Yup...It's my ultimate dream city

Hong Kong island as viewed from the Star Ferry
The Star Ferry....the most picturesque 10-minute crossing between Kowloon and HK Island
Busy busy.....it's not just me that loves HK....look at all of these peoples!
Me and Jenny on the Star Ferry looking all fresh and ready for adventure.....12 hours later we would look much more tired, and yet totally content with our first of many HK Saturdays (the first picture was zoomed waaaay in and only got our nostrils, but alas I am getting better at this 'taking pictures of myself' type photography)

Hmmm, so it's been awhile since I've posted.....what has been going on? Well....it is the week before Halloween in Shenzhen and you must know what that means...Halloween lessons for the kiddos...ergo...I go to class armed with A) music such as the theme to Ghostbusters and the Monster Mash, B) pictures of crazy foreigners in costumes like Genie from Aladdin or Elvis or a Pirate girl...even costumes for dogs...zorro dog, cowboy etc. C)worksheets with Halloween vocabulary and most importantly D) CANDY and voila! the week is destined to go well. I've been using the second half of all of my classes to have my students make up their own Halloween costume shops replete with name, goods, prices and a drawing of their best-selling product. The boys seem to think that "rubbish shop" or "rubbish clothes" are terribly appropriate for Halloween. I even had some clever girls make up an edible costume shop where the blood is spaghetti sauce, hair is made of liver, and a ghost costume is made entirely of meat....creative but ultimately....gross.

Life in Shenzhen is at a lull right now....November is nearing, the weather is cooling, students are prepping for midterms. Everything seems pretty routine, until........

I added Hong Kong to the mix. I know know exactly where I want to live after I finish law school. See, Hong Kong is a blend of my two favourite aspects of the world: London and the East. Hong Kong is essentially the eastern version of London and I love it I love it I love it. In Shenzhen, no one offers you help, in fact, you're much more likely to get spat upon than to ever get help from anyone. But in Hong Kong, the two times that Jenny and I pulled out my map to figure out how to get to our next destination....people promptly came up to us and asked us how they could help. And these weren't foreigners, they were Hong Kong people....so wonderful. And while i'm on the topic of foreigners, for the first time since Beijing, I wasn't stared at all day long, in fact I wasn't stared at all b/c there are people from literally all over the world living in HK. In addition, not everyone there is aenorexic looking like they are in Shenzhen, people actually come in all shapes and sizes, lovely! Plus....I swear that everyone in HK is gorgeous...maybe the friendly demeanor heightens this plausibility, but seriously, compared with Shenzhen...oh wait, you can't compare. In Hong Kong you can buy diet 7up....amazing. In fact, for prices slightly less than what they are in the US, you can get pretty much anything western....which is cool. However, since I'm paid in Chinese rmb....I feel very poor in HK. Also....they've got English bookshops, with English newspapers and magazines....it was like Christmas taking the South China Morning Post and the latest copy of the Economist back with me across the border.

Speaking of the border....I went through customs and immigration twice in one day in order to get in and out of HK. On my way out of China and into HK, the immigration officer didn't think I was me, and had his friend come look at my passport, made me sign my name twice...it was kinda funny b/c that's never happened before. My day trip into HK added 6, yes 6 passport stamps into my passport....no wonder people have to get additional pages in their passports so often here. It's actually not all that pricey to actually get onto HK Island from China. It's about $33HK which is a little less tha $4.50 each way on the lightrail. It takes about 35 minutes once you cross the border to get into Kowloon. The border crossing is what takes time....maybe 45 minutes or so, b/c you have to a) leave China and then b) enter HK.

Jenny and I just spent the day poking about Central and Causeway Bay on Hong Kong Island, really just trying to get our bearings. We joked that we were seeing HK 'one bookstore at a time' b/c our English word-starved brains were craving new books and we thus sought out 3 or 4 different bookstores in our 12 hour day on the island. We also went to Victoria Park...where all big things public happen, and rode the Star ferry across the harbour from Kowloon. Unfortunately the day was hazy and so pictures, the few I took, came out terribly sub-par. We decided to save the trip up Victoria's Peak for another weekend b/c of the haze. Never fear.....if I can be frugal during the week....there will be many, many, more trips to HK. Especially since you can buy cheese there, and cheese in my favorite form...with tomatoes and basil on a baguette...mmmmmmm, yum. Plus there are limitless museums to see, and even some very interesting sounding temples.

In short....if anyone can procure me a job in HK for the indefinite future; I would love you forever and ever.