life together, asia-style

changes, changes

2011-06-21T11:46:00.002+08:00

apparently, i update this blog about once every 4 months. a lot happens in a third of a year, so i apologize.

let's see, where did we leave off in the riveting story of the frankes? at last post, we'd just been out to an all night karaoke affair, a goodbye party for friends, and grant was waiting to hear back from a job he'd interviewed for (who had been holding him on the hook for 2 months).

since then, a short recap:

1) that job told grant no. jerks.

2) kristin went to a youth ministry conference in chicago

3) kristin agreed to stay at union church for at least one more year, and so did her intern-turned-coworker.

4) grant went to a teaching conference in kota kinabalu.

5) we played in the boracay beach tournament -- always a delight.

6) grant spoke to a student's parent about a job at their church

7) we went on a mission trip to the philippines with the union church kids

8) grant got the job at this other church as a junior high youth pastor

9) grant finished his last school year at ics.

10) we played the shanghai tournament.

11) we found a new flat. http://hongkong.asiaxpat.com/property/apartments-for-rent/654904.asp

12) we're ready for summer!!

until next time... hopefully we've told you most of this anyway, and i apologize for our delinquency in blogging.

for future reference, grant slightly-more-regularly blogs at: grantfranke.wordpress.com

and i blog once in awhile on borderline philosophical and theological matters at: kristinfranke.blogspot.com

our big weekend

2011-02-21T17:06:00.002+08:00

On Friday night, after a big youth group night and the first night of Grant's teacher conference, we met up with some friends for karaoke. In Hong Kong, karaoke doesn't involve singing in front a whole bar of random people (and listening to all of those people sing poorly), but getting a private room with you friends to sing your hearts out to Total Eclipse of the Heart, Taylor Swift, Backstreet Boys, or (in Aaron's case) gangster rap. We were out with a group of people from our church small group, Kyle the youth intern, and a couple frisbee people. Karaoke breaks down barriers and everyone gets along drinking whisky and green tea (actually quite a good drink) and eating random snacks while singing as loudly as possible. We were there til 4 AM! Grant had to get up at 7:45 AM to get to his teacher conference. I'm not sure how he pulled that one off, except a whole lot of coffee!

I, meanwhile, slept in until 2 PM, ate lunch and had two friends come over to play xbox. To be more clear, the two boys wanted to play xbox, and I read a book while they shot Nazi zombies.

Grant got home; we went out for Indian food; and then we went to a farewell party for our two

favorite Brits - Michele and Stu (and part-Swiss, I must add). Stu and Michele have been in Hong Kong for almost the exact same length of time as us. We met them through frisbee, have celebrated Christmas Eve with them almost every year, and introduced them to their first American Thanksgiving. It appears that London will be on our upcoming travel itineraries!

For those still following along

2011-02-20T09:05:00.003+08:00

Every now and then, I get on our blog and realize that neither of us have posted in 2 months. Oops. I apologize to our plethora of loyal readers who wait eagerly for our inconsistent updates. Since we last posted, a lot has happened. Or something.

1) Christmas - we spent 14 hours in the air on Christmas Day to get back to Elkhart in time for Christmas dinner with the Huang clan. Amazing to see everyone. Seriously amazing. Then we spent New Year's in Rockford before getting on a plane on January 1 to get back to Hong Kong in time for work. Short trip, but absolutely worth every minute on the airplane.

2) Chinese New Year - we went to Sihanoukville, Cambodia to veg on a beach. It's not the most well-known beach, but I think it's one of those well-kept secrets. Super hippy, relaxed, and dirt-cheap. Lots of 50-cent draft beers for us, and hours spent baking in the sun. (I know, I know, skin cancer and all that).

3) Girls' night out - Our last day of CNY holidays, Grant let me leave him for almost 24 hours to spend a day with Donna and Michele before Michele leaves us for London. 4 hours at the spa, champagne at the peak, and dancing til unknown hours. We love you Michele!

4) Other stuff... We're still working on figuring out next year. Grant's applied at a bunch of Hong Kong schools, but it's a waiting game until they get back to him. I'm working on figuring out what I want to be doing next year as well.

5) More other stuff... My youth kids are amazing, and I love seeing them grow in their faith and understanding of God. I also love how random junior high students are. They fluctuate so quickly between childish and profound, and it's hysterical and joyous. For instance... we have a 13-year-old boy whose favorite jokes (only to the other boys) all include some variation on the world "wiener." This same boy got up the other night and gave a testimony about how important it was for us to remember that helping the poor and needy shouldn't be a once-a-year event, but something we do everyday. And he was PASSIONATE about that point. It's amazing how God is at work in the lives of these students even in their ridiculous-ness.

That's a good summary of the past 2 months :)

Mother's Choice Charity

2010-12-13T10:40:00.000+08:00

Kristin and I had the pleasure of singing Christmas carols, eating food, and drinking mulled wine on Sunday night... all in the name of charity. Much money was raised and people were informed of Mother's Choice, an organization based in Hong Kong, designed to help young mothers make the best decision for their newborns. For more information, check out their website.

a weekend without kristin

2010-11-28T15:09:00.002+08:00

kristin went off to the philippines this past weekend for an ultimate tournament. it's been a good time relaxing, reading, watching movies, and eating lots of thanksgiving food. i even went to a poker game with some guys and won HK$800! however, i can't help but feel that i'm a bit off kilter while alone. i've decided i like life much better, and i am a better person when she's around.

kristin, come home soon so we can hang out again!

love,

grant

panhandling for charity

2010-11-22T12:02:00.003+08:00

yesterday afternoon, grant and 2 buddies raised around $400 for charity.

how you might ask?

by playing music around hong kong...

hong kong pan asian tournament

2010-10-26T14:12:00.003+08:00

this weekend was the hong kong tournament.

i (kristin) played for hong kong junk. we ended up finishing 3rd, and it was a really FUN time together as a team. PARTNERSHIP!!

Grant was awesome and was helping neil, our tournament director, keep things running while neil was playing. it'll be REALLY soon when grant gets to play with us again. we miss him on our D line!!

i love ultimate weekends :D

Union Church BBQ

2010-08-29T14:53:00.003+08:00

It was an awesome day at church.

