Wide and Narrow Alleys

There is an area of the city we live in that has recently been "redone" to look like traditional architecture. The Enlglish translation is "Wide and Narrow Alleys" and we went yesterday with some local friends. It was really pretty and interesting. I took several pictures with my phone because we forgot our camera and I was impressed with the quality!

A couple preparing to take wedding photos (here they take them together before the wedding, rather than the day of)

I think this was a building built by Europeans sometime in the past that was restored, but not for sure...


It's everywhere!


So pretty!

This is on the "narrow" alley (there are two, one is wide, one is narrow)

This was a restaurant, but to me it looks like an old church! And I think it's interesting that a red cross is incorporated into the restaurant's sign (on the triangular shaped glass piece right above the umbrella)

If you ever come to visit, we'd love to take you for a stroll. Unfortunately we didn't know how cool it was while Sean was here, but we took him to another area similar to this.

A Home Cooked Meal

While Sean was visiting us (July 10 - August 5) we were invited to a friend's home to eat a home cooked meal. It was delicious - and I thought it was also very nice looking!

Hong Kong Views

Here are a bunch of pictures from Hong Kong. It truly is an intriguing city. If you ever have the opportunity to visit, I highly recommend you go. It's a maze of skyscrapers, but yet it's clean and surrounded by lush green mountains and the ocean/harbor. These are kind of random but I wanted to share. I think you can click on any of the pictures and it will open up for you to see a larger version.


This was a shot from the MTR (subway that sometimes goes outside as well) Just trying to capture the hugeness of the apartment buildings. Almost everyone lives in high rise apartment buildings in Hong Kong (much like China)


A historic looking Catholic church we saw while we were walking down from the top of the mid-levels area of town to the botanical gardens.


Sean took this picture of the traffic roundabout also during that walk


This picture was after we went to Disneyland at an MTR stop - I wish we could have gotten outside to get a better view of the beautiful mountains and sky. (We don't see such a beautiful contrast between the blue sky and white clouds in our city)


I think when this building was started it was supposed to be the tallest in the world (it's still not finished) but now we heard there is one in the middle east that will be taller.


This is on Hong Kong Island (there are two main parts of Hong Kong, Hong Kong Island and Kowloon - which is still part of the mainland penisula) I think it's so crazy how many tall skinny (and considerably old) high rises there are - just like the blueish one on the left between two shorter white buildings)


We ate here for lunch after Mason's eye doctor appointment. It was really good Mexican food! But it's really small and they didn't even have filtered water to drink - a mineral water cost more than a coke - so I got a coke!


This is my favorite picture - unfortunately I wasn't even there for the taking of this one. Micah and Sean took a hike on the island one morning and got to see some awesome views. There are lots of trails (some cemented) to hike around the mountains surrounding Hong Kong.


Also a view on their hike - that's a golf course


The famous nighttime view of the harbor - this is from the Kowloon side looking at the skyline of the island.

I'm still hoping to post more pictures and report on Mason's doctor visit! Stay tuned!

Walt Disneyland Hong Kong!

Trip back to the Shining City

We took a trip back to our old city. We have been gone almost a year and it was so wonderful to go back. It's so much cooler and drier there. But the best part was seeing all our old friends. Actually we couldn't see everyone because it was a short trip.
Here is Reister with our old househelper. She was so happy to see Reister and play with him.

Here is Reister and Mason with Cheng Cheng, my B.F.F.'s son. He's two years old. We went to the People's Park which was so nice and had a new really nice kids' playground.

Here are the high school (now two are in college) that I used to have to my house. They were so grown up!




Here's a group of friends that we used to hang out with often. The lady in pink and the lady in black own a dumpling shop together.

Here's our good friend Lucy enjoying giving Mason a banana.


It was a short, but great trip. We wished we could have stayed longer but it was really awesome anyway.

Recent pics

This was from today - Reister has gotten more and more into playing with Mason

Our househelper gave Mason this big dog and he loves it - he will ride it, hug it, roll around on it...

Mason enjoyed spaghetti this night :)

Mason's First Birthday

Here are the pictures from Mason's birthday - When I load the pictures, they load backwards and then I can't rearrange them (I used to be able to, but now...any tips from other blogger users?)
We had three local families, a foreign family whose youngest is about Mason's age, and a couple of single foreign friends come and eat taco salad and cake. I made the taco salad fixings (except the yummy chips that we bought at Peter's Tex Mex) and the cake (from a box). It was a fun evening and as you can tell, Mason thoroughly enjoyed his cupcake. We bought him three gifts from a website in our country that sells pretty much everything, including american brand toys. One toy was from us, and the other two were from his grandparents (both sides). He enjoyed his Playskool walker thingy, and two Little People sets. We are so blessed to have such a sweet, cute boy in our family. He has become very affectionate in the last week and we love it! He's saying new words left and right and can even hold up one finger to tell you hold old he is. I'll try to post more pictures soon - there are a lot of cute ones!

Wanted: email addresses

Hi everyone - I am in need of your email address! Our newer Dell laptop's harddrive failed last month and we lost all our emails and email addresses that were on there. I may still have your's saved on our old laptop, but just in case, would you please shoot me an email with your current email address so that you can receive our email updates? If we've only met once or twice can you please remind me where you live and how we met?
Thanks!
micahandmichelle@pobox.com

June 1st Children's Day

Reister's preschool had a performance on Childrens Day.
I can't change the order of the pictures for some reason, so they are backwards (starting at the end of the morning) Micah took all the pictures with his long lens on his Nikon DSLR D70.

During his class' performance, he was at the back and turned around backwards. You can see the teacher really was the performance - the kids were just not that into it.

When he finally got turned around, he started getting unhappy and could see me on the side.

Eventually he got up and started walking towards the edge.

So I went and sat with him to get him to at least stay on stage with his class for the whole song.

Reister wasn't quite sure what to think of his hat

Here's another class and their performance

Reister was waiting on the side of the stage, watching the activities

More of the waiting and watching

Girls AND boys got makeup before the perfomance


It was fun to go and be a part of the excitement at his school for Children's day, but after his class' performance we headed home - it was a hot day.

Chocolate Cake Fan

Reister enjoyed the chocolate cake a friend got me - so much that I caught him eating the icing off the edge with his mouth. Here he is looking a little... uh... well, he looks like he just got caught, I think.

Beautiful Scenery

Micah took this on one of his recent trips out...

Isn't that a beautiful little village?