Pirates

Despite the crazy weather, T's class jumped on The Bounty and became pirates for the day.  Isn't she a cutie!  I didn't want to have pictures of other children (children I don't even know) on the blog, so I cut them out; those other adult pirates and blue guys can fend for themselves on my blog. 

911?

Yep, that's the Land Rover.  Yes, it's in the middle of the road on Sunday afternoon. 

It just died as we got off the expressway, and Jeff put it in neutral, and just as neutral was about to become dead-stop, there was a little triangle in the road!  So, we sat there and both said, "what do we do?" I sent a text to a new friend and found a phone number for a tow service; within twenty minutes a tow truck was in front of us.  And, through this entire time, we never blocked traffic, ever!  It seemed there was no one of the road and I can't tell you how rare that is.  

Jeff drove with the tow truck and the girls and I sprinted across the street and got the bus home (taking pictures as I walked away).

 The boys stayed after church for a retreat today, so there was only the four of us to experience this adventure. I have a feeling the boys will be thanking the Lord for missing this one.  The girls, on the other hand, never worried one bit. This kind of stuff just doesn't phase them. As we were getting out of the car to run across the street, Claire was asking if she could go to the pool once we got home. 

photographer

Forrest is taking a photography class at school, but I think he inherited something (skipped me). 

These are taken from the front windows of our place.

mid-autumn festival

In terms of celebration, and from what I understand, the Mid-Autumn Festival is a bit like our Thanksgiving.  It's based on the lunar calendar, as are all the festivals here, and this particular one revolves around mooncakes, I mean the moon. 
I posted a few pictures of our attempt at celebrating, but today I found such a great post on the subject on our church's website, that I wanted to share it. I'm not sure this is legal just to cut and paste someone else's words wherever I want, but I'm going to do it anyway (as far as birth-order is concerned, I think it's normal for me to ask forgiveness instead of permission).

Devotional Thought - Harvest Festival!

By Tim LaTour in Island Evangelical Community Church 5 days ago | 71 viewsLink: http://bit.ly/1aPIvHy

Happy Mid-Autumn Festival! I hope you were able to celebrate last night with glow sticks, lanterns playing “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” (like the ones my kids have), time with family or just a nice evening with some friends and a few mooncakes.
This Festival celebration is becoming more and more of an event in our family. As I talked about last year, it’s one of the main holidays in Hong Kong that stand out to me because it was the first one we encountered when we moved here nine years ago. But now that our children are a little older, the festivities are becoming more and more attractive because, seriously, who doesn’t love glow sticks?!

Last night, as we were outside among the lights and crowds, I stopped for a minute and looked up at the moon. Wow! It was full and seemingly as bright as the sun!

While looking at this full, gleaming moon, I started to think about what everyone was celebrating…what does this festival even mean?

Historically, the Mid-Autumn Festival celebrates many things: family gatherings, a time for prayer, a celebration of the moon – but mainly, it celebrates thanksgiving for a harvest. Since we’re in an urban area of the world, the concept of an agricultural harvest celebration may be a little foreign. But what is key to understand is that historically, after planting and growing, a community would gather their crops and mark that time with a celebration – usually in autumn.

This got me thinking about this passage in Luke 10:1-2:

…the Lord appointed seventy-two others and sent them on ahead of him, two by two, into every town and place where he himself was about to go. And he said to them, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.

The harvest is plentiful…

Here we see Jesus is sending out 72 disciples in pairs to go reach people with the gospel. He tells them that the harvest is plentiful, meaning, there are many people who are ready to receive Christ. What amazes me about this city is that people are increasingly interested in God – and also readyfor Him. We see it more and more at Island ECC. Our attendance has increased that we have added more chairs on the 10th floor, there are more and more people coming to Alpha, getting baptized, joining classes, going to conferences (this is just a teaser for this Sunday – make sure you’re here for this week’s sermon!). And we hear story after story of people bringing friends, coworkers or family members to church. People are READY!

…but the laborers are few.

Jesus knows that there is much work to be done. He wants us all to join in the effort of reaching people with the gospel! We can all be a part of this “harvest.” We can all lend a hand to helping spread the gospel. So…think about this: What am I doing to help reach those who a ready? How can I help?

Warning - graphic

Here we go, back to the hospital to have the doctor check his hand for "who knows what"might be growing in that wound, and to check for proper healing. But this hospital visit is going to be a bit of a non-event, thankfully. 

