Hong Kong

Hong Kong was fabulous. Nothing was planned so we had some free time to enjoy and do what we wanted to do.

The day we arrived in Hong Kong we went straight to Ocean Park – a massive theme park. We spent hours there going on all the rides. We thought about going to Disneyland, but after hearing from the locals that we made the right choice, we’re glad we did Ocean Park. We went on all sorts of roller coasters and water rides. They even had some animal exhibits interspersed throughout the rides – like an aquarium, a penguin house, a house for walruses, seals, and sea lions, and even a house for panda bears! We had a blast, and the scenery was amazing because it was on the backside of Hong Kong island and over looked a bunch of other islands and the China Sea. The day we arrived also happened to be the USA’s Independence Day so thankfully the park had an evening show with a few fireworks. So we felt like we celebrated a little.

Our second day there was the day we went to the Hong Kong LDS temple and participated in an endowment session and some sealings. It was beautiful. I loved hearing the sealing ordinance spoken in Chinese (I think). It reminded me of the Lord’s promise that he’ll speak in our own language so that we might understand.

After the temple, Catherine and I went to the LDS Church’s area office building and visited with an acquaintance of hers that is the Executive Secretary to the Area Presidency (which includes Elder Gerrit Gong who used to work at BYU). He told us some fascinating things about the work of the church there in the Asia area.

• Their area covers half of the world’s population and 25 countries, while they only have 1,100 missionaries (out of 70,000 worldwide) and the church only has a presence in 18 of the 25 countries.

• They have an “everyday branch” that holds worship services Tuesday through Sunday for all of the Filipino women that work in Hong Kong. It sounded like they worked in the service/hospitality sector and don’t have any say in when their one day off of work is. So the church holds church services all those days of the week in order to accommodate those sisters.

• The church is looking at a new model of holding church services for those that are too poor to send their whole families to church every week. They are thinking of holding “group services” with 10-15 people in a neighborhood/village on three of the Sundays each month, and then gather the whole branch/ward together once a month for more traditional services.

After meeting with the church, Catherine and I visited with NetDimensions with whom I work for my job at BYU. They host and provide our learning management system that houses all of the online training courses we have. It was so fun to meet all of the support people that I regularly correspond with. They were so nice. They stayed with me for 1.5 hours and answered all of my questions. They seemed excited to see me, especially because they said that they don’t get very many visitors from their clients.

Then Catherine and I headed off to Stanley Market on a bus that took us along the coast of Hong Kong Island. The market wasn’t all that impressive, but it was still cool to get around to the less busy side of Hong Kong Island. Then we came back to take the train/funicular up to the top of Victoria Peak and see the city lights at night – which were beautiful!

On Saturday, Erin, Kara, Bryce, and I took a ferry to Lamma Island. It was a much-needed laid-back kind of day. We slept in. Ate breakfast to our heart’s content. Left to catch the ferry when we felt like it. And then once we got on the island, we just wandered around. We had some of the famous seafood that the island is known for. And then we started walking to the other village on the pathway that takes you there. The cool thing about this island is that there are no roads on it nor are there any high rises. It was truly a tiny little island. The paved pathway between the two villages is how you get to each one. We did see some tiny little vehicles on the island, but they had to be tiny to fit on that pathway. We also stopped by a beach and stuck our toes in the water. The most interesting sight on the island is when we got over to the other village and found that people apparently live on some sort of floating dwelling out in the bay. There are a ton of these humble little floating houses. I also loved all the little houses along the pathway. But I did not love the huge, freaky spiders that hung over the pathway.

We stayed in Hong Kong for Sunday so we could go to church there at one of the international branches. The church services were held in the area office building that Catherine and I visited previously. Then we ended our stay in Hong Kong with some very hot and spicy Indian food before heading off to the airport to catch our flight.

Xiamen University

The university where we attend class is beautiful. The architecture of the buildings is diverse and beautiful – meaning you have some pretty modern looking buildings while others (like the one in which we attend class) are older, more traditional style. There are palm trees all over. There are a million basketball courts all over! They love their basketball. In fact, one of our Chinese classmates, Chris, loves to play and the other students go meet up with him to play. Chris is really quite good at playing!

Their School of Public Affairs building, where we meet for class, is beautiful. It has ivy or something growing all over the outside of it. The classroom is pretty standard. But the building has a coffee shop slash lounge where we all hangout to work on our homework since it has free Wi-Fi, is air conditioned, and is pretty nicely furnished. I spend hours in the lounge working. That’s where I do my work for 10 hours per week.

For class, Carol – our professor – teamed us up with Chinese students for our group assignments. My teammate’s name is Sky. All of the students in our class are graduate students and they are getting their Master of Public Administration (MPA) too. Sky is a hoot. She is almost hyper to be in class with us and get started working on our group assignment. She’s really on the ball. Her English is excellent and she understands most things shared in class. On occasion, Carol will give us some time to chat with our Chinese teammates to make sure they understand everything that Carol is teaching.

