The Dashboard was melted but we still had the radio

Another day off today, yesterday we all went to the Hong Kong 7s or Rugby 7s at the Olympic Stadium in Causeway Bay. We dressed up as surfers, there were some really elaborate costumes when we got there. It was a little weird riding the MTR with people in suits and us in swimming trunks, sandals, and rashguards.

The rugby games were actually really fun to watch, we were in a section next to some British fans. One of the games was England vs Wales, I asked this British guy why Wales has a rugby team if England has a team too. He replied asking if Canada has a team then why does the US need one? I don't really understand, but whatever it was a blast.

Anyway here is a picture of my room and living room from the flat we live in. I just rearranged my room yesterday, it feels a little bigger now, but it's still only like 10x6

One Month and Counting...

I just realized I have been here for over a month now. Time goes by so quickly, especially being busy with work and always having things to do/places to go/explore here.

We have a day camp tomorrow with 4th graders and then a school next week coming for 3 days. After that it is the end of "Spring Season" and a few people are leaving us, hopefully only for the summer, but who knows. We will be off until June 15th or so, I'm actually working an Easter day camp with a few others up until mid-April then that's it.

I have a pretty good idea for somethings that I want to do, ride the gondola at Ngong Ping, hike the 40 miles of the Lantau Trail, experience Discovery Bay and Hong Kong Disneyland, take the ferry to Lamma Island just to see other parts of Hong Kong and go into the New Territories. I also will probably visit Irvin (a coordinator at Treasure Island) in the Philippines for a little bit.

Also if anyone out there that reads this ever wants to take a trip to Hong Kong between now and June 15th you would definitely have a place to stay for as long as you want, just let me know. There will be some empty rooms and we have a futon and if worse comes to worse there is a public campsite 5 minutes away; some expatriates have been living out of tents there for years. All you need is a passport and you know...just a couple grand for plane tickets :( Once you get here it's super cheap to live though.

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Other random happenings on Lantau Island
-You can get a full value meal at McDonalds for less than $4 US, i think whenever they see me walk in the door they automatically start making a sundae, my icecream intake as increased 1500% over the last month.....MMMMM...Melamine...the world's greatest milk thickener and baby poisoner
-I found a decent coffee shop in the city, it's hard to get to and $4 for 16oz but it's the closest thing to 'merican coffee i've found
-I spent $280 HKD (~40US) on food that should last me for weeks now
-Every day I fall more in love with the fiddle I bought, it really sounds good and I'm getting my fiddle touch back
-I'm not sure if i mentioned this already, but last week we had the most ridiculous wind storm I've ever been in, we were stranded at the Ooh La La restaurant while airborne projectiles whizzed around outside.
-I found a stick ample enough to make a bow for my bowdrill set, Hong Kong coal busting is imminent
-They have these $0.50 US juice boxes here in all types of flavors, Guava, the most amazing fruit ever, and Orange/Mango are my favorite, I probably put down a good half dozen of them per day.
-I'm still trying to wrap my head around British English which almost all of the kids know....Now if you will excuse me I need to queue up, grab my torch, and head to the washroom. In addition I need to get ready for the programme and eat some toe-MAH-toes; touch wood will ya?
-I've realized that I need to slow down a little when I talk to the kids, some of them don't have the best english. I also tend to sometimesrunsomewordsinto others and it must be hard for a non-native speaker to understand.
-I have a Cantonese language course on my computer I'm trying to listen to it for a few minutes everyday. Newest addition to the vocabulary (Where is the bathroom?--Hai bean doo wah chi saw?) To which they reply, "Hello sir, take a right down at the end of the hall, you can't miss it" Then I say "Ngoi" (Thank you) and they say "no problem" :)
-I also just bought 6 months of travel insurance and finalized my Hong Kong work visa documents

Last week

Last week was pretty busy, we had an Australian school come Monday (6th graders). So I was there to help them out because my real group (Shanghai) didn't come until Tuesday. Then Wednesday I broke off from them to go kayaking with yet another school coming in for a day. It was a pretty logistically crazy week. It was great weather all week, the sun was blazing Wednesday, but then hazed up Thursday and Friday.

My primitive skills package came in and I was able to use some of the materials in it to show how to make a matchless fire, well almost. I didn't have time to prepare everything so we tried a lot with the strikers and just couldn't get it to catch, but all the kids had fun trying and they got the point I think.