I was able to worship while BBQ-ing in the courtyard outside.

Today was kick-off Sunday, and free food is probably the best way to get any church congregation interacting with one another.

There were still at least 125 people still hanging out at church a 1.5 hours later!

Here's a shot of the action when we turned up the grill as food was running low:

last day in europe

2010-07-28T13:14:00.004+08:00

In Paris, Sacre Coeur Basilica in the distant background

Our Final Travel Itinerary

July 28

5:15 - Woke up way too early

6:00 - Left our Parisian flat

6:25 - Arrive at Gare de L'Est Station & snag some pastries and coffee

7:04 - Train leaves Paris! It's fast and smooth - I like high speed trains :)

11:00 - Train arrives in Frankfurt... on time!

11:56 - Checked in with boarding passes in hand

12:20 - One last German meal of sausages and beer

14:20 - We board the plane to Beijing. Oh, how we missed the Chinese "lines"

...

July 29th

6:30-7:30 - Kristin proceeds to lose numerous games of "poophead" while we eat a lousy & expensive breakfast in the Beijing airport

9:30 - We board Air China's ghetto plane, on lease from Air Macau

13:26 - Touchdown in the HK airport

HOME! :)

Hong Kong!

paris on a bike

2010-07-27T12:56:00.000+08:00

Yeah, they gave me a girl's bike

Kristin was a little less excited about biking

We rented bikes to tour the inner loop for the day. It was a little nerve-racking at first, but we adjusted and learned to relax. We covered over half the inner ring, riding under the Eiffel Tower, around the Arc de Triomphe, and past the Bastille Monument. We stopped periodically to shop and relax in a park, located near Kristin's old apartment when she studied abroad.

Looking sexy under the Arc de Triomphe

Kristin's old apartment - top floor

After returning the bikes, we had a fun fondue dinner near the Saint Michel fountain. So how did I end our time in Paris? I was playing with the fire for the fondue pot & accidentally set the table cloth on fire! Wow. Thankfully, no one was hurt.

Pre-fire table arrangement

Goodbye France!

Hello Indiana!

The Louvre

2010-07-26T21:26:00.000+08:00

HUGE
Incredible
Overwhelming

And we only saw about 1/4 of the museum. By the end, my mind was exhausted as well as my legs. We went back to our flat for dinner, cards, & to read books.

Anyway, pictures always explain it better, right? :)

Ancient Rome

Modern Rome

The ridiculous crowd for the over-rated Mona Lisa

The famous/infamous glass pyramid

The straight line view from the Louvre (Arc du Caroussel, Place de la Concorde, Arc de Triomphe [and what you can't see is the Arche de la Defense])

Room commissioned by Catherine de Medici painted by Rubens

These paintings were HUGE!

A monkey, painting a painting... of course!

The inner courtyard

A painting of the Louvre being arranged

I came, I conquered

Donna's last day

2010-07-25T23:05:00.002+08:00

Can you imagine listening to the accordian EVERY day?!

It was a lazy last day. We slept in again and then went to breakfast down the road at a 83 Rue de Crimee. Boulangerie por Veronique Mauclerc is one of only 4 bakeries left in Paris that uses wood-fire kilns to bake its bread. Their brunch meals were astounding - in both taste and size!

chocolate bread to start
heaping portions of 3 types of bread (fruit, pistachio, & poppyseed) with butter and jam
quiche
coffee, tea, & juice
more chocolate for dessert
12 Euros

Wow. It was far more than we could eat. So we took the leftovers and gave it to a beggar on the train.

The metro does weird things to people

Tour de France

We're in France & the last leg of the race is passing through the heart of Paris. Why not go? It seemed like a good idea in the beginning, but sometimes the best intentions just don't turn out well. Here's a short list of what went wrong...

Super crowded, but to be expected
We found a good spot, but it took an hour to get there due to police and blockades
We found beer, but it cost 8 Euros a pint
The parade that started out well, turned into the lamest parade ever
The racers were 2 hours late
Turns out that the race is already over by the time the bikers get into Paris - i.e. the Tour de France in the city limits is just for show

Since the race and event was generally sucking, Kristin and I left to visit the Museum of Orsay.

Note the chair

Museum of Orsay

It's the funky museum that took all the pieces of art that the Louvre rejected. It's strange that it didn't take certain items. For example, Van Gogh was left out. As well as the statues and paintings of Degas. Crazy Louvre people.

"I must be sooo cool"

Donna met us afterwards & we went for pizza and crepes at a quaint, local cafe. We amused ourselves for the rest of the night playing cards and talking.

"Donna, thanks for hanging out!"

Note the restaurant... it was also on the "donna" street

Chapelle Show meets the Hunchback at Pompidou

2010-07-24T11:55:00.007+08:00

It's been another great day in Paris! We started uncharacteristically with sit-ups, push-ups, and planks before setting off for coffee at a hostel called Christopher Inn.

Some of the best coffee in Paris

Art near Saint Christopher Inn

The longest foosball table I've ever seen (up to 12 people!)

Our next stop was Sainte-Chapelle, a beautiful church renowned for its stained glass. It did not disappoint. The only drawback was the renovation, which covered up the stained glass of the Passion of Christ. We snapped a few photos inside as well as on the steps just outside at the Ministry of Justice. Donna was asked to help another person take a photo, and Donna had a clear perspective of the woman's yellow underpants. Whoa.

Each window tells a story, L to R, bottom to top

The infamous yellow underwear stairs

From there we made a return trip to the crepe shop from day prior. Delicious. We were extremely stuffed, but managed to drag ourselves to Notre Dame Cathedral. It was ornate, dark, crowded, and made one's jaw drop once inside. However, the feeling of holiness and reverence seemed to be lost among the crowds and flashes.

Mmm...

Grant introducing Donna & Kristin to Catholicism

Inside Notre Dame

On to the Pompidou, the modern art museum of Paris - rumored to be one of the best in the world. We didn't go in, so I guess the rumors will continue. Instead, we hung out in the plaza.

