Hong Kong Day Four -- Total Relaxation

Herman and I outside the Hong Kong Temple.

For our last day of our China trip we had no real plans for any grand adventures. We just planned on having a nice relaxing day where we could enjoy each other's company as we soaked up the wonderful atmosphere in Hong Kong.

We started the morning by heading to church. Well, actually, it ended up being the afternoon because we found the building closest to our hotel but found that the English speaking ward did not begin services until 1 pm. So we took the morning to do yet another round of organization as we relaxed in the hotel. As we headed to church we got to do something that we have never really gotten to do before. We WALKED to church rather than having to figure out the subways and taxis. the building was only a few blocks away, so we had a nice walk through our neighborhood to get to the building.

Outside the church building in Kowloon.

The church building here is a stake center for the Kowloon stake, and it is located in a four story building. On the outside it doesn't really look like any of the church buildings we see in the US, but once we got inside it looked exactly like we would find anywhere around the US -- the same type of carpet, the same room signs, the same walls, the same pictures on the walls, etc. That is always comforting to enter a church building and feel like we are coming home, no matter where we are attending.

We were almost an hour early because we didn't know how long it would take for us to find the church building. When we arrived at the building they directed us to the fourth floor where the sacrament meeting would be. There was a Relief Society choir practicing in the chapel, so we hung out in the lobby and talked with people as they came by. We found that we would be attending a branch that only services Filipino domestic workers. It was really interesting. These women left their families in the Philippines and came to Hong Kong to work as domestic workers for families in the area because the money that they would earn here is more than they could earn in the Philippines. These workers have different schedules that revolve around the schedules of their employers, so the branch meets five different days a week in order to meet the needs of the sisters in the branch. They have five sacrament meetings a week! The member of the branch presidency we spoke with said that they plan the same topics for each meeting and have different sisters speak on that topic each time they meet.

Because this unit only contains sisters, they rely on two older missionary couples to serve in the branch presidency and provide leadership in the organizations. Then there are one or two sets of full time young missionaries to help out. That does it for priesthood presence in the ward. There are no children at all. When we arrived they came up and asked Spencer if he would help pass the sacrament, and Spencer agreed. They ended up needing Herman to help as well. That was neat to see them pass the sacrament together. That is something that may never happen again in the future unless we do something like move to a place with a super small branch or ward because there are usually enough deacons to pass the sacrament that they would not need Herman. So, anyway, it was nice to see father and son sharing in this duty together. The branch even gave a special shout out to Spencer at the beginning of the meeting because they said that he was the very first deacon to ever pass the sacrament in the history of their branch. Because these women are here without their families, there are never 12 or 13 year old boys like Spencer to pass the sacrament. Instead they rely on the missionaries and older men who might be visiting. That was kind of neat to serve in that way. The ladies really did appreciate Spencer being there.

This was a very special unit of the church. The women were very humble and very faithful. I would say that there was not a huge depth of gospel knowledge with these sisters, but they abundantly made up for lack of knowledge with their amazing level of faith. They were so sweet to us, genuinely happy to have us with us. I think we were personally greeted by every single sister there. You can tell that these sisters really rely on one another while they are in a foreign country, isolated from their families and friends at home.

One thing that made me happy during church this day -- before the services several of the ladies oohed and awed over Minsy. She was sweet as she stood by the lady who was greeting everyone at the door, and Minsy would extend her hand and shake hands with everyone. Then we would do her cute little hello/goodbye wave that she does by holding up her right hand and wiggling her ring and pinky finger. Super cute! The ladies loved her. Several of the women extended their arms and asked Minsy if they could hold her, but she would shake her head and then give me a big hug each time. That gave me some confidence that she wasn't going to just run off with any happy lady who would come calling. She really is beginning to understand that she is safe with us. We are where she belongs. Hurray!

I spent the entire meeting in the mother's lounge with Minsy. She is still not used to sitting quietly for a long church meeting. I don't expect her to be able to sit quietly for quite awhile, so I just know that one of us will be walking the halls for a few months at least. I ended up just closing the door to the room and relaxing on the couch while Minsy explored the small room for a bit. I had relaxed quietly by sitting on the couch and leaning my head against the wall when I noticed that Minsy, who had been making noise by hitting the door over and over, was very quiet. I looked down and saw her just sitting there and looking at me with a single tear going down her face. I'm not exactly sure why she was sad -- probably she wanted to just leave the room and wander around somewhere else. But she never made a sound to let me know she was sad. I picked her up and gave her a big hug, and she fell asleep in about ten seconds. It is amazing to me how quickly she falls asleep when she is ready to sleep. It isn't that she is easy to put down for naps or bedtime -- it is quite the opposite. But when she decides that it is time to sleep she will fall asleep immediately. She'll be jumping up and down on the bed for half an hour, but then she'll just lay down at the end of a jump and be asleep in the next minute. Interesting.

