Holiday comings and goings

Let me tell you, having two weeks off for Christmas has been pretty darn great. I was able to successfully revert to "lazy, non-working mode" without any snags or problems. However, I will admit that at times I missed some of my students.

We went to a few Christmas parties, attended a great Christmas Eve church service, spent time with friends and family and also had some "us" time.

We exchanged Christmas gifts on Christmas Eve. We already kinda knew what we were getting from each other, but it was still nice and there were some little surprises. I got Rufina a 16GB iPod Nano and protective case. She had wanted an MP3 player since she also has a pretty long commute. She was interested in doing something that I do- listen to podcast or sermons during the travel time (I recommend Ravi Zacharias).

I knew she was going to get me a cellphone, but I was expecting something more basic. However, I recently dropped my digital camera and it hasn't been working properly, so she got me a great LG slide phone with a nice camera and a lot of bells-and-whistles. In fact, all of the photos in this blog entry were taken with the new cellphone. She also got me some nice accessories to go with it.

My students will especially be please with my new phone as they like to tease me about my old phone which is worth about $15 (US).

The day after Christmas we took a little trip to the southside of Hong Kong Island for a stroll along the waterfront (h/t David). After walking from the Hong Kong Country Club to Repulse Bay, we took a break and kicked up our feet.


You can see the bricked promenade and then the beach behind me. Further back are expensive flats and hotels. There were actually a lot of people out (which you can't see in the photo below), despite somewhat chilly conditions. I think a lot of Mainlanders were in town for the holidays.

Finally, we rang in the New Year over at the Hung Hom ferry pier. We watched the fireworks display at the IFC building on the Hong Kong side. We didn't have a perfect view, but it was good enough and we didn't have to fight the "people mountain, people sea" over in Tsim Sha Tsui or Central.