All the piping is on the outside of the Pompidou

Pompidou Plaza activities:

eating gelato (again)
reading books
playing cards
watching performers like magicians and jesters
listening to street music. My favorite was the Chinese guy, playing English songs, in the heart of Paris

He juggled 6 balls while slack-lining - so pro!

Fountain near the Pompidou

Somehow Kristin was able to nap in the midst of it all. I also should note that she was lying on a cobblestone surface. Wow.

Our nighttime sightseeing near the Moulin Rouge

Tower of Mr. Eiffel

2010-07-23T23:18:00.006+08:00

A. Recoup from our previous night out

B. Hearty "breakfast" at noon

C. Eiffel Tower! :)

Eiffel Tower as viewed through the "peace" wall

We went to the summit and relished in the breathtaking views of the city. When we left our flat it was sunny & warm. However, a brief storm blew in & dropped the temp drastically just before our ascent. We managed to still enjoy everything, & I liked it when Kristin was able to point out various sites around Paris.

Kristin is strong...

...but Grant is stronger

Trocadero - as viewed from the top

D. Traipsing around the city. Much of it in the Saint Germain district

We tossed a disc in this park for awhile

E. Delicious crepes, cold beer, & wine

A ham, cheese, and egg crepe - so tasty!

F. More walking

We walked all the way to Hong Kong

G. A chill night back at the apartment. We ate snacks, drank champagne (courtesy of our landlord!), & played card games. We taught Donna to play Rage, while she introduced us to a card game called "Shithead." I was the shithead for 3 of the first 4 games we played.

We love Donna!

H. Bed. Yay!

Fondue + Wine = Good Times

2010-07-22T16:00:00.000+08:00

Kristin Franke

Grant Franke

Donna Gee

Donna, Kristin, & I enjoyed a bottle of champagne with Gerrard, the owner of the apartment we rented for the week. It was a good start after our long train ride. (16 hours!)

Our tiny kitchen in the rented flat

Afterwards, we set off for a night out that turned out to be crazier than anticipated. It began on a relaxed note, hanging out at the Sacre-Coeur Basilique (Sacred Heart Basilica). From there we wandered around the Mont Matre shopping and cafe district where I was rebuffed from taking a picture of an old painter. He looked like a salty sailor and had a wicked beard!

The steps of the Sacred Heart Basilica

Dinner was at a fondue place called Refuge des Fondus where customers get to climb over the table, & wine is served from baby bottles. Kitsch, but fun. While there we met another group of 3 frenchmen, Garrick, Quentin, and Latitia.

The restaurant

The appetizers

Our delicious cheese fondue and baby bottles of wine

After dinner and 500mL of wine each, we set off to find mojitos & drink them at the most obvious of party locations in Paris - the steps of the Sacre-Coeur Basilica. It felt a little sacrilegious, but there were probably at least 100 other people doing the same thing.

From L to R: Quentin, Garrick, Letitia, Donna, Kristin

Mojitos in hand on the steps

All in all, we had a good time & made it home safely. Though it was crazy, & we slept in quite a bit the next morning. I guess we just wanted to start Paris off with a bang!

the day of problems

2010-07-21T15:29:00.002+08:00

Fail #1

Flight canceled b/c the french air traffic control went on strike
Solution: Kristin found an overnight train and booked tickets

Fail #2

Missed our check out time at the hotel. To be fair, we were never told a time
Solution: We did a rush pack, and the hotel gave us extra time, no charge. It wasn't a big deal in the end

Fail #3

We were completely unable to contact our Paris guesthouse about our changed itinerary
First, it was the wrong phone number. We eventually figured out the real number
Failed public pay phones - out of order
Failed phone card - uncertain why
Failed internet and international phone cafe - dude running it was a jerk
Failed mobile phone - bad Italian network?
Solution: We never found a phone solution, so we resorted to an email even though guesthouse said they needed a phone call

Fail #4

Delayed train. 1 1/2 hours late. Another 1/2 hour delay after boarding
Solution: Wine

Fail #5

Our seats were in the same car, but different compartments
Solution: We did get 2 hours together before we picked up Kristin's riding companions in Florence. However, no one wanted to switch, so we traveled separately

Fail #6

Border and immigration problems. Train delayed another 1 1/2 hours
Solution: Coffee, cribbage, and books in the restaurant car

Fail #7

Frantic texts and missed calls with guesthouse once in Paris
Solution: Donna checked in on our behalf

All in all, the day wasn't that bad. We made the best of it and tried to use our time to do some fun stuff together. I would say our European backpacking trip was very successful since this was the only difficult portion during our month of traveling.

Art and Dining among the mafia

2010-07-20T23:38:00.008+08:00

We woke later than usual, but it was much needed. After a light breakfast & my morning coffee perk, we made our way to the metro and journeyed to the Galleria Borghese. Unfortunately, I left our reservation sheet at the hostel. Fortunately, a guy wearing a motorcycle helmet with an iPhone (go apple!) let us access our email and show the ticket lady the necessary info. Whew!

Galleria Borghese

AMAZING! Perhaps one of the best museums I've been inside & had the pleasure of viewing. I was especially thrilled to see Bernini's sculptures of marble. The detail was incredibly intricate. Other artists I saw included:

Caravaggio
Rafael
Titian
Cannova
Rubens

The museum was definitely worth a visit and the 11.50 Euro ticket!

Outside Galleria Borghese

We walked to another "Ryan Balch" suggestion for lunch, located on 35 Via del Orso, called L'Orso 80. Apparently, the restaurant is famous with movie stars & celebrities, both past and present. For example, Julia Roberts just finished filming part of Love, Eat, Pray at L'Orso 80 for 24 days. Also, Italy's president, Sylvia Berluscani, ate there. Finally, some hot Italian chick named Angela Cavagna had a framed, signed, risque photo on the wall. Needless to say, we ate like Roman emperors, gorging ourselves on 16 heaping portions of various antipastos. It was perhaps one of the most filling and savory meals yet! As a final note about L'Orso 80, we feel like it might have connections to the Italian mafia.