Some cultural dancers performing in a
courtyard after we left church. Way cool!

We only stayed for one hour since there were only sisters in this branch, making it so that there was no primary or youth classes for the kids to attend. Instead we headed back to the hotel to change into more comfortable walking clothes. After a quick lunch of noodles in the hotel room we grabbed a city bus and took it a few blocks down our street until we came to the Hong Kong Temple. Seeing just how close it was to our hotel made me a bit sad that we hadn't taken the time to visit the temple during the week. Still, it had a small and beautiful garden on the temple grounds that we sat at as we talked a bit as a family about our wonderful experiences of this trip. This temple seems to be a smaller temple, but that could be deceiving simply because of the compact shape of the building as well as the smaller garden surrounding the building. It was very beautiful, of course. We took a few pictures and then headed out.

The Gorgeous Hong Kong Temple!

Team Blau minus Herman outside the temple.

There was a nice park across from the temple, and we took some time to play there. The kids have been dying to go to a regular neighborhood park while we were in China, but we have not been anywhere that we could find anything like that. The few things we did find were more like tiny exercise spots where there was equipment that was meant to test athletic abilities. This park was a true park like you would find in the US. Herman and I just sat on a bench and watched the kids play and run through the park. Minsy was a bit nervous of the equipment at first, but Spencer spent a lot of time working with her and carrying her up the ladder to a small twisty slide. Then he would go down with her on her lap. She LOVED this. She smiled and smiled and smiled as she came down the slide. Pretty soon she felt brave enough to go up the ladder and down the slide on her own.

Katie and JoJo helping Minsy to go down the slide at first.

Pretty soon she managed it on her own.

Ancient Hong Kong torture device.

 Spencer had one thing that he wanted to do when he was in China, and that was eating at a restaurant called The Modern Toilet. You'll have to look it up online to get a feel for what this restaurant offers, but it is just what the name implies -- a restaurant dedicated to serving food with a toilet theme. A great example of this is their chocolate ice cream that is served in a porcelain dish shaped like a toilet so that the ice cream looks like a pile of poo. And the list of yummy foods like this goes on and on. Ewww! Ever since Spencer saw that this restaurant was in Beijing he wanted to go, and so we promised him to eat there once. Unfortunately, we found that the restaurant was no longer in Beijing, but luckily we saw that there was one in Hong Kong, so planned to visit it here. Since this was our last meal in Hong Kong, we decided to find this place.

We began looking for the address of this restaurant which was near the subway station near our hotel. It shouldn't have been too difficult to find, especially since Hong Kong's streets are pretty easy to figure out. However, as we reached the neighborhood of this restaurant we found a throng of shoppers. Hundreds and hundreds of people were walking the sidewalks and shopping in several of the shops along the street. What made it even more difficult was that it always seemed that we were always swimming upstream against the crowd as we walked. This was super hard for us to do when we were in Beijing, but now in Hong Kong it was a hundred times harder because we had Minsy in a stroller, and there really weren't any strollers in the crowds, making the people of the crowd unused to expecting them as they walked.

We searched and searched and searched for what seemed like forever, including waiting at a bus stop for a bus to arrive for forever until we gave up and decided to just fight the crowds and walk the few blocks to get to the street containing this store. We found a giant sign on a building advertising the shop, so we felt confident that we had finally found it in a type of shopping mall that is common in China. It is open to the outdoors like so many shops, but you go to an escalator to ascend to another level and see more shops inside. It is really hard to describe these malls, but they are a combo of a traditional mall of shops and the open air stores of the street level.

When we got up the escalator we searched in vain for the place, but didn't have any luck. Finally we asked a security guard at the door, and he told us that the restaurant had closed. Drat! Or maybe I should say, thank goodness. I was never that excited about eating poo themed treats. Spencer was a bit bummed out and wondered why both of these restaurants were closed. I explained that there were just not enough twelve year-old boys in the world who able to provide the business to make this sort of restaurant work. We didn't get to eat at the restaurant, but we had given it a valiant effort at least.