I found a stave to make a bow for my bowdrill set and I should be "busting" a coal sometime today. I feel a lot of relief now that I have that box, there are so many projects/possibilities in it. And for someone who is pretty knife-centric I felt pretty lost without my Leatherman the past 3 weeks.

We have a half day of work today and then I might go get some more groceries I think. We have two day camps coming Thursday and Friday so it should be a pretty chill week.

------Cantonese Lesson of the Day------
Joe-san = Good Morning

Tai O video

Tai O, Venice of Hong Kong

Meaghan and I went into the fishing village of Tai O on Lantau today, it's a touristy but pretty authentic fishing village built in the tidal mud flats. We took the bus there and then the ferry around to Tung Chung (pronounced DungChung) and then a bus back over the mountain to Pui O.

We also took the tour boat out and saw some of the pink dolphins, they didn't show up too well in the photos, but they were there. I took a couple videos, it was pretty awesome. We ate at a restaurant there, Cashew Chicken and fried Singapore noodle, not the best in Hong Kong, but pretty good.

We did a lot of walking and found some pretty cool scenes, it's hard to post pictures because they don't really capture everything that is going on, but I hope they can give some idea. I also made two videos that should turn out well too.

More pictures

Pictures from the City

We went into the New Territories section of Hong Kong on the mainland yesterday and visited an farm out there. Here are a few of the pictures. We also rode the trolley around Hong Kong Island and I bought a complete fiddle setup for like $75. More pictures and explanations to come soon

I finally found bluegrass in Hong Kong! too bad it's not the right kind

Lantau Peak

SPOT TRACK OF LANTAU PEAK
For our final day of training we hiked Lantau Peak, which is the highest point on Lantau and the second highest in Hong Kong. We hiked up and I led a little reflection/discussion at the top, we then hiked down the other side into Ngong Ping where the big buddah is. We had a vegetarian lunch there and caught the bus back. I'm pretty tired, even though it was only about a 5 mile walk. Lantau peak is about 3,000 feet above sea level so parts of the trail were quite vertical, it is pretty much a rock staircase all the way up to the top and back down. You'll find some more pictures here

A day off

Not really much going on lately but I want to keep up on the writing. I never kept any record of anything I did at ALE, except for the mountain if itineraries in ziplock bags I have in my basement at home, which I will sort out someday...ha!

I'm back to 100% health, yesterday we shared a bunch more of our games and activities with each other. I made a bamboo handdrill and got some smoke on it, everyone was pretty impressed. I can't wait to make a real bowdrill set when my knives get here. I also showed everyone the water bottle cozie, we might do them with the kids if the rains hit next week.

Yesterday has some of the highest winds I think I've ever been in, it was probably sustained 45mph gusting over 50 they said. It was pretty crazy, we hunkered down in the Ooh La La restaurant for a few hours until it died down enough for us to walk home.

This morning I had my first grocery shopping experience, it's pretty much the same as in the US except everything you buy is a little bit smaller in size. You can't get 5 gallon buckets of peanut butter or ice cream, which is a good thing. I'm fine with my 8 slices of bread and 4 oz peanut butter, less wasted food when I'm at camp all next week. I also can't buy $350 HKD (or ~$50 US) in food and expect to be able to easily get it back to the flat, you have to carry everything to the bus stop and wait for the bus. You can get a taxi easy enough, it's just the difference between a ~.50 bus ride and a $3 taxi, but it does add up. So today I spent less than $20 US on groceries and it was enough to comfortably carry back to the bus.

I'm not sure what I'll do today, maybe try to make it to the music shop in wanchai and try out some sanxians and pipas

Feeling much better, almost back to normal

This will be a quick post because it's late.

I'm almost back to feeling normal, I sat out of a few of the training activities we had yesterday and today (a hike, bike riding, and kayaking). I slept about 16 hours yesterday i think. I know my body pretty well at this point and I'd have to say that this sickness was less of a viral/bacteria infection and more of my mind/body/spirit saying that I've been neglecting it lately and it had had just about enough. Being in this or any new place I tend to push myself a further and further while neglecting more and more self-care. So I pretty much got over that sickness by resting and reading, with a movie, pizza, and a bunch of juice and ice cream thrown in there. Pretty much everything I haven't had in these two weeks that I've been here.

I still feel unsettled and out of tune with this place. I take great comfort in walking down the road and knowing what every tree is called, what every bird is called, what every stream is called and where it flows to, where each road goes, and what this or that building does. There is so much to learn here.

