Year 2

Saturday was our 1 year anniversary here in Hong Kong. It's been a great year, filled with lots of adventure here and travels abroad. We decided to celebrate by heading to The Peak (the top of the mountain overlooking the city) for the day. At the top are shops, restaurants and a Madame Tussauds Wax Museum.

That was our first stop.

As you can see, Brad took a back seat in this photo.

Obama and I chillin out.

Jill becoming a Rembrandt work of art.

Jill holding her own against Yau

And getting a quick math lesson

The museum was OK, but no need to go back anytime. We had some time to kill so we decided to do a quick 3.5km walk around the peak.

This anvil looking building is where the restaurant was and the sky terrace for viewing.

I'd never heard of Bubba Gump Shrimp restaurants before coming here. Jill had been to one in Florida once.

Our view was great.

These signs were quite interesting. If you flipped it, then it said "Stop Forrest, Stop" and the waiters would stop at your table. "Run Forrest, Run" obviously meant that everything was fine.

The food was pretty good, Jill had the Fisherman's Bucket, filled with shrimp, lobster and fish. I had the Shrimpers Heaven.....lot's of shrimp.

After dinner we headed to the Sky Terrace to take in the city at night. This was our first time up there after dark. It really is such a bright and vibrant city.



Sometimes this is exactly how you feel with all the lights. We love seeing this but are happy to be living in a quieter area with a lot less light and noise.

Now to look forward to year 2....

Back to School

Well we've been back to school now for 3 weeks. There are a lot of changes to get used to with our new supervisor. We're trying to be patient with her but her English isn't that good (even though she thinks it is) and she seems to be lacking that thing called "logic".

Anyway, today was our first event. We had our International Day Party. The kids got to dress up in clothes from their native country or just have fun and dress in another country's style. It turned out well. When out shopping, I was lucky enough to find a shop in the market that sold Hockey Jerseys and was able to dress in a Canadian theme. Jill's style was supposed to be Nepalese. She picked up her shirt at the market for $3.

Here is one of my students who didn't dress up. I let him wear my costume, guess it was a bit big.

This was our first year doing this event. Last year, we arrived just after this.

Speaking of which, we are now on day 365 of our time in Hong Kong. We are celebrating with our own International party.


Here is another story from school. Our first week at school, Jill had to start on Monday but I only started on Thursday. So, they asked me to go to the 2 year old Chinese class to help with the crying kids (babies). It was hard, as soon as the parents left they all started crying. I was there 3 days and this one girl (who was one of the loudest criers) became my job to help. The first day she cried for an hour, the second just a few minutes and then stopped. I felt pretty good that I helped her stop crying and get used to her new environment.

The problem was on the Thursday when I wasn't there, she started crying for me!!! It was really funny to hear. She asked the Chinese teacher where "uncle Hello" was. I see her now in the music room at lunchtime when they are all together waiting for the school bus. She seems really happy and is dancing around when there is music on and makes me smile.

Our Fijian Wedding

July 22, 2010. The Pearl South Pacific, Fiji.
These aren't the official photos. We'll get those in about two weeks. Most of these are photos that our wedding planner snapped for us with our camera. He did such a great job.

Getting my hair and make-up done in our room. This guy had to come from the city, 1.5 hours away. It cost a lot to get my hair and make-up done, even by western standards. It was worth it though - I felt gorgeous.

I had a lot of time alone waiting for the wedding to start. My self portrait, trying to capture my hair and make-up.

Here the staff are getting the archway and canopy ready.

Finally 4:00. It was time. I walked from the side door of the resort on the far right of the photo, down a pathway and up these steps to the beach.

Brian walked from the archway to meet me when I reached the beach, and we walked together to the archway.

The handsome groom.

All smiles on a perfect day.

Brian putting my ring on and saying his vows.

Me saying my vows and placing Brian's ring on his finger.

Sealing our vows with a kiss.

Signing the official documents.

Posing for photos, a little squinty-eyed. In hindsight, I would change the wedding time to about 2pm for better lighting, now knowing that the sunset was nothing to rave about.

After walking around the resort with our photographer for an hour, we took a break. The Serenaders sang us a Fijian wedding song.