We headed back to our neighborhood to eat at a Chinese restaurant next to our hotel. I was glad to have an authentic meal for our last meal, but it wasn't the best one we had on our trip. Still, we enjoyed eating the wonderful family portions that they serve in these restaurants. Instead of each member of the family ordering their own plate, the way these family restaurants works in China is that we order plates of food for the entire table. Then each of us have our own plates and can take a little from each of the family dishes. It is a lot like eating at home is, and it gives all of us a chance to sample several types of dishes. Also, as a side note, we have become really, really good at using chopsticks on this trip. I never thought that this would ever happen. I had packed some forks and spoons that we could take with us to restaurants so that we wouldn't starve because of an inability to use chopsticks, but I haven't used them once on the trip. In fact, a lady at a restaurant we ate at when we arrived in Hong Kong asked us if we were local residents because she was so surprised with how well the kids were using them. Hurray!

I needed to pack everything up since we had a fairly early flight in the morning, but instead Herman sent the girls and I to a massage parlor in our neighborhood to get a massage before we left for home. I have wanted to get a massage ever since I arrived in China almost a month ago because they are insanely cheap here. I really could have used a massage in Beijing when all of my muscles were completely knotted up because of our hectic schedule that week on top of the stress of preparing for the trip that I was still suffering from. But there had never been any time to do this. I would even say that tonight was not a good night for one either because of my need to pack, but Herman insisted.

The girls got foot massages and I got the foot massage along with a full body massage. I wish that I could call this massage relaxing, but I think that I will have to settle for calling it effective. It wasn't quite as painful as the Chinese massage that Herman bought for me at the mall in St. Louis last summer, but it wasn't like the Swedish type massages that I get in Waynesville/St. Robert. It was maybe a cross of the two. I could tell that my muscles were horribly knotted up, and the masseuse worked those muscles over and over until they relaxed. That tended to be pretty painful, but I felt better in the end.

After the full body massage I was led into the main room where they were doing the foot massages. This felt a bit better while she was working on my tired feet, but it was almost excruciating while she worked the muscles of my calves. I kept telling myself that it would all be worth it in the end because it was helping to relax my over tired muscles. But I really think that she ended up bruising one of my legs at least, so I probably should have been a bit more assertive and asked her to be a bit more gentle -- not that that would have necessarily worked -- no one at this store spoke any English at all. Oh well! At least the experience cured me of my desire to get massages in China.

The fun thing about this appointment was that the ladies working there had a couple of big screen televisions on, and they were watching some sort of Hong Kong television show. I'm not sure what the name of it was because the name was written with Chinese characters for the most part, but it did have the word "hero" in it. This seemed to be a crime drama like CSI with a team of investigators that used different skills to solve crimes. However it has the feel of a cross between CSI and Days of Our Lives. It had an almost soap opera feel to it. I didn't understand a word that was spoken in the show, but I interpreted it based on the action onscreen. There were several times that I wanted to laugh at the campy acting, camerawork, and musical score. But I kept my mouth shut because the ladies in the shop watched every scene with rapt attention. They were hooked. Even without understanding the language I was almost hooked by the end of the show. Unfortunately the massage ended before the show was over, so now I'll never know if Angel's partner on the investigative team and boyfriend would ever recover from her death at the hand of the main suspect, or if the bespectacled guy in the wheelchair was the real culprit, or was it really the guy running through the neighborhood with a sucker in his mouth? Will they ever find out? I know I won't. Sigh.

So after our massages we headed back to the hotel to find that Herman had put the boys and Minsy to bed already. That made things easier as I packed for the next day. I still ended up packing until 1 am, but it got done. We're ready to head out in the morning. It has been such an amazing trip. I'm so glad that I have taken the time to write something about each day or I would have never remembered all the wonderful memories we have had as a family. We have grown closer as a family on this trip as we have shared experiences. I feel like the kids (and me too!) have gotten a better understanding of how diverse the world really is. This trip has given all of us an appreciation for the Chinese culture and people. I am so glad that we chose to bring all of the kids with us because I really believe that this common experience has shaped our family for the better. The time that we have had to get to know Minsy and help her to become accustomed to us has been invaluable. It could be that we just have a unique gem of a girl who would have just seamlessly entered our family without problems, no matter what, but I think that part of the ease of her transition into our family has been because of the presence of her six older brothers and sisters. Although I have been itching to get home, I am glad that we took these extra days in Hong Kong crammed into a small hotel room together, because I think that it has further strengthened the family bonds that we were working on forming with Minsy during our time in Wuhan and Guangzhou.

Just an idea of how crowded our
little hotel room was in Hong Kong.

Tomorrow we're headed home for a completely new adventure as we throw ourselves back into the lives we put on hold during the past month. I'm hoping all goes smoothly.