The celebrity and mafia hangout

The hot Italian chick

16 dishes of antipasto goodness

The rest of the day was pretty relaxed. First, McDonalds treated us to its 3rd floor lounge chairs, where we took a nap in the sun. Afterwards, we went on to see the magnificent Fontana di Trevi. We tried to play cards for a short time, but the police told us that fun is not allowed near the fountain. Our final trying activity was hanging out on the Spanish steps (where fun is allowed), just watching people and playing card games. The sunset was beautiful, and we watched it from the topmost stairs overlooking the whole countryside.

Fontana di Trevi

Chillin' on the Spanish steps

Sunset view from the Spanish steps

Somehow, Kristin and Lily were still hungry, so we set off for another pasta place. We drank a lot of wine, including the complimentary glass of the "secret/sexy" wine, which had a strong strawberry flavor. After another round of playing Rage, we set our sights on bed and went home.

Our dinner hang out

One Note: we discovered a shop that sells all sorts of uniquely shaped or themed pasta. One was labeled "sexy pasta," and they were all in the shape of penises. Whoa.

the pope's palace

2010-07-19T20:50:00.008+08:00

Vatican Day

7:45 - Woke up way too early

8:25 - Depart

8:35 - 1st ride on Rome's metro

9:05 - Enter Vatican's piazza & getting in line for the Basilica - metal detectors!

9:15 - Show up late to mass... how typically Catholic!

9:45 - Mass ends. Italian or Latin? My guess is Italian

10:00 - Light shines down on the ladies & I take pics. Lots of wandering to view mosaics, sculptures, and other cool art

10:15 - The waxing machine almost runs me over

10:30 - Kristin and Lily touch St. Pete's lucky toes

10:45 - Walk around Bernini's Bronze Baldacchino. The bronze was stolen from the Pantheon. Supposedly St. Pete is buried beneath it

11:05 - We buy official Vatican rosaries - we liked the photos of Pope John Paul II better than his ugliness, Benedict XVI

11:15 - Climbed the 551 steps to the top of St. Pete's Basilica, opting out of the life despite Kristin's whining and wussiness. Hehe...

11:30 - Our sweat dried once we reached the top. We were blessed with glorious views!

12:15 - Ate lunch at Franchi's - a picnic-like restaurant. I had a delicious tomato, rice, and potato antipasto with a panini & red wine. Mmm...

12:45 - Wandered over to the fresh fruit market, where Kristin passes out for a 1/2 hour. Lily journaled, and I read more of Stieg Larsson's "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo."

1:15 - We head back to the Vatican to get in the ridiculously long line

1:30 - We play Rage while standing. It required some intense coordination to balance the cards, score sheet, walking, & suffering the heat

2:15 - Old, cantankerous lady tries to shove us out of the line & butt in front of us. I step in & take charge, which leads to a stare down contest. I suggest she take a pre-booked tour to "officially" jump queue. She backs down only to begin her passive-aggressive approach to move up the line, one-family-member-at-a-time method. "Excuse me, my family is up ahead..." :(

3:00 - Enter the Vatican museum! A/C!!!

3-4:30 - We navigated the sea of endless people in the overcrowded, but priceless museum. One of my favorite parts were Rafael's frescoes

The Sistine Chapel

4:30-5:15 - Hangout at the cafe, play Rage, & then browse through the museum gift shop

5:30 - Send 2 postcards via the Vatican's postal service

5:45 - Walk past Rome's castle. Noted the very cool bridge called Ponte Sant' Angelo

6:00 - Pantheon! An astounding structure built nearly 2,800 years ago, & is considered one of ancient Rome's most magnificent structures. I can see why!

The Pantheon's dome

7:30 - Dinner at an unnamed restaurant, simply known as #18/19 on Via del Governo Vecchio. Delicious!

9:00 - Wander the streets and explore the cool shops while drinking beer & eating gelato. 2 shops of note: nostalgic wooden toys & pop culture books on music, movies, and art

9:45 - Hanging out at Plaza Navona - we heard opera, saw breakdancers, listened to funky bottle music blowers, & watched various artists do their work, which included a spray paint artist

11:00 - Finally catch the metro back "home"

Verdict: A good day! :)

visiting the ancients

2010-07-18T19:27:00.004+08:00

A day in Roma

Breakfast at a nearby cafe. The man owner was funny, and we saw 2 Italian dads taking care of their babies
The Colosseum! However, we actually bought tickets to Palatino Hill, the Forum, and the Stadium (12 Euros). All areas needed signs, and the info was completely lacking. Everything was disorganized chaos. Still, it felt like an epic experience once we were inside the sites

smoke break for the centurion

Saturn's temple - or what's left of it!

Lunch at the Pizza Forum. We gorged ourselves
San Clementine Basilica! It was built in stages, one building on top of the other. First it was the Mithras Temple from the 2nd century BC. Then Christians arrived and built a church on the temple in the 4th century, where Saint Cyril has his remains. Finally, the basilica was constructed on top of that. Overall, it was an amazing site! The temperature was cool and there is an underground spring running throughout the site
Church di Santa Maria in Cosmedin. It was a Greek-Catholic church, which resulted from a schism and the church of Byzantium... or something like that. At this church was the Boca dela Verita. Legend has it that the stone mouth will bite down if someone is telling a lie. To perpetuate this legend, priests would occasionally put scorpions inside the mouth

The Boca claims another victim!

Capitoline Hill. This is and was the government center. Here we met Ryan Balch, an ultimate player, currently giving student tours in Rome. He used to play for Chain Lightning in Atlanta, and he knows all sorts of mutual acquaintances between Lily, Kristin, and me. He gave us a handful of recommendations - all of which turned out awesome, especially the food recs!
The 3D church fresco on the ceiling of Chiesa del Gesu. It was beautiful, ornate, and quite intriguing to look at
Dar Poeta restaurant! It was delicious, hip, and had a crazy dessert - a calzone filled with ricotta and nutella. We were stuffed, and by the time we left the wait outside was about an hour

Conclusions

It was a sensational day, filled with history and framed with good food! Also, I'm really glad to be a part of the ultimate community. People in it are extremely friendly (most always), and it has shown me how small the world is within this circle.

