Vacation Part 1

It's been a pretty busy year for us. One of the joys of teaching at an international school is the holidays. You typically get the usual North American school holidays along with the national/religious holidays of the country you are working in. Our holiday schedule went like this: one week off in October (Mid Autumn/Moon Cake Festival), 2 weeks off in December (Christmas), 3 weeks off in February (Chinese New Year), 1 Week off in May (Labour Day?), 1 Day off for the Dragon Boat festival in June. Not too shabby. And the best part of having holidays in this part of the world, is that there are so many fantastic places to visit close by. So here's the run down on how we spent our vacations.

October: Hong Kong

We meet these fine folks for the first time at a wedding last summer, and later learned that they were living in Hong Kong for the year (only two hours away by train!).

Since then we've had quite a few visits back and forth and Tom and Anne Marie have become our Canadian "family" while we've been here. It always feels a bit like going home hanging out with them. Here's a look at our first visit to Hong Kong.

the harbor

National Day Fireworks
(I think the cell phone touting crowd was more interesting than the fireworks!)

Riding the trams - our favourite thing about Hong Kong

Care for some shark's fin?

Hong Kong is an easy city to navigate with great public transport and pedestrian walkways

On the Star Ferry with our friend John

Typical Hong Kong diner - every seat is filled,
no wasted space spent on only sitting with people you know

The harbor at night - if you have ever tried eating cotton candy on a windy tropical night, you know its not an easy task. It melts faster than you can eat it, and ends up blowing bits of liquid sugar all over your face and clothing.
Not reccomended. This particular piece of cotton candy lasted all of 2 min.


going up the peak tram - it's very steep, and old, a little scary

view from the top

So that's a little peek at our first trip to Hong Kong. Vacations part 2 coming up...