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