Lido beach and leaving Venice

2010-07-17T16:17:00.005+08:00

Last day in Venice, concluding the especially lazy portion of our trip. Fittingly, we made an excursion to Lido Island, which houses Venice's only beaches. It was amazing that the water was fairly clean considering the heavy boat traffic everywhere else.

Lido highlights and details:

soft, black sand
plenty of beach
free! :)
we played a disc game in the water called "flutter guts" and learned that I'm a ninja at the game, easily winning 3 in-a-row, regardless of the partner I had
people watching was quite interesting - people of all sorts, including a wide range of topless women (though 75% were large, older, and extremely tan)

After a shorter time than desired, we trekked back to Venice and the train station. While there, 3 sad things happened:

Our stored bags cost the 6 hour rate even though they were stored 5 hours and 4 minutes
No gelato at the train station
We had to say goodbye to Jonny, whom has to return to work :(

Few entertaining things have happened on the train with the exception of seat swapping due to so many people either not checking their tickets or stealing better seats (which we also attempted to do and succeeded at for the first 90 minutes of the ride).

A glass monument

The handmade masks of Venice - we bought a magnet version

glass blowing on murano

2010-07-16T15:51:00.004+08:00

Murano Island

Lots of handmade and blown glass. It was a lazy day of strolling, browsing amongst the stores, eating gelato, playing cards, & checking out the glass museum. The museum told us about the process of glass-making and housed examples from as early as the 1st century. However, it seems the heyday of beautiful pieces came from the 18th century, all starting with Guiseppi Brianti. Unfortunately, the day was blistering hot, and the museum was the equivalent of a glass kiln. We retired to a nearby cafe with A/C and played Rage for an hour or two.

We eventually caught a boat back to Venice and then our hotel for an early evening. Just before we fell asleep, we decided we needed pizza. Fortunately, the hotel restaurant was able to provide us with 2 such pizzas for only 10 Euros, and it only took 5 MINUTES to prepare. No joke!

Rage, the card game of aggression and fun

outside the glass museum on murano island

a glass spider

glass fish in a glass bowl with glass bubbles = skill

door to a glass showroom on murano island

gelato with the doges

2010-07-15T15:15:00.006+08:00

We wandered around Venice, getting lost/exploring.

Highlights:

Gelato = yummy, yummy!
Basilica du San Marco - free, beautiful, girls used red napkin/cloths to cover shoulders
More gelato
2 Euro bottle of wine
Euchre in the park. Local drunk watches nearby while singing for us
Doge's Palace...

not free unfortunately
audio guide was a rip off
doges tended to have little ruling power and were basically under house arrest unless they could gather their 6-man posse
most of the decorations were absolutely beautiful. However, most were not original to the rooms except for the fire places
venetian aristocracy = a "system of self-celebration"
palace also included a prison. The prisoners' final glimpse of freedom took place through the windows of the "bridge of sighs"
boasts the largest horizontal painting/portrait in the world
one doge committed treason & his portrait has a black cloth covering it. Also, all history of him was supposedly erased to help people forget him

the bridge of sighs - under renovation

view from the bridge of sighs

listening to the crappy audio guide

in front of the doges palace

basilica du san marco

gelato cone

gelato for the cone

lots of cheap, delicious italian wine

the gandalas - cost 100 euros per hour. yikes!

Happy 3rd Anniversary!

2010-07-14T13:46:00.004+08:00

Today is our 3rd anniversary... Yay!!!

Most of our anniversary was spent traveling to Venice, but we made the most of it - reading, playing games, chatting, & catching up on sleep.

Hotel Paladio

It was difficult to find, but mostly because of Jon and me. (i.e. we got off the bus much too early and walked the wrong direction.) Eventually, we arrive to find:

Clean and tidy room
A/C, but weak
4 single beds, but we can push them together

Venice

Our first views of it are glorious! It's beautiful, packed with people, and fascinating. There's really nothing like it. We had a delicious Italian dinner to celebrate not only our anniversary, but also Lily's 26th birthday. Cost of a bottle of wine IN the restaurant: only 7 Euros

anniversary dinner

anniversary roses

a typical venitian canal

Schornbrunn Palace and Prater Amusement Park

2010-07-13T13:03:00.005+08:00

It's been a wonderful day around Vienna! Our two main stops have been the Naschmarkt outdoor market & the Schloss Schornbrunn. The market was typical, but fun. It was the first time in Vienna that we've seen more than a handful of non-westerners. Most of the vendors seemed Lebanese.

Best part of the market: eating fresh falafel sandwiches from Dr. Falafel. He also sold a delicious pomegranate wine that we sampled.

The rest of the day centered around the Palace Schornbrunn. First, it was HUGE! The inside rooms were ornately decorated, & we heard more details than anticipated. Here's some that I recall...

Franz Josef - symbol of supreme awesomeness. He woke at 4am & worked until he literally had no more energy. He welcomed all sorts of visitors to hear their opinions, complaints, praises, etc. & supposedly NEVER forgot a face. He was utterly devoted to his wife. Lived "modestly" despite the richly decorated palace, well-tended gardens (labyrinth included), serving staff, & 6-course meals each dinner
"Sisi" - Wife of Franz Josef. Apparently not as devoted to him as he was to her. I quote, "I do not believe in the antiquated institution of marriage, & I have come to look upon my past 30 years of marriage with regret." OUCH! Sucks for Franz.
Sisi also... traveled extensively, hated her mother-in-law, was anorexic, and spent most days working on her beauty
Maria Teresse - Revered as a strong, wise, and diplomatic queen. She decorated much of the palace and kept much of the Austrian landholdings in tact when other royal families tried to steal them during a time of political turmoil.
Difficult things for a queen... could not marry for love, but for political reasons, married at 15 or 16, was essentially a baby-making machine - producing as many heirs to the throne as possible (one queen had 16 kids! - maybe Maria Teresse)

Still, I concluded that "Sisi" was essentially a stuck-up brat that didn't appreciate most of the benefits that came with royalty.

On to the Prater! It's an amusement park that's open every day & night within the city. We checked out a few rides, but kept it to a minimum b/c of the high cost. There wasn't an entrance fee, but rather a pay-per-ride policy.