Also, thanks to our wonderful helper, Citas, this hospital visit is not going to be finding a needle in a haystack because we know exactly what bus to take.  Citas also saves me from spending three hours on the city bus website plotting my bus numbers and bus entries and exits.  And lastly, thanks to Citas, I can leave everyone at home while I take Ellis by myself (this still rocks Taylor's world that she doesn't have to go on every errand under the sun).

Walking up the very clean sidewalk from the bus stop.

And, last (because I didn't want this to be the first picture that popped up), the Frankenstein hand!
I think it's a good thing that the photo is blurred. Yes, it's his left hand for all of those I told it was his right.  It's also not in a Z shape. Not at all. Things were a bit bloodier when I first looked at the hand prior to the stitches and the peroxide clean-up.

concrete trails

Jeff and Ellis are the resident trail runners (Forrest will go along for the hikes sans run), and there are many trails to choose from in Hong Kong.  It's hard to believe until you see it, so I'm attaching photos.  

The steps are brutal, but I wouldn't know because I've been at the pool with the girls for the past few hikes (okay, all the hikes so far). But I truly enjoy the beauty of my sweet husband's photography skills.

Of course, on this hike, we kept the stitched-up child home, but I'm not sure why because earlier in the morning, we wrapped his wounded hand in a large ziplock bag and sent him off to the beach. 

This last picture (below) overlooks our new home.  The green hill that stretches to the right holds the hidden holcombes.

ER

First of all, I was not on this little hike. Today was a public holiday, so at noon the boys of the family - Jeff, Forrest, Ellis, and Hank - decided to hit the trail, while the girls of the family decided to stay behind and lounge at the pool.  Another typhoon is coming and we needed to make sure we got our outdoor fun in on this side of the tyhoon. Bread and milk can come later.

But Ellis had other plans for our bread and milk money. 

I am no good with open wounds and blood.  Do we all remember when Ellis had eye surgery and I, the brave mother, had to vomit after seeing his eyes when he awoke? This is why God kept me at the pool today - divine intervention.

So, at this beautiful location on this very hot day, Ellis took at spill and sliced his hand. Forrest, the wonder-son was quick to wrap the hand in his shirt (this is from multiple viewings of Soul Surfer) and stayed calm and cool.  Then, all four males hiked out to the car. I got the call to figure out where we should go for stitches and the best way to get wherever this may be. I sent a quick text to two new friends and got the same answer from each - to the hospital by taxi.  So Jeff brought Hank and Forrest home and our sweet men who work at the gate to our community had a taxi waiting (I also had waiting peanut butter sandwiches, a banana, and peroxide to clean the wound on the way).

The greatest part of this story is the short time - less than 2 hour - it took to get to the hospital, get stitches, and get home.  This is crazy considering this is how long it takes me to get to the girls' school, watch a 15 minute presentation and get home.  I should take more taxis. I digress.

Anyway, twelve stitches later, Ellis is back together again. I spared you the graphic photo, but I have it for those of you who would like to examine it.

NO!

If you look closely, or not, this sign is not in English!  And, the little scrolling sign behind it is not in English! This morning, I get on the bus to head to the girls' school because Claire is getting an award for star student this week. I give myself one hour and I know I have to take this particular bus and then a short taxi ride and I will be there just in time to snap the picture of my baby.  I'm not confident on the bus system when I have a deadline, which is why this sign was painful this morning. 

The great thing about these buses is that you can use their website to plug in a route and know the bus number you need and the name of the bus stop.  All you need to do is hop on that bus number (going in the right direction, of course) and be ready to push the red stop button just before your designated stop. You push the button because the bus doesn't stop if no one is waiting to get on, or if no one on the bus wants to get off (I learned this the hard way one day as we passed by my stop). And how do you know your designated stop if you are new like me? You read that sign that scrolls in both Chinese and in English.  It even speaks in Chinese and English, unless you got on that bus this morning and the paper sign tells you it is going to do nothing of the sort! Oh my gosh!  

I quickly looked at the name of my stop and realized I can read the sign on the roadside and it will have the name I need, which I know, but I don't think I know the bus stop before my stop to give me the signal to push the stop button!  