Then usually we go to lunch with Sky and Chris after class at their cafeterias that are called, “Canteens.” The food is . . . interesting. They don’t eat a whole lot of vegetables. Nearly every dish is hot – the only stuff that isn’t hot are the drinks, watermelon, yogurts, and ice cream. The Chinese looooove watermelon. It is everywhere. Seriously.

campus sidewalk

Xiamen University administration building

a cool building on campus

basketball courts galore on campus

a cool building on campus

dorms on campus (two fo my classmates too)

the School of Public Affairs building where I attend class

Chinese Laundry

So last week, I had to do my first load of hand washing and line-drying laundry. This is the real deal. No hand wash mode on a clothes washing machine. By hand. In a bucket. Sitting on a chair in my hotel room’s shower. Ringing out my clothes by hand. And hanging them on a clothesline that is strung up from the window to the fire sprinkler in our hotel room. I kind of had to think through how to wash them by hand. This was my process (for good or bad, but it’s the best I could think up!):  

1. Soak them in my bucket with detergent
2. Work on each individual article with my bar of detergent rubbing the bar on the article and then rubbing the article on itself
3. Ring the piece out and put it in Erin’s bucket (Erin is my roommate)
4. Soak them in my bucket in clear water for the first rinse
5. Rinse each individual article with the shower head
6. Soak them again in the other bucket
7. Wring each article out as best as I can with my hands
8. Lay all of the clothes out on a towel
9. Roll up the towel and kneel on it to get more water out
10. Fold the rolled up towel in half and kneel on it again
11. Hang the clothes up on hangers on this cool clothesline that has slots for the hangers to keep them separated

I did my first load of laundry early on Tuesday morning, and they were all dry by Wednesday evening. I’m glad I avoided bringing cotton clothes because they are the ones that took the longest to dry. I mostly brought polyester clothing.

Interesting Cultural Findings (Part II)

The humidity continues to be oppressive and inescapable. Even my books have been affected by it because their pages are warping. I find that I have to drink a lot more water here because I’m sweating it off before it can get through my system for me to pee/tinkle it out.

Our packing list suggested that you pack lots of bug spray and anti-itch cream and they weren’t kidding. In my first day of being in Xiamen, I got two pretty good mosquito bites. I can usually tell when the mosquitos are biting me when they are in the middle of biting me, but not these. We call them “no-see-ums” because you don’t see them biting you! The bites also last a long time! I think I still have my bites and it’s been a week, and my classmates still have theirs from the week before I arrived. Consequently, we all wear bug spray like it’s perfume.

Here in China, the sun rises at 5:20 am and sets at 7:00 pm. It’s crazy early on both ends for the summer! I wake up with the sun that early! And did you know that all of China (which has a greater land mass than the USA) has only one time zone? Kind of crazy considering the contiguous/continental USA has four time zones.

Air travel is awesome in China. Mostly awesome. Let me tell you why. Yeah, maybe the flights are delayed (regularly), but everything else makes up for it. So far I’ve flown on airlines I’ve never heard of such as Hunan Airlines and DragonAir, but they are amazing! Their airport security doesn’t make you take your shoes off nor do you have to take your baggy of liquids out of your carry-on. And best of all, they serve meals on every flight even if the flight is less than an hour long, no extra charge.

Everyday we get a couple new rolls of toilet paper in our room. It has to be a couple rolls because the rolls they give us are seriously mini-rolls. I’m talking they maybe have a quarter of the paper on them when compared to the amount we have on our regular-sized rolls in the USA.

My Happy International Traveling Discovery

So exciting!! I discovered that all of the charging cords for my Apple products (my iPhone, iPad, and MacBook) come with their own voltage converters! Which is so super fantastic since the power adapters and converters you buy for international travel cannot be used for prolonged periods, electronics, or computers. The battery charger for my camera has the same deal! So love it.

The Church in Xiamen

Church in Xiamen is only two hours long! From 10 am to 12 noon. We go to the Branch President’s home here in Xiamen where he has a bunch of chairs, a table for the sacrament, a laptop, and conference-call phone all set up and prelude music playing. The branch is a virtual branch held via Skype and conference call for people that reside allover China (basically everyone else that doesn’t live in Chengdu, Xi’an, Shanghai, or Beijing).

The branch presidency counselor, who resides in a different city, conducted my first Sunday in Xiamen. He made some announcements for their branch and reminded everyone listening in of the laws and regulations against proselyting while in China. Then we sang the opening hymn, had an opening prayer, called a sister to be Relief Society secretary, and sang a sacramental hymn. Then they muted the conference call for eight minutes while everyone at each location blesses and passes the sacrament. Then we got back on the call to listen to two speakers, sang a closing hymn, and had a closing prayer followed by a ten-minute break.

After that, they conducted a roll call to take attendance of who all was listening in. There must have been a dozen or so cities called out over the conference call to see if anyone was in attendance from those cities. We had the biggest group in attendance with 14 of us (10 from BYU, the branch president and his wife, and two others). Other groups were only handfuls: two, four or five people at each location. Then we resumed with a speaker, who happened to be the other counselor in the branch presidency. He told us about his experiences with the church in other foreign countries where he has lived, and he has lived in a lot of foreign countries! Then we closed with prayer and that was it.