Fourth of July!

It was quite different celebrating the fourth of July in Hong Kong since, you know, no one celebrates it here... but we woke up (some of us earlier than others) and went to a church service held entirely in Cantonese!! It was so cool! The service followed the same order of service of most Lutheran churches back in the states so we were able to follow along fairly well, plus we had a translator, whom I couldn't hear/understand very well. During the sermon we took the children out to teach them a Bible story in English and sing songs. They were so cute! We mostly just watched as the GEOs taught, but starting next Sunday it will all be on us to lead it entirely since the GEOs are going home for the summer.
After church we ventured over to a giant shopping mall mostly just to get a feel for using the mass transit. Apparently it is a huge mistake to go to any sort of public area on the weekends because that is when EVERYONE goes. It was so crowded, but we found out that it wasn't nearly as bad as usual. I thought it was the most crowded place I'd ever been... but then again I hate crowds. Highlight of the day: the bubble tea. I got mango green flavored (in honor of Meagan, of course) and it had chunks of mango at the bottom. SO much better than Lollicup or Bento! After we got home we began our Independence Day celebration with Pizza Hut! Except even that wasn't too terribly American since one of the pizzas had octopus on it. Needless to say, I didn't eat it. Then the GEOs came over to give us a briefing on teaching ESL and using the mass transit. For those of you who have never visited Hong Kong before, their public transportation system is absolutely incredible, but also absurdly intimidating. To get to many places in HK you have to take 2 or 3 different types, like train, light rail, bus, or cab. It's all very cheap (even the cabs) and you just scan your octopus card to get on. It's super efficient but very confusing. I now have at least 3 different maps and I have been studying so I'm sure I'll pick it up quickly.

Today we started our "work". We went to a Lutheran secondary school in the area to meet our new group of form 6 (equivalent to US 12th grade) students. My team got divided up so we are each in a different group with about 8 Chinese students, the goal being that they would get to talk to us and practice their English because in order to go to a university they must be fluent in English, Cantonese, and Mandarine. My students were awesome. They were so interested in American culture and they loved Michael Jackson. Thursday they are taking me out to some place in Hong Kong for one of their school summer projects. I'm not entirely sure where we are going, they kept telling me it was a secret, although I'm pretty sure they just didn't know how to explain it to me in English. After my team and I all met with our separate teams we wanted to go to lunch (yum cha) so I invited my team to come with us because we weren't familiar with the area or the restaurants. They took us to their favorite Indian restaurant. It was good! I'd never had Indian food before but I liked it! I even tried some of Adam's ox tongue curry, which was absolutely repulsive. Now we are all just hanging out in the common room and we're going to a very fancy restaurant for dinner tonight (the same one we ate at for lunch on the first day) and I'm pretty excited because that place has the most delicious traditional Chinese food ever.



Sunday school

The church

My group!