Well, I hope that at least one of my wonderful got a White Christmas wherever you are! Apparently, according to Andrew our senior pastor, anyone who has grown up in Hong Kong, will not know what a 'white christmas' is because it has never actually happened and probably will never happen because of the amount of pollution and consistent high enough temperatures to maintain lack of snow.
I hope that you all had a wonderful Christmas Day and that you are still celebrating, now with the New Year coming very quickly upon us. Can you believe it is nearly 2014? It seems like 2012 was only yesterday...well time flies when you are having a good time! I hope that you have all had as memorable a year as I have had, I hope to commemorate a look back some how but I will have to see if I have time and the means to do something which I am not even sure what I am going to do!
Naturally, the entire highlight of my week was Christmas Day. Having spent Christmas Eve at school, 7 hours of stapling paper together, I was glad to have my first day of holidays to spend with friends. I went over to The Vine for the Christmas Day service which was packed full. I found my friend Mike who had some friends who were all lovely and I spied Murray and were both able to give them a small bag of chocolate truffles which were gladly received!! I was surprised by how full the church was but I had forgotten the simple factor of lack of Midnight Service, which in my home church is the one that everyone seems to go to, and the fact that they were fitting perhaps nearly 3 services worth of people and their family and friends into one service! Following some wonderfully festive songs, including finally a good chorus of Hark! The Herald Angels Sing, Senior Pastor Andrew Gardener delivered a short but sweet message which was a wonderful look at how the place where Jesus was born is important to the story.
After church, I hopped onto the MTR all the way to Kowloon Bay. The MTR system is what the London Underground is based upon, however the latter is far more complicated and with stops that are closer to each other. The MTR in Hong Kong has stops that are far more spread across the city/country which actually makes you more grateful for the system that we take for granted in London where you can walk from one stop to the other. Although I travel on it rarely, I prefer using the buses to get to church and the LRT (only operates in Tuen Mun), it is a handy and consistent way of travelling around from mainland to the islands.
A very kind friend, Eleanor, had invited me to Christmas lunch where were joined by a fellow Brit and three ladies and their children who were very polite and they thankfully spoke quite good English. While only the oldest child, 7, spoke some English and very confidently by the end of the afternoon, there was an ease with communication as Eleanor is fluent in Cantonese and English so if there were things that we couldn't explain in English, she would helpfully translate. It was more than amusing to try and explain the idea of Christmas pudding and stuffing to our friends who had never experienced these. As Eleanor is from New Zealand, instead of turkey we were treated to roast lamb and chicken, with all the wonderful trimmings that come with a roast and it was very hard to leave space for dessert afterwards which proved to be as delicious as the main course.
While we let our food settle in between courses, Eleanor had asked me to prepare some games for all of us to play. We started with pictionary and then colonies (also known as empires, a continued hit in the family and friends over time) but neither of these seemed to work. Pictionary worked better as we had a Christmas theme but the children have a very short attention span and with so few possibilities to chose from for both pictionary and colonies, I was glad that I had a third option in charades which turned out to be the answer to my problems. The kids often came up with their own ones and it was hilarious to have a range of things coming out as each person took a turn. I was rather glad that had been a hit as I was afraid it would bomb like the other two games. I returned home extremely full and content that it had been a Christmas Day that had felt like Christmas.
On Boxing Day I had the most wonderful lazy lie in and found myself in the afternoon with a ukelele in my hand! I've been wanting to get one for a while and I finally managed to get around to buying one! It's very cute and I'm getting the hang of playing it quite easily. I'm trying to learn a new tune every week, I've been working on Edelweiss from The Sound of Music for the last few days and I'm trying to decide which one to choose next. There is a picture below of the uke and as it is yet to have a name, suggestions are more than welcome.
The last few days has been spent in nice relaxation, resting my body after three months solid of teaching and although it hasn't been quite the same as I haven't had my family there to celebrate it with me, I have been able to relax and just take a break for the first time in a while which has made me feel refreshed for the next few weeks until Chinese New Year.
I have posted the review for The Hobbit: Desolation of Smaug under the blog post 'Practise for University'. That is where I will post all of my theatre and film reviews. Next week, I will post a review for 'A Warrior's Heart' which I watched the other day, rather good!
I hope that you all have a wonderful New Year and 2014 brings joy and laughter for all. I look forward to keeping up with as many of you as I can and seeing you all when I get back in July.
Until next week, next year,
Batkinson xxx
Cantonese word(s) of the week: pronounced: yap, yi, sam, sey, um; translation: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5!
Quote of the week: 'Working hard is important, but there's something else that's even more important: believing in yourself.' - Harry Potter
Prayer points:
- That I will find the transfer back into teaching easy, I have 7 lessons on the first day back
I haven't sung this song in ages, one of the perks of being at The Vine is that we go back to some of the older worship songs as well as the new ones!
I dropped homemade chocolate truffles outside the flats on my floor with a note saying 'Merry Christmas from 27A' and when I got back from school on Christmas Eve, this was what I found outside my flat!
Finally my whole Courage Collage (as I like to call it) has been put up! Photos of family, friends and animals as well as some motivational quotes that you find on this blog anyway as well as a few personal favourites! Closer up photos will go up soon!
My collection of Christmas cards from family, friends and children at school!
Presents under the Christmas tree? It must be Christmas Eve!
The start of the food out for Christmas lunch! This was just the vegetables and the potatoes, sweet potates and pumpkin!
Christmas pudding! Not quite aflame, there were young children there!
The view from Eleanor's flat, a perfect view of where mega city meets beautiful countyside!
My Christmas present from Eleanor, the two things that I adore that are so hard to come by in Hong Kong/are so expensive: Cadbury's chocolate and cheese!
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