Prater highlights:

Kristin and Lily experienced a quasi-slingshot/bungee jump
Glorious view from the "swings" ride... perhaps the tallest structure in Vienna
Trampolines = Kristin & I are pro
Extasy ride. Spins, sideways, upside down, & changes direction. Strobes, fog, & extremely loud music contributed to Lily puking later that evening. However, it was probably exacerbated by mild food poisoning

Other fun memories:

Frisbee toss in the park
"bubble tea"
Learning to make apple strudel
Playing in the various labyrinths - the Frankes climbed better than the Cater-Huangs!

Dr. Falafel's pomegranate wine

making apple strudel

in the labyrinth

more labyrinth

slingshot/bungee

the swing ride with a view

ninja jump

backflip pro

A typical Vienna day

2010-07-12T12:51:00.003+08:00

We've been touring around the inner ring today, and here's a rough itinerary.

Breakfast of pastries & coffee. Lily found a candied and glazed mosquito on hers :(
We found the Der Anker clock. Came back at noon to watch the procession of political and other famous people while various genres of organ music, representing the figure's respective era, played in the background
Explored the Stephensdom Church. Climbed 343 spiral stairs to the top & experienced glorious views of Vienna
Bought tickets to a full on orchestra concert featuring Mozart. The ticket sellers were even dressed up in period costumes
Saw a yellow Lotus
Found a cafe and tasted a delicious drink (fruchtsirup) - like a milkshake, but not
Viennese food at the Esterhauzy-Keller & sampled some delicious wine
Mu Mok Modern Art Museum... random stuff! Favorite displays were the light exhibit & and the car exhibit. Worst things I saw: a single brick on display & empty plexiglass mounted on the wall. The museum was weird, but occasionally fun
Trip to Billa grocery
Mozart concert at the Konzerthaus, conveniently located next to the sand volleyball beer garden - where the real party was at
Home-cooked dinner of pasta, watermelon, & red wine

jon made me do this

the church in central Vienna

jon cater & lily huang

we climbed to the top of this - 343 stairs!

modern art with a hottie

disco car

mozart - in costume

Vienna meets World Cup final

2010-07-12T00:07:00.001+08:00

In Vienna, and our hostel is great! Spacious, private toilet, kitchen, and dining table. It's part of a group called "Apartments in Vienna," and its only 18 Euros per person, per night.

Other plusses...

cool (both popular definitions) courtyard
free wifi
free laundry
coffee and beer available
located near all the fun bars as well as some historical landmarks

The downsides...

super warm - no a/c or fan
one double bed and two, single beds for the 4 of us
light streams into the room at 6am, and there are no substantial curtains
awkward toilet; I quote Jon Cater: "It's like getting into a tiny sports car, but worse."

Weird things...

toilet (see above)
elevated shower
tiered flooring of 1-2" in between each room
hot/cold H20 reversed
5 types of recycling, but no rubbish bin

World Cup...

We watched the final game of the world cup last night at Pickwick's English Pub. Spain vs. Netherlands. Both are very talented teams, and the bar was equally divided in fans. Here's a quick play-by-play of the game:

Netherlands plays great defense (with the exception of 1 karate kick to the chest)
Spain dives and fakes injury
Netherlands receives a yellow card
Repeat steps 1-3

After a full 90 minutes and 2 15-minute overtimes, Spain finally scores at minute 116. Holland can't score in the final 4 mintues, and Spain wins the 2010 World Cup. However, it was a dirty game, and I just don't feel satisfied at the end. Kristin said, "I don't like games where the cheater is rewarded."

Jon, Lily, Kristin, and I concluded ultimate is by far the superior sport, and refs should never be introduced to the game.

The 5 story club

2010-07-11T23:28:00.001+08:00

Last night we capped off the world's tournament with a trip to the 5-level club in downtown Prague. We arrived around 11:30 to see a huge line littered with disc players. Thankfully, dress code was not an issue, and the line moved at a rapid pace. Inside the Karlovy Lazne (5-level) Club were 5 different floors of music and aesthetic appeal. Descriptions are as follows:

Level 1: Radio mix floor. Came with its own pole dancer
Level 2: House music to the extreme. Featured strobes, smoke, and eye lasers emitting from a nude statue. Oh, and black lights too
Level 3: Oldies/disco music. Definitely the gay floor. Literally, we walked in on people getting down to "It's Raining Men"
Level 4: I quote, "The Black Music Floor." Basically, top 40 R&B (i.e. Black Eyed Peas). Most disc players were crammed onto that floor
Level 5: Chill floor with a DJ. It was mainly designed to drink, talk, and chill on couches

NOTE about level 3: Strangely, this floor also had a pole dancer that was clearly not for the gay couples. In our brief moment in the room, the dancer not-so-casually checked her watch. Wow.

Overall, it was a fun night... probably one of the best club experiences I've had yet.

Today we're traveling to Vienna via train with Jon Cater and Lily Huang. It should be a fun wee with them!

on the st. charles bridge

the 5 story club was not far from here

WUCC updates

2010-07-07T01:50:00.003+08:00

Today team China won their first game! They beat the Belgium Mooncatchers 14-7. It wasn't the most spirited of games due to the abundance of calls. However, China did play better overall, and they deserved the win.

I've been taking photos... it's been fun and interesting, but it sucks not being able to play!

The women's team is still struggling. Their closest game so far was 17-9 against Russia's "Cosmis Girls." Results so far...

Men's games

Colombia Euphoria 17, China 7
Texas Double Wide 17, China 7
Italy Cota 14, China 12
Prague Silence 13, China 5
China 14, Belgium Mooncatchers 7

Women's games

Japan Huck 17, China 2
Russia Cosmic Girls 17, China 9
San Francisco Fury 17, China 1
Denmark Mermaids 14, China 7
Russia Brilliant 15, China 6
Quebec QUB 13, China 3

Good luck teams!

team china with colombia

Club Worlds, Day 1

2010-07-04T01:39:00.003+08:00

We're at the World's ultimate tournament!!! WUCC 2010!!! It's been a crazy adventure in Prague so far, not crazy on the bizarre sense, but crazy to think of the absurd amount of disc stuff simultaneously happening in the location.

