Winter in HK

I had a great Christmas! 

We also went to my Great Uncle's house (houses are really rare here)

 

We went with my Dad's Cousin and my Grandmother for a Christmas Supper.

It was very cold here, tv stations were saying the "cold snap" could reach a "freezing" 16 degrees here. Temporary shelters have been opened and the Home Affairs Department is recommending that the homeless should take shelter in McDonald's or the Library. They also recommend wearing down jackets, parkas and several layers. Seems kind of funny to us Canadians, but between 30 - 40 degrees is normal here so I can understand. 

Some friends are coming over now so I need to go.

Bye

Jonathan

=P

   

Christmas in HK

This week I'm going to post a some Christmas photos, because it is the official start of Christmas Break here (no more work, YES ). There are lots of decorations here, but somehow I doubt that the people know what Christmas is really celebrating (Jesus' birth). Here are the photos:

 

The Christmas tree at the piazza (small mall) near where I live.           

       

Some of the decorations  at Pacific Place, an upscale mall (a pair of jeans costs $250USD there, no wonder why I don't shop there).

A close up:

The Disneyland tree:

I wish I got presents that big!

And our Christmas tree:

Merry Christmas!!

=P

Jonathan 

Schools

Last Sunday we went to the Adventist College during their annual Food and Fun Fair. There      were lots of booths selling food, trinkets and they even had some games. They had quite a wide variety of food, from pasta and pizza to traditional Chinese food to food that I've never heard of. Don't worry, all were vegetarian dishes. Each class from the college sponsored a booth. There were lots of people there as you can see from the following picture:

The food that I really like was linguine with a cream sauce:

 To buy things you had to get tickets. The tickets were 5HKD each and my dad gave me 10 tickets. So when you wanted some food, you gave them a certain amount of tickets and they would prepare your food:

Throughout the day, there were performances on a stage. The performances included dances done by the college students, songs by the teachers and even a puppet show by the primary school at the college:

A behind-the-scene look:

The fair was really good but it had one downside, it took us two hours to get there and two hours to get back!

Home school for me is really easy!! I just have Math, English, Reading and this blog. Dad does a finance class once a week. I am learning about budgets and banking. I have violin lessons once a week (frustrated sigh) and Chinese lessons twice a week (extremely frustrated sigh). Here is a picture of my Chinese teacher:

P.S. We went to Disneyland again! We have an annual pass so we can go on any weekdays, which means that sometimes if I finish my school early I can go to Disneyland for the evening and watch the fireworks.

Bye

Jonathan

=P

Beijing, the new version

 As you now know, we went to Beijing a little while ago. Here is my post about the new side of Beijing. I was so amazed at how modern it was, it had a better selection of brand name stores than New York. All the streets were very clean! There was even a Lego outlet store that I went to. But the coolest new places in Beijing were the Olympic sites. They were really well done. I'm sure all of you have seen them on TV, but I'll still show you some pictures of them anyways.

The Olympic sites were about an hour drive from central Beijing. The first site that we went to was the Water Cube. It was really cool looking from the outside:

 The bubble shapes on the outside were made from plastic filled with air like this:

Inside, I could not believe how high the diving boards were! This photo should give an idea:

I didn't get any good pictures of the lap pool because it was decorated for a concert. Other than these pools and a practice pool, there wasn't a lot in the Water Cube. Next we went to the Bird's Nest. On the way there I think I saw the CBC Beijing Olympics broadcasting studio. The Bird's Nest was very impressive:

Here is a close up picture of the design:

The Bird's Nest looked a bit small inside but in fact it could hold 91,000 spectators during the Olympics! Here is a picture of one of the mascots:

A picture of the track where World records were broken by Usain Bolt and others (not me!):

Also built for the Olympics was an extension of the Subway system. It was very nice. They also had some brand new trains going to the Great Wall:

  

The new airport was also very nice. The design of the roof is like a dragon's back.

(Did you find the Tech Decks in the last post?)

Bye

Jonathan

=P

Beijing, the old version

Last week we went to Beijing, the capital of China, the Heart of the Dragon. Beijing is a very diverse city. On one hand you have horse drawn carts:

  

and on the other hand you have Nike:

This week I will just write about the old Beijing. There are many amazing old things in Beijing, such as the Great Wall or the Forbidden City, and we went to all of them! The first amazing thing we went to was the Lamma Temple. It is a very old temple. Most of the temples in Beijing were destroyed during the Cultural Revolution, but this one was one of the few that survived the Revolution. Two Emperors were born there. It was one of the major temples in Beijing. 

Here is a picture of the front gate:

 

This is a picture of a Prayer Wheel: people spin the wheel then pray while it is spinning.

The next big place that we went to was the Forbidden City. It was built six-hundred years ago and has 980 buildings with 1,707 rooms over 720,000 square meters of land! It was Incredible! 

It was so big! Here are some pictures from it:

Just outside the Forbidden City is Tiananmen Square. It is very famous for its central location and all the protests and demonstrations held there. 