I'm like a child trying to do everything, say everything and be everything all at once.
-John Hartford

Iz A Gotst Me A Banjer

This post is about the three days off I had over last weekend, it's a little late but that's alright.

On Saturday all of us from Treasure Island went to race in the 1st annual 5K Lantau Beer Dash for the benefit of the Lantau Buffalo Association. There were 120 people there for the start there were also quite a few teams dressed up in costumes. It was pretty fun, the guy that won raced in flip-flops and jean shorts. I couldn't find his time anywhere, but it was probably like 16 minutes. One of the guys that I work with took second and he couldn't even see the guy in front of him after the first 1K. Oh yea, the catch with the race was that at every 1,000 meters a station was set up were you had to finish a can of beer before moving on. I got a T-shirt at the end and I was standing in the back of the awards ceremony and my picture ended up in the local paper.

On Sunday we went into the city on the MTR (subway) that was great, we went to a bunch of malls and the IFC building. We also went to Mong Kok where all the street vendors are, it's just rows and rows and street upon street of booths selling everything you could imagine.

I have been in contact with a man that I met through BanjoHangout.org for over a week. I originally asked him if he knew of anywhere I could buy a banjo, since shipping mine over would cost an arm and a leg and be risky. He replied that he had an extra banjo lying around that he wasn't playing and that I could borrow it. Long story short, he sent me a text 9am Monday morning saying I could pick it up around 11 if I could make it to his office in Wan Chai and he would give me directions to there. So I caught the 9:30 bus to Tung Chung and hopped on the MTR. The ferry would have been faster but it was too late to get on the Fast Ferry in to Hong Kong (Central). The MTR system is so massive, each stop has 3-6 exits to get up to ground level and you have to make sure you take the right one or you will end up on the wrong side of a street and have to walk around to find a footbridge over to the other side.

Finding his office only had one hiccup, right off the bat I went north instead of south, but this was corrected with a quick phone call. Then I quickly found the office building and went to the 25th floor. The man that greeted me was a director of operations of a branch of the Hong Kong government. Pretty crazy how the love of a banjo can span entire worlds. Anyway we talked a bit and he brought out the banjo, it's a pretty cheap aluminum (al-You-minney-yum as all the Brits say it) Washburn with a really nice hardshell case. It's pretty much the same exact thing as my first banjo, pretty much a toy that occasionally makes banjo type noises. It's hard to complain about it because it is pretty much one of the only banjos in Hong Kong and this man let me borrow it for nothing more than a handshake and some contact information. So it is pretty awesome being able to play the banjo again. When we all come together; Nate on guitar and James on Mandolin we sound quite good. This bunch of "Gweilos"(Cantonese for White Ghost used to describe most white foreigners) might be playing at a place in Mui Wo at some point soon.

In other news, I've had some fever/stomach/intestinal thing going on since last night and pretty much slept this entire day, hopefully I'll feel better tomorrow.

Running through the summer rain, trying to catch that evenin' train...

The kids had to navigate to various waypoints and do different tasks and answer questions. I was stationed at the Cheung Po-tsai cave and brought a few groups through the 75 meters (no one knows what you're talking about if you use feet here) of darkness. Then headed back to meet up for lunch and to catch the ferry back to Mui Wo (which is the ferry travel hub on Lantau).

We were supposed to do a 4-5 Kilometer hike (miles??) we were able to start it, but it started down-pouring so we ended up getting buses to pick us up after 45 minutes of walking. It was good to see the kids get challenged a bit with this, most did alright with it, for me it was business as usual. Coming from the Adirondacks, the land of a thousand 60 degree and rainy days (Yes that's Fahrenheit, I haven't wrapped my mind around Celsius just yet), I felt at home in my full set of rain gear and was bone dry when we got back; ready to set up camp and put the pot on....err wait this isn't ALE.... Ready to bring the kids to dinner and get ready for the indoor nightly activities.

The kids left Friday afternoon we did forum....err debrief about the week, I brought all my soaking wet stuff home to dry since the tent area is a huge mud puddle when it rains and we had our complimentary Friday beer and burger week ending get together

Nepalese Barbecue

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This is where I went today for a Nepalese party, at a park in The New Territories. I think I ate like 5 lbs of beef, chicken, and pork from the barbecue. I'm glad Khem invited us, it was pretty awesome.