on the planet.  And to celebrate our new elite membership status, we went to attend not one, but TWO days this past week.

I should preface our adventure by saying that our school calendar allowed us days off from work on both Monday and Tuesday.  Monday was in exchange for being at school the previous Saturday for the Walkathon/Fall Festival fundraiser.  The day began early with a three mile hike along the river walk that ended at school where walkers were greeted with all sorts of fun things from a giant bouncy castle, dunk tank, and HUGE amounts of booths sponsored by classroom teachers and different organizations affiliated with the school.  Great fun was had by all, including the hundreds of small children that rushed the bouncy castle between 1pm and 2:30pm during our shift.  The one exception is the poor middle school girl that got a bloody nose while stuck in a "bouncy valley" that required both hands to climb out.  That one was kind of a bummer.  Thank goodness for readily accesible bleach:)

Tuesday was a national holiday for grave sweeping (part of Buddhist tradition where people visit the graves of their deceased loved ones and clean off the area and perform sacred rituals), so we ANOTHER day to adventure.  Our original plan was to check out pink dolphins off one of the island coasts, but the tour boats only leave on certain days of the week.  Unfortunately Tuesday was not one of those days.  Everything else was closed because of the holiday.  One of our friends also has a yearlong pass and she wanted to go, so we did the only thing that friends can do.  We agreed:)

Sleeping Beauty's Castle

So that is the background of how we ended up at Disneyland two days in a row.  Unlike Orlando's DisneyWorld that is spread out over many parks each with a different themes, Hong Kong Disneyland is all located in one park with individually themed areas.  (Much like Disneyland in CA and Paris Disneyland I believe.)  Fantasyland, Tomorrowland, Adventureland, Toy Storyland, and Grizzly Gulch are all located here.  There is also Sleeping Beauty's castle located in the middle of the park.  Apparently Cinderella's castle is only in FL. Oh, and everything is in three languages: Cantonese, Mandarin, and English.

The first driving in three months!

Excuse me while I use the little astronauts room:)

Photo Fun on the MadHatter's Tea Party

Highlights/Recommendations from our two days of adventures?  Most definitely the Grizzly Bear Rollercoaster.  There are cute fake bears all over the place that cause mischief with your rollercoaster ride.  The Tahitian Terrace restaurant serves Halal certified dining options (much greater demand for that in this part of the world) and the lentil lunch options taste SOOOO good.  The Festival of the Lion King is a live performance show complete with aerialist, dancing, and fire and great singing and music. The Golden Mickeys highlight some of the lesser known Disney characters, especially Mulan and Quasimodo, two of our favorites:)  Space Mountain was a Halloween version of the ride that wasn't all that fun.  The Stitch Encounter was a fun interactive show to see, and Christine and I even got a planet named after us.  The planet was later destroyed when Stitch accidentally misspelled Christine's name and said "Delete" to the computer, but it was fun while it lasted:)  And the FIREWORKS!!!!!!

Fireworks display

Speaking of Stitch, we have a new addition to our Hong Kong family.  The stuffed Simba that Christine has had since 1994 now has a friend.  Stitch joined us on Monday night and the two little guys seem to be getting along nicely.

On a more serious note, we have continued to settle in and find an equilibrium for Baumann life here in Hong Kong.  The seasons are changing from really hot to kind of warm all the time and we are continuing to learn more about ourselves, our craft as teachers, and our world everyday.  We are thankful for all of the fun notes, well wishes, and hugs from back home via the internet and we hope that these blog posts find everyone doing well and working hard to do good things in their lives and become more of the people they were meant to be with each passing day.  Love and hugs to you all from Hong Kong.

Tim and Christine
(and Simba and Stitch)

Mid-October Already?

Well, another week has already passed and I can't believe it is already the middle of October!  It seems that as soon as October hit we had some cooler weather (relatively speaking haha).  So far I have only found about three leaves that look close to fall, but thanks to the increasing number of Halloween decorations for sale in stores and in bakeries it does seem like October is indeed here!  Here is a recap of the adventures of the past week:

Monday was the first rehearsal of the Hong Kong Community Wind Band that Tim and I joined.  It is held here at school and was started by one of our colleagues.  He asked us if we wanted to conduct and play and we said yes!  Tim is playing oboe and I am on percussion.  It is also fun to conduct a band and keep the skills of working with winds and brass sharp. :)

Tuesday I took it easy (stayed home and caught up on some tv shows) and Tim ran off to the island to go hear a piano concert.  He said it was a wonderful concert and so worth going on a school night.

Wednesday we experienced the dentist for the first time in Hong Kong (man our lives are thrilling aren't they...).  It was time for the every 6 month cleaning.  I am not sure what they used but it only took 10 minutes to clean my teeth.  I think maybe it was some sort of ultrasonic thing?  I don't know - it made a horrendous noise but thankfully didn't hurt.  The noise was way more grating than what they did.  The dentist stayed in the room and did the actual cleaning while the assistant just held the suction thingy so there were four hands working on my mouth at a time.  We got some dinner at New Town (Tim got a baked potato thing that was awesome and I got my fav - the grilled shrimp burger), got some fro-yo (that was cheap thanks to groupon!) and headed home.

