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)