A couple days later we went to the Great Wall. We got there by  train. It was a very nice trip and I got some good pictures of the Great Wall from the train:

The Great Wall was also amazing! Guess how long it is. Nobody really knows, but is estimated to be 10,000 to 20,000 km long. We only got to walk a little way though. Here is a picture:

Later that week we went to the Temple of Heaven. It was beautifully built with its design of rings. It was built to connect man to heaven. 

 

The last "old" thing that we went to in Beijing was a show about Kung Fu. The monks who did it were incredible! Here is a young monk (the one without hair!):

Next week I will do a post on the new Beijing, so bye for now

Jonathan

=P

Random Things....(I'm bored).

 This week we went on a two-hour hike near our apartment. The trail that we went on was the MacLehose trail. It is 100km long but we only did around 3km. It was about a ten-minute walk from our apartment. The walk was very steep at the beginning but then it got more level. It was all paved and there were quite a few people on the trail. We got home by bus which was very cheap. Here are some pictures from the trail.

One of the exercise places along the trail: 

 

A rest stop:

The stairs going down to the road:

A grave site. There is some money on the top to "help" the dead people through their "other lives":

And now a guest editorial by my Mom on a Yo-Yo Ma (Cello) concert that we attended:

"One of the advantages of living in a city of 7 million is the opportunity to enjoy word class artists. This past weekend we were privileged to attend a concert with the Hong Kong Chinese Orchestra (HKCO) and Yo-Yo Ma. The highlight was a new commissioned piece by a famous Chinese composer, Zhao Jiping, written specifically for Yo-Yo Ma and the HKCO. The program also featured other "amazing acoustic journeys" which echoed sounds from Tibet and China using ancient Chinese instruments (like the sheng & pipa) along with the cello. Yo-Yo Ma was as relaxed as any performer I have ever seen; he is truly a master. The general layout of the HKCO is similar to western orchestras, except the instruments are quite different. The stringed instruments include the ehru, gaohu, zhonghu, pipa and zheng. The wind instruments include the guan, suona and the sheng, which is like a mini pipe organ played by blowing. I'm sure Uncle Kroy and Kendra would be fascinated with these instruments."

Bye

=P

Jonathan

A Land of Magic

The highlight of my week was a trip to Hong Kong Disneyland. This Disneyland is only three years old. To reach the park we took a special subway train to the Disneyland Resort Station. Here are some pictures of the train:

The park is divided into four main themes: Main Street USA, Tomorrowland, Fantasyland and Adventureland. Here is a picture of the entrance:

 

 

 When we got into the park it didn't feel like we were in Hong Kong. It felt more like we were in the 1950's USA. The first thing we did was ride the train around the perimeter of the whole park. The one thing that I wasn't happy about was that the rollercoasters were closed. My favourite attraction was a show called Stitch Encounter. It was hilarious! We had lunch then we went to Tomorrowland because Main Street USA was all stores and restaurants.  In Tomorrowland there wasn't that much to do besides drive cars because all the rollercoasters were closed.

 We walked through Fanstasyland to get to Adventureland:

In Adventureland we went to the Lion King play:

We also went on the Jungle River Cruse. Then we went back home on the Subway and a minibus. It was an awesome day!

Bye 

=P

   

               

I'm RICH HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA......cough

Ok, so I'm not really that rich. I have a hundred Hong Kong dollars which [at the time of this post] is worth $15.64 Canadian dollars. But still there are a lot of things I could buy here with one hundred Hong Kong dollars. But first, you probably want to know what a one hundred dollar bill looks like in Hong Kong. There is more than one design for each type of bill, so they don't all look alike. Here are two types of one hundred dollar bills, the front side first, then the backside:

 There are lots of things I could buy with one hundred Hong Kong dollars. I will list some of those things here:

1: Fanta (like a Crush soda) 

Cost: $8

Amount I could buy for $100 HKD = 12.5 cans

2: Mini Lego set 

Cost: $35

Amount I could buy for $100 HKD = 2.8

3: Tic Tac

Cost: $6

Amount I could buy for $100 HKD = 16.6

4: Classy restaurant noodle dish

Cost: $88

Amount I could buy for $100 HKD = 1.1

5: Not so classy restaurant noodle dish

Cost: 15

Amount I could buy for $100 HKD = 6.6

6: Udon (fat noodles)

Cost: $11 for 4

Amount I could buy for $100 HKD = 36.3

7: Tram

Cost: $1 per ride

Amount of rides I could buy for $100 HKD = 100

8: Bus

Cost: $3 per ride

Amount  of rides I could buy for $100 HKD = 33.3

9: Tennis

Cost: $20 per session including equipment

Amount I could buy for $100 HKD = 5 sessions

10: Swimming 

Cost: $12 all day pass

Amount I could buy for $100 HKD = 8.3 day passes

11:RC cars

Cost: $40
Amount I could buy for $100 HKD = 2.5

This is a photo of a front-page of a newspaper. You can probably see the ad. The guy in the picture is the richest man in Asia. He lives in Hong Kong. Sorry about the photo being on its side. I try to do better next time.

                                     

This is an advertisement from a newspaper advertising all their sales and deals. 

 I hope you now have a sense of how much things cost in Hong Kong.

PS: I take donations in any currency. I will provide my own exchange rate.

Bye

=P