Hanging out with Linus after getting my teeth cleaned :)

Hello Kitty flower arrangement at the mall

MEGABOX!!!

Thursday we went to a movie!  Pause for a second and rewind back to this spring.  I love watching America's Next Top Model (and Tim got sucked into it too).  While I could pass on the petty drama, I absolutely love the photo shoots and watching the photographers go through the process of setting up the shoot, directing the shoot and then seeing what the results are at the end.  Last spring they went to Hong Kong as part of a challenge and they worked with an actor from Hong Kong for one of the challenges - Nicholas Tse.  Tim and I watched those Hong Kong/Macau episodes super closely since we knew we were moving here :).  Fast forward again to about a month ago - there were posters for a movie called "The Bullet Vanishes" all around Hong Kong and who was in it?  Nicholas Tse!  It was almost like seeing an old friend!  There are always new movie posters here but I don't see a huge amount of familiar faces.  Anyway fast forward again to about 2 weeks ago and there was a groupon to go see "The Bullet Vanishes" and so we purchased it.  That is the long story of how we went to the movies and saw a movie in Cantonese (with English and Chinese subtitles).  Anyway, it ended up being an awesome movie!  It is a murder mystery with some old school western-ish/steampunk-ish qualities and was really well done.  Even though we didn't understand anything in Canto (other than the 6 or so words we know from Canto class), it was a very entertaining and enjoyable film that kept you guessing.  I REALLY liked it and I highly recommend you guys looking for it on Netflix at some point in the future.

Tim in the 40 person Theatre

Going to a movie in Hong Kong is different than going to one in the US.  Tickets are about $10USD each and when you purchase your ticket you actually choose the seat you want to sit in and watch the movie from.  They have theatres of varying sizes too.  The one we were in only had 40 seats in it (while others with brand new movies are more the standard size that you find in the US).  The theatre we ended up going to is a mall called MEGABOX (yes all in caps) and every time I saw it I wanted to say it like a transformer would.  It really was a giant futuristic mall thing with a billion stores and was very cool.  We had some dinner at Ikea afterwards and sat outside on the rooftop patio watching the harbor.

Food from Ikea

:)

Friday we had a nice dinner with some colleagues and then had a low key SSR night at home and read books and the newspaper :)  The newspaper that we get (The South China Morning Post) is pretty good but I think one of my favorite parts is that it runs old Calvin and Hobbes comic strips :)

Saturday Tim went to an Orff workshop (elementary music drumming thing) and I went to yoga and then hung out in Victoria Park until he was done.  It was good to have a low key day.  While I got some good exercise and walked around a whole bunch, it wasn't a frantic pace which was nice.  I also discovered the public pools of Hong Kong :) (more on that on Sunday).  We had dinner at a favorite place at the IFC mall, wandered around with our ice cream cones and then headed home.  

Sunday Tim was at his workshop for a second day.  I went to church and sung in the choir (and had a good time hanging out with everyone).  After that was finished I headed up to Tai Po to go see the Hong Kong Railway Museum.  It is a free museum that started when they preserved the old station in Tai Po.  Even though Hong Kong has been around for a VERY long time, there is not a lot of preserved history here.  For the most part everything is quite new so the fact that there is something saved from the early 1900s is unusual.  It was a neat place and I enjoyed just sitting in an old coach while figuring out my next move. 

Tai Po Market Station (Hong Kong Railway Museum)

Some artwork on the station

After the railway museum I decided to check out the Tai Po Swimming Pool.  I discovered that there are quite a few public swimming pools here in Hong Kong when I was in Victoria Park and I was intrigued to see what it was all about.  I found the free observation area and discovered that the Tai Po pool had 1 lap pool, 2 "training pools" (shallower ones), a water park (similar to Kamp Dels where we go camping with my sister) and 4 water slides!  Using my trusty phone I discovered that there are 3 pools in Shatin (the area where we live) and one of those happens to be a few stops down the line from where we live.  I went home, grabbed our swimming stuff and met Tim at the pool.  The pool in Ma On Shan had about the same facilities as the Tai Po one and it was a lot of fun swimming outside.  The water slides were nice (more relaxing than thrilling) and I think about the only thing that would make the pool better would be a lazy river to float around on.  :)  After swimming we ate some delicious ramen and headed home for laundry and getting ready for the week.  

Walkathon is coming up next weekend and I am looking forward to some more adventures that next weekend will bring!  Thanks to Walkathon on Saturday and a public holiday we do not have school on Monday and Tuesday.  Yay for more exploring :)

We hope you all are doing well and that you have a great week :)
Christine and Tim