It's unimportant how I did it, but I did it.  I pushed the button on time, I got off the bus, and I found a taxi at 9:25am, which is not always easy at that time of the morning as the sweet taxi driver told me, and I was off to school.  For my enjoyment, the driver also gave me a Cantonese lesson, telling me I should know how to say the name of this particular road in Cantonese.  He was not impressed with my pronunciation, and kept trying to work with me.  I swear he was driving slower to help me out!  I gave him my best because I thought it might be speed him up if he felt he was a good teacher. 

As I said, I made it.  She's a star, as we all know.

Hotdog

I know I always go on and on about how hot and humid this land is, but, once again, IT IS HOT! We were at the beach down below and Hank and Jeff took the trail up above.  When we saw them coming back off the trail near the beach, E said, "Mom, why is Daddy wet?" Really? Don't we all stay like this 85% of the time! "It's hot E." 
While E is not sweating on his little skim board, Hank collapsed in the bay! 

at the mercy

This is my newest purchase on the way home on the bus,  my newest purchase for our home in HK.  This plant, riding up front with the sweet driver who just smiles every time I bring something like this on the bus, reminded me of the control I no longer enjoy.

For so long (until we reached this new land of ours) I had been driving a very large SUV to haul kids and animals and general stuff; and for so long I had been jumping in that SUV moving from errand to errand, store to store, event to event, with the ease of a woman who never thought things might be different.  I was in control.  I could go when I wanted to go, and I could go where I wanted to go.  I could run five to ten errands in a morning or afternoon, choosing to move from one place to the next with ease, as long as the grocery store was last (and the ice cream wouldn't melt). Or, I could break up the errands, making sure to stop by home in between to take care of an animal or drop off items to make room for a child or two or three or four. 

To be clear, we have an SUV in HK - our one car.  It's not the same fabulous Yukon XL from paragraph two that is now Texified and living in Summerfield with one of greatest friends on the planet. Our current vehicle, shown in earlier posts, is fifteen years old and technically holds all the children, as long as someone doesn't mind riding sideways in the jumpseat in the very back, which is what someone does every time we go to church or the beach.  Of course, I have yet to get behind the wheel of this car, although I am riding on the left hand side in the car and would be in the right spot to be behind the wheel in most areas of the world. It's the family car on the weekend or after 8pm at night; otherwise, it's with Jeff at work.

Back to the plant on the bus.  I bought the plant one morning and the shop keeper smiled sweetly and hoisted the plant into my arms and off I went to wait at the bus stop.  I couldn't stop by the grocery store and grab the milk we needed because of this plant, and I couldn't really stop by Watson's and grab a bottle of water; I was bound to the plant and getting home because I only have two arms.  On the bus, I can't hold the plant so I leave it up front with the driver and the lady sitting in the front row, who braces the plant as we make the sharp turns on the tiny roads.  And when I depart at my stop, I smile and take my plant and realize this plant would have been one of my many stops in the US.  

Now, I don't have the freedom to hop in the car and move so freely. I have to rely on the bus, I have to rely on the lady in the front seat to keep the plant from pitching over. I have to wait for the bus, I have to plan around the schedule of the bus, I have to think about the one place I want to go for the day, and work out how to get to that one stop and get back, which is never the same bus number. I have to remember to have an address written in Cantonese to give to the taxi driver just in case my bus situation doesn't pan out. It goes on and on, and this is the way most of the world lives. 

For me, it's very humbling.  I no longer have the control. I am in constant need of help from someone. I find I pray so much more often, and I wonder why it takes these moments in life to push me to this wonderful state of dependence. I once heard Tim Keller say people remember the times where they were the least comfortable as the times where they were the most alive.  

captured

I found the proof. Leave it to El to capture the "lack of judgment" on film.  We have beaches all around and this is what we choose (and in the dead of night)!

The skim board in it's right place.

Bamboo scaffolding

This is another thing I just find amazing. The saffolding is all bamboo and just lashed together with rope.  It doesn't matter how tall the building, they use this bamboo. I know it's strong, but it just seems so crazy.  This picture is in our neighborhood, but I see the bamboo on buildings thirty and forty stories high all the time. 

driving

So, as we all know it is packed in this place, and it's hot and humid here, and we are expats living here, therefore, we don't know what we're doing 85% of the time. But, we are trying and we are sometimes failing (as you can see, the roads are narrow and the side view mirror has taken the hit), but we just keep on moving despite the steel rods that sometimes pop up.

I also find it funny that the sides of the road that look like nice big hunks of rock are not big hunks of rock at all.  They're just sort of plastered, but somehow trees push through and grow out of them. Crazy.

