I apologize I have not been doing a great job of updating my blog. I was quite sick over Christmas. I had a cold that turned into bronchitis. I still have the remnants of a cough after 3 weeks. As bad as it was being very sick over Christmas I am thankful that we had a week and a half of from school so I could get healthy. It has been frustrating as this is the third time I have been sick in our almost 5 months in Hong Kong. I think it is mostly working with these young children that are often sick. I think the pollution may have some to do with it as well. I have been drinking Emergen C packets and Echinacea tea everyday so I am hoping this will help!
Ok, back to the Holidays. Thanksgiving is an American Holiday. (It is quite surprising how many people asked if they celebrate Thanksgiving here in Hong Kong.....the answer is no, by the way, they do not celebrate Thanksgiving here). Nate and I did go out for a traditional Thanksgiving dinner at an Italian Restaurant called Fat Angelo's. A little silly eating a traditional American Thanksgiving at an Italian restaurant in Hong Kong but it was delicious! Our meal included light and dark meat Turkey, sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, mixed vegetables, salad, bread rolls, stuffing, gravy and cranberry sauce. It was delicious! I was actually upset not to be home for Thanksgiving. I did not realize that I have never ever been away from my family on Thanksgiving before. Nate did an amazing job of comforting me and the dinner also helped :)
Christmas was a completely different story. I have never seen so many Christmas decorations in my life! Hong Kong is filled with malls after malls after malls and stores after stores after stores. Everywhere we went there were elaborate Christmas decorations. I loved it! We go to a giant mall called Langham Place almost everyday after work to head to the gym. They started playing Christmas music at the end of November. This made me extremely happy. I was very excited to teach my "babies" (what I call my 2 year olds at school) Christmas Songs. Throughout December I taught them Jingle Bells, We Wish You a Merry Christmas and O Christmas Tree. Very easy versions of course. I also bought a red santa hat to wear to work. We had a Christmas Party at work on December 21st. We each pitched in $50 HKD ( about $7) for food. They had Pizza Hut Pizza, sushi, mini donuts, sausages, cheesecake, and lots of other traditional Chinese food. We each received a little gift as well. I was given 4 tubes of hand cream from Crabtree and Evelyn. Very nice. My coworker friend Becky gave me a gift of a hand painted picture and an 8 pack of Ferrero Rocher. For whatever reason, Ferrero Rochers are a HUGE deal out here. They sell them everywhere!
Between November and Christmas Nate and I did our best to get into the Christmas spirit. We bought Christmas sweaters. Mind complete with reindeer. We went to a Christmas Fair at the Hullet House Market that had a variety of Christmas crafts and lots of food. We sipped on mulled wine and egg nog. Both of which, I decided, are good for about three sips and then are too strong! We bought a mini Christmas tree and decorations for our room. We attended an event called Santa Con. When I say event I mean bar crawl. Everybody was dressed up in some sort of costume or sant hat. It was fun to see everybody so dressed up and festive. Nate and I implemented our own version of "25 Days of Christmas" for movies. We watched Elf, A Christmas Story and Home Alone about 10 times each.
We made plans to go to Macau for two nights over Christmas. Macau is where we went when we first arrived in Hong Kong to activate our visas. Macau is considered the Asian Las Vegas. It's filled with casinos! We arrived in Macau on Sunday December 23rd. It was actually a bit chilly. It was down in the 50's at night and with the surrounding water it feels cold. (And if you know me at all you know I am always cold all the time). Unfortunately, this was the height of my bronchitis. I was extremely excited to get to our hotel so I could take a bath! I brought along some bath petals for a nice hot bubble bath. I was chilly from our ride to the hotel. Once we got into the hotel room I wanted to crank up to the heat. Welp, there was no heat, only air conditioning. Alright, I thought, it's time for that hot bath. I could barely fit into the bath tub and the water wasn't as hot as I wanted. I was frustrated but I was just thankful to be in any sort of a bath! That first night I drank some wine to try to dull the pain in my chest. We found out there was a Mexican Food restaurant not too far from the hotel. The fajitas were amazing as were the chips and salsa. After dinner we walked to the Venetian. They had some amazing Christmas decorations outside include fake snow! Live bands were singing Christmas songs as well. I felt badly for Nate because just the simple act of walking was very painful and I needed to go lay down (except for laying down caused horrific coughing, I don't think either of us slept for about a week!). The next day we walked around Macau and saw a very neat area called the Fisherman's Warf which was right on the water. That night we went back to the Venetian for Christmas Eve dinner at McSorley's. We had a delicious all you can eat buffet including prime rib, turkey, gravy, yorkshire pudding (which is not pudding at all, come to find out, it's more like a bread roll!), roasted potatoes, macaroni and cheese, brussel sprouts, carrots, salad, cake balls and brownies! All very good.
The next day was Christmas! We had to check out by 11 so we soaked in as much of the hotel as we could. This was really just watching TV and taking another bath. We caught the ferry back to Hong Kong. My coworker Tracy invited us to her house for Christmas dinner. Tracy lives on Lamma Island. So just as soon as we were off the ferry from Macau to Hong Kong we had to hop on another ferry out to Lamma Island. Tracy was making a heap of food and asked that we just bring some beer. We know a thing or two about beer so we thought this was a great deal! Tracy met as at the ferry peer to take us to her flat (yep that's right, nobody says apartment out here, they say flat, and Tracy is from England as well). We sipped on wine, beer and sausage rolls. My cough was getting unmanageable so Tracy made me sip some sort of whiskey liquor which actually did help tame the cough. Tracy made so much delicious food! We had sausage rolls, turkey, roasted potatoes, cauliflower with cheese, gravy, mince pies, chocolate marshmallow cookies and a Christmas Cake. After dinner we each grabbed a cracker. These are little toys that two people pull and it makes a "Pop!" noise when it cracks. Inside there is a little toy and a little trivia question along with a paper hat or crown. Tracy's friend Ruth was nice enough to give us a card and a huge tin of Irish Shortbread cookies. After several hours we had to hop on the ferry back to Hong Kong then jump on the MTR home. It was a long and fun day! Nate and I did not exchange big presents for Christmas as we treated ourself to the hotel in Macau for Christmas. We did have stockings which we filled with little treats for each other that included: pizza combos, fruit mentos, cookies and cream Hershey kisses, chocolate gold coins, reeses peanut butter cups, socks, Lululemon headbands, Pacific Coffee gift certificates and strawberry pocky sticks.
We still had off until the 2nd of January. Over the next few days I tried to rest as much as possible. Grandma and Grandpa mailed us a delightful Christmas package that included peanut butter fudge, chocolate nut fudge, white chocolate nut fudge, almond bark, 2 lbs of cheddar cheese and olives! I snacked on all of these delicious treats over our break. We say Twilight and Les Miserables as well. We really did try to do as much as we could and thankfully each day I felt a little better.
For New Year's Eve we found a pretty good deal at a bar/restaurant called Pier 7 which is on the top of Pier 7 in the Central Harbor. For about $65 American $ (or $500 HKD) it was all you can drink and eat. We thought we'd be able to see the epic firework display from the roof. We met up with a group of seven other people. The night was very fun! Unfortunately we could not see all of the fireworks but we were able to see quite a bit. It was chilly out for sure! When the 2nd of January rolled around we were not ready to return to work. We keep telling ourselves that we just have a little over 3 weeks until we will be in Mexico!