The numbers...

about 140 teams
over 3000 players
32 fields to play on
24 China mens players
16 China womens players
1 giant party in Prague (Praha)

China Open had a rough start to the tournament. We psyched ourselves out and made many unforced errors. Oh well, there are more games for us to pull ourselves together and chalk up a win. Good luck China!

The Stag Party

2010-07-03T01:27:00.004+08:00

We left ridiculously early for the train to Munich, successfully switched on a train bound for Prague. Our compartment reminds me of Harry Potter, as if I were bound for Hogwarts. However, I have yet to see any chocolate frogs, Bertie Botts every flavour beans, or butterbeer on the train. How sad!

Stag Party...

Yep. A large group of German guys boarded the train and took over the aisles. There's lots of beer, loud music, and the bachelor is dressed in lederhosen, leg warmers, and a funny hat. The guy is getting married in 2 weeks, and they're celebrating with a trip to Prague to watch the world cup game (Germany vs. Argentina). The whole scenario is hilarious to watch. Although, I just witnessed the groom-to-be snort some cocaine. No kidding!

So what's the most sensible thing to do? Buy the guy and some others a shot from the drink cart! Kristin and I toasted them (prost!) and made a little small talk. We also enjoyed a couple of beers with them (at 10:45am) before we went back to reading, while they set about finding a couple of girls to sign their names on the butt cheeks of the bachelor. Since then, it's just been more music, beer, and many rounds of cheering, chanting, and merriment. :)

the stag party bachelor

the long long long walk

2010-07-02T21:56:00.004+08:00

What a crazy day! We're staying with the Princiottas at a US military hotel called Edelweiss. It's beautiful. Last night we went out to eat in the quaint German ski town, and I had an ostrich burger and Weissbier. We walked back to Edelweiss and had more drinks and finished watching a world cup game. Anyway on to today!

The hike...
*We set off at 9:30 on a near-perilous journey for our feet
*Saw an old bobsled course used from 1910-1960, including in the 1936 Winter Olympics...4 people died from the course!
*Trekked through a BMW motorcycle - the bikers are much less intimidating than US Harley riders.
*Continued to the gorge sandwiched in the Alps - It was powerful, exotic, and dazzlingly blue.
*The gorge and river visit could also include a horse and carriage ride or a cable car trip to the top. But we did neither.
*Time: 9:30 AM til 5 PM
*Distance: Mostly unknown. After discussing this with Kristin, our best guess is at least 15 miles. Whoa.

We concluded our journey with a trip to the hotel hot tub and sipped on beers. We went out to dinner again, ate superbly on more typical German food, and then retreated to watch a legendary World Cup match.

Ghana vs. Uruguay:
1st Half: Ghana 1-Uruguay 0
2nd Half: 1-1
Overtime: 1-1
Final minute: Mysterious free kick awarded to Ghana results in multiple shots on goal. Uruguay defender (Suares) handball blocks a shot on goal and receives a red card. Ghana takes the ensuing PK and totally misses, hitting the crossbar!
Penalty Kicks: Uruguay keeper stops 2 PK's
Final: Uruguay miraculously wins, moving into the semi finals. Unbelievable ending to the match. Tragic for Ghana. Africa is out of the World Cup.

Good night!

The German Alps

We met horses on the long walk

The Gorge

ice cream

2010-07-01T21:52:00.002+08:00

Had a great stay at Erin's! It was an easy transition to life in Europe...Comfortable home, small and manageable town, our own German translator. Now we're heading to Munich only to be picked up by the Princiottas. Kristin's family friends will take us south to Garmisch.
Today we confirmed an observation I've been having: ICE CREAM. So many Germans are always eating ice cream. Not just kids, but adults too. It's quite the contrast after being in HK for 3 years where the people there don't have much of a sweet tooth. Despite my extremely diminished intake, I thoroughly enjoyed my ice cream sundae.
Burn Notice: Enjoyable, witty and addicting
The Jansen Directive: OK thus far, but I hope it gets better
Travel Music: Dave Matthews Band, The Best of What's Around.

Heidelburg highlights

2010-06-30T21:47:00.005+08:00

Went on a day trip to Heidelburg with Erin today. It's a beautiful little city with its own castle and restored stone bridge. We received the "regurgitated tour" from Erin, who went on a tour last week with her company.

History tidbits:

Biggest wine barrel in Germany (195,000 liters!)
Perkeo - a drunken wino jester that died when he was given a drink of water. We proceeded to eat at a restaurant named after him in his honor
Posed with a bronze monkey that points his butt at a tighta$$'s statue (Carl Theodore)
Walked along Germany's largest pedestrian street... that cars can drive on
The castle also has an archway supposedly built overnight for the queen's 19th birthday
One of the churches used to have a wall dividing it in the middle so Catholics and Protestants could share the building but not their company, or their beliefs in Jesus

Insights:

*German girls are way taller and look more intimidating. Asian girls are extremely dainty in comparison. Also, though the average German is fatter, I applaud the amount of bikers peddling all over the city. Finally, all German public transportation is quieter than Hong Kong. It's on the verge of eerie or creepy, like I just walked onto the set of Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

New TV show:

*Erin introduced us to Burn Notice. We're going to back to her place to rest and watch some more.

the scandalous bronze monkey

romantic archway for the queen's 19th birthday

this was the smaller barrel, not the 195,000 liter one!

To Germany!

