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.