Brian and our photographer chatting. I chose our photographer because he had the same name as my high school principal - I took that as a sign. We later found out that he's quite well known in Fiji. One Aussie actress had her wedding in Fiji, and flew in her hair stylist, make-up artist, and chef, yet she had our photographer do her photos. That says a lot, I think. I can't wait to see his photos.

The cake wasn't included in our package so we paid extra for it. It was much nicer than I expected. When we cut it later that night after dinner, we decided to share it with the dozen others in the restaurant. Mmmm, white chocolate...

One of our favorite photos, snapped as the sun was setting. We were tired but so happy. We had a perfect day; everything had gone well.

We returned to our room to see it filled with flowers and little gifts for us. It was a nice surprise -and smelled so lovely.

We had great weather. We were worried about the tide and the wind. Neither caused a problem. We were worried about having a lot of onlookers, but we were lucky that there weren't many people around at that time. We did get lots of good wishes from everyone we saw afterward, and they were kind enough to give us space for photos. We were tired at the end of the day. I can't image going through the stress of a real wedding - in both the planning and the big event. This was just as we wanted.

Week 1 - The Pearl South Pacific

Our first week in Fiji. We were really excited about getting here. It was very easy to get from the airport to our first resort, The Pearl South Pacific. This was a larger resort, two restaurants and 5 bars. Because we were getting married here, I think it was better to have a large resort with the experience doing weddings.

Our welcome drinks.

One of our first nights there, the resort hosted a "lovo". A lovo is what Fijians call it when they cook their meals in underground bbq ovens. It was really yummy, and was all you can eat so we were really excited. After the meal was a show. The men did some war dances and played instruments and the women did more tropical dances.


They dragged Jill up to dance, she was reluctant to go but in the end she did.

We did a river tour in a long canoe like motor boat. Up the river, we stopped at a village to have lunch and get a tour. This village was started over a hundred years ago by an English man who lived in Fiji and became friends with an important chief. After he worked a long time the chief wouldn't let him go home but allowed him to have his own village. Fijians must marry outside of their village and the woman must leave to her husbands village. This Englishman, named Danforth, started this village and after over 100 years, every male living there was a direct descendant of him, all with that family name.

There was a Fijian warrior at the river bank blowing a conch shell to signal our arrival.


Notice the huge afro in the picture. This was the style a hundred years ago. They were also cannibals so I wouldn't be too hasty to make fun of them.

We were part of a traditional kava ceremony. Kava is what they drink for special occasions. It's not alcohol but does affect your body. I'm thinking it's a kind of tranquilizer.

This was the village's kindergarten. It's a lot different than the one we work at.

The kids were so cute and friendly.

After this little village tour, we were brought to the fire pit where they unearthed our lunch.


Yummy
We had another Fijian warrior show, it was very similar to what we had at The Pearl.

We continued up the river and passed a few people using these "billibillis" (push push)

Our final destination on the river was a big waterfall. You can tell by the look on Jill's face the temperature of the water.


We boarded our own billibilli to coast down stream for a few minutes.

Here are some pictures from around the resort:

The bats came out at night.


The beach after sunset. We got married just to the the right, a little off the picture.

On our wedding day, we decided to get up early to watch the sun rise. It was worth it.


We kayaked up the river next to the resort one day. We started with these other couples on a guided tour but after realizing the others had never been in a kayak before, we quickened our pace and lost them.






Our last day there we did a dive. The dive masters would use chopped up fish to create a feeding frenzy. These are not sharks but sucker fish that swarmed the boat.

We couldn't take our camera that deep so I pulled these off of their website. It gives you a sense of the size of some of the sharks.


Our dive didn't go that great though. After getting to the bottom, I was having trouble with my equipment and had to breath hard to get air so after a few minutes, I had to surface. Jill stayed and watched the feeding. After the first dive, Jill got sea sick and couldn't do the second dive but I did. So we each only did one of the two dives.

Before leaving we heard it was tradition to throw your lei into the ocean so on the day we left we went out and I threw my lei into the ocean. Jill took apart her bouquet and did the same.


It's now off to the second resort. Our time at the Pearl was great. The staff did a great job on the wedding and we had pretty good weather. We're really looking forward to the rest of our trip.

Click on "older posts" at the bottom to see the rest of our trip.