Yeah, I'll do pictures.
The view from the plane. As most of you know, this was our first time flying, so it was pretty exciting. After about 8 hours though, the excitement wore off. But it's okay, we only had 10 more hours to go from that point...(longest plane ride. ever.)
Getting a "good night's sleep" at the Hong Kong airport. Which was actually a really cool one to walk around in, which I (foolishly) did instead of sleep.
Double decker buses...cool! I loved riding on the top level and these are all over Hong Kong.
Our first morning there was an adventure to say the least. We leave the airport and on the way to the hotel we get split up; us four (us + the interpreter) had to tote all 8 50lb suitcases and about 9 bags over the bumpy side walks and roads for over a kilometer in church clothes (high heels for some of us!), in the rain, while we rushed so we wouldn't be late for church! And since I hadn't slept at the airport...yeah, I'm embarrassed to say it, but I did fall asleep at church. Keeping my eyes open that morning was the most intense battle I've ever lost.
Lychee! Oh yum. It was in season while we were in China and it was everywhere.
Tooth paste ice cream. I have no comment.
We thought driving in Hong Kong was scary (small lanes, fast turns etc). But then we went to mainland China and learned what scary driving really meant.
This is pretty much how all of Hong Kong was. Tropical jungle with apartments and sky scrapers built anywhere they would fit. A neat contrast to Tucson. They have a saying in Hong Kong, "An inch of land, an inch of gold." It cost so much to live there.
So that was Hong Kong folks. We also went to this really cool street market but it was too crowded for pictures. A couple days after arriving we bused to Shenzhen (SHEN-jen), which does slightly border Hong Kong but is officially mainland China.
Both cities (Hong Kong and Shenzhen) are very modern and new. Shenzhen was a huge university city (pictures in the next post) but had only been an anonymous little fishing village 50 years ago. But I'll get to Shenzhen in my next post. Or one of us will anyway :).