Another chicken

One day I am going to put one of these in my grocery bag and I'm taking it home and trying my hand at this wonder of nature.  

Notice, the chopped legs next door? I would typically say those legs to the right would belong to my photo subject (eyes open for the shot), but they're the wrong shade and size. 

In a few years, with my attention to detail, I could be a buyer for this grocery store. 

Bicycle lanes for cars

I actually have a driver's license in this country, but I find I have no desire to navigate these roads. The first picture is like many of the roads in and around our house. The lanes are more like bicycle lanes in my opinion, except they are not!  We share these roads with cars, double-decker buses, and BICYCLEs.  Yes, people ride their road bikes on this road during the morning hours all the time - death wish!

This picture is the bridge we cross every Sunday on the way to church.  I guess it's appropriate because I use it as a prayer bridge.  It's a white-knuckle kind of crossing with the normal car, but those double decker buses cross this same road with us as well!  I feel better when those buses are going in our same direction, but inevitably, they are always coming toward us, except today when I'm trying to caputre the danger on film. 

Again, I am not the driver - I'm the photographer and the horribly nervous person telling the children to stop talking to daddy while he drives.

ask advice

I've said this many times here: ask a native speaker his or her advice when translating your message. I'm not even going to mention the lack of possessive nouns and pronouns in this place!  Of course, I used to get frustrated with the ill use of possessive nouns and pronouns in the US, so I should be thankful the use of any are generally ignored here.

prayers for boys

Someone on facebook posted an entry from a blog called givenbreath.com (from April 27, 2013) and I had to take this section from the blog and copy it because I don't ever want to forget this. My children have an amazing, truly amazing dad, who points them to their heavenly Father.  My thought is that I can pray these at all times, on the bus, in the car, cleaning the house, just lifting these up to our Lord.

But, I think I should like to add to number twelve that if my two boys keep skimboarding on our roof in the rain, God is going to be for them, but he is going to let the natural consequences of this beautiful nature he created take its course.

OK.  Here goes – twelve prayers for our men of all ages.  

1.  Love your wife: be faithful to her in your mind, and also with your body.

*If you are not married, choose to be honorable in your thoughts and relationships this day.  Be a man – of any age or marital status – who is faithful and true in his inner and outer places.

2. Little things matter: everything, good or bad,  starts small.

3. Be an encourager: pour your best energies into building others up.

4. People are more important that technology.

5. A man cannot serve two masters: who do you serve?

6. Be stong and gentle: this is a tall task, but the world needs men who are both.

7. Show restraint: just because you know you can, doesn’t mean you should.

8. Defend the outcast and notice the lonely: go out and welcome in.

9. Find the good whenever humanly possible: it is the mark of a happy man.

10. Enter the fray: don’t be afraid to try, or discourage those that do.

11. Bring your whole self with you everywhere you go: it takes much courage!

12. Remember this always: if God is for you – who can be against you?

Roof: It would be one thing if the boys were skimborading on the roof sections with the nice concrete walls all around; but, no, they are doing this on the long, skinny section above the glass door.  I'm wondering if a similar experience might have prompted one of my neighbors to plant grass on that section of his roof.

Cemetery

When heading to the girls' school we always drive by this cemetery in Happy Valley. Traffic is slow at times, so I can take a good picture, but you should google this cemetery and see a picture from the sky where you can get a visual of how massive it is. If I was unkind, I would have downloaded the picture with the cracked and taped side-view mirror that met its fate on our first morning to school.  But, I am kind, and I will not include.

I am going to include a clip from a CNN travel article about the cemetery.

Like many people in Hong Kong I assumed Happy Valley was so named because of the horse racing, and associated gambling, that took place there. But the area has a much more morbid genesis.

Back in the early days of British colonial rule in the 1840s, there was a high death rate from malaria and other diseases in Hong Kong. The area became a burial ground for victims of disease and was named "Happy Valley," a common reference to cemeteries in Victorian times. 

reading day

 Despite leaving 45 minutes earlier than his expected arrival time, the car-parking decks in this city meant for parking bicycles proved too much for him. But, somehow he made the squeeze in the deck. He said she was standing at the door of her classroom with the saddest eyes when she saw him come running into the front door of the school (her room is next to the front door).  Her sad eyes turned quickly to excitement when she saw it was him and she knew he would get to read her favorite book, the book that allows him to use his loudest (and normal) voice that always makes her howl with laughter.