2010-06-29T21:41:00.003+08:00

Just spent a couple of hours in the Beijing Airport and watched Netherlands beat Slovakia in the World Cup, drank a beer, and played cribbage. Our next leg of the journey was darkly foreboding. With most gates available, the predominantly white person flight was corralled into a dark underground gate, and we had to take a bus to our plane. Racism? ;-)
However, the plane is fantastic compared to our first flight. I always enjoy the individual TVs on the backs of seats. Frankfurt, here we come.
...
I actually slept! It was a bit fitful, but better than usual.
Weird moment: Kristin used my toothbrush. She NEVER does that
*Kristin: Darn me for forgetting!! I've had to use it twice now.
...
Just got on the train and there's no room for luggage! However, the biggest surprise is how quiet the train ride is. To be fair, it's 6:30 AM, but it's still nothing compared to the noise of the AM rush in Hong Kong.
Note: Let Kristin stare at the trees while it's early
Theme Music: Wilco!!! :)
...
Met up with Erin Arndt, and she's kind enough to let us crash with her. She went to work while we promptly took to eating Haribo gummy bears. Between flying and our sugar crash, Kristin fell asleep on the couch while watching the Office. After waking, we went for a run around the town to exercise and explore. Currently, I'm sitting at the Bistro Saxophon in Weinheim.
First German food: Hausgemachter Wurstsalat mit Pommes and a Hefeweizen beer :)
(Translation: weird meat salad and fries)
Kristin had spaghetti and a Weinheimer Riesling. 1/2 German at least!

wurstsalat - yeah, worst salad indeed ;)

leaving on a jet plane

2010-06-28T21:36:00.002+08:00

Kristin and I finished packing today. Before heading off to Europe for a month, we made The Office a priority in our lives and watched 4 episodes. Silly us!
*Kristin: This is a high priority, I needed my fix for a month!
Very stoked about the trip, but not about the plane ride. Decided to take Kristin up on the idea of limiting technology, ie my iphone, on the trip by deleting almost all my apps, especially the games. I'm sure it'll be surprisingly good in the end.
*Kristin: I think so too... I'm trying to avoid internet
Books: Today I began Robert Ludlum's The Janson Directive. Should be fun and thrilling.
Weird moment: Kristin witnessed a girl go into the men's room in the HK airport :)
Tidbits:
-Air China = ghetto flight on a leased Air Macau plane
-Food on flight was surprisingly simple and good
-Chinese lady next to me bought a 1400 RMB belt
-Kristin and I had a lengthy conversation about our various faith statuses and faith crises.

school's out for the summer

2010-06-23T11:31:00.002+08:00

grant finished school about a week and a half ago. i finish my school year at church on sunday.

and i am SO ready for this summer!

we leave on monday night for europe for a month!

our itinerary:

-fly to frankfurt

-see erin

-train to munich

-see dotti and steve princiotta

-go to prague for the world ultimate championships!

-vienna and venice with jon-e and lily

-rome with lily

-paris with donna

it's going to fly by. i'm so excited for the break and also for all we're going to do and see.

then, right after we get back, grant goes under the knife for his 2nd knee. it'll be a busy 2 months!

a "world" expo

2010-06-08T18:01:00.002+08:00

we went to the shanghai "world expo" this weekend. we were already in shanghai for a frisbee tournament, and grant took an extra day off, so we thought, "what the heck."

here's what i learned about the world:

*moldovan wine isn't that great

*bulgaria has a ton of history that i know nothing about

*the ARV drug for HIV was developed in the czech republic

*the caribbean countries had nothing to display on their shelves, but lots of pictures of beaches

*zimbabwe has nice waterfalls (but there was no information about the country at all!)

*sudan's first exhibit was their peace agreement from 2003 (ironic?)

*somalia has sharks and camels (displayed together)

*chinese people push and shove and push and shove some more when they're in a line

*and they're not afraid to queue for hours and hours and hours to get into a pavilion, get a stamp for their fake passport, and move on to the next one.

*in 5 hours, i'd guess we saw less than 20 foreign visitors to this "world" expo.

i realized it felt a bit like a massive version of epcot center in disneyworld. all of the countries show their glossy, pretty side and sometimes even perpetuate the stereotypes about their country! the exhibits that we saw were all really slick with no real content. and did i mention the lines?

youth sunday

2010-05-11T13:57:00.001+08:00

We had our youth Sunday this past week. 6 of our students led worship, 4 preached, 3 gave testimonies, 6 ushered, 3 helped with the tech team, and 3 more did other parts of the service.

it was really awesome to see our kids serving and to hear what was on their hearts.

here's two links:

our service trip video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bm_eN-9g0Qo

our youth sermon: (click on the one called "an example for all believers.")

http://www.unionchurchhk.org/component/option,com_docman/task,cat_view/gid,13/Itemid,60/

a week in rural china

2010-04-09T16:33:00.006+08:00

last week, i (with 3 other chaperones) took 16 youth from our church to bangbing village in yunnan, china. if you can see on the map, it's very near the myanmar border.

it took us 2 flights and over 7 hours on a bus (total) to get there.

we helped build sinks at a middle school, picked and made tea, taught english, and played with kids.

the worst part? no toilets or running water for 4 days/3 nights!!

the pictures might tell more than my words would. these are courtesy of 2 students' facebook albums. i didn't take a camera :-)

2 trips to the Philippines in 2 months

2010-03-18T17:29:00.002+08:00

yes, it's true, the Philippines is officially our "most-visited" destination. several reasons for this:
1) flights are cheap to Manila
2) life is cheap when you are there
3) there's a huge ultimate scene and, therefore, lots of tournaments

trip 1: chinese new year
Coron, Palawan

Coron is gorgeous. it's a small town and not highly built up. we tried scuba diving, did a lot of snorkeling, and rented a boat to "island hop" around to different sites. truly one of the most fun vacations i've had in a fairly remote area!

trip 2: my birthday!
Boracay Island - home of the white beach

Boracay is the same as always: white sand, clear waters, ultimate, great restaurants and bars. The tournament was fantastic, and we had a great group of friends to hang out with post-games. Boracay is a great place for "developed" vacations - almost anything is available.

pictures are on facebook. i find pictures on blogspot too difficult to deal with. sorry!

"is there anybody out there?"

2010-01-26T21:29:00.002+08:00

that was one of my favorite burlap to cashmere songs when i was in high school. i'm still not sure what the point of the song was entirely, but that's ok.

my point in quoting it is wondering if anyone follows us! i know that i'm bad at remembering to update, and grant's even worse, but it is definitely hard to be inspired when you're not sure if anyone's there.

regardless, our holidays were good. christmas eve was a beautiful evening of church services and dinner with friends and their family. our candlelight service at church was really amazing, and we had a group of friends join us. we got home and opened all our presents before we went to bed. i guess we are still little children!

christmas night, we flew to bangkok, en route to chiang mai where caroline becker was waiting for us! she'd come to hong kong for a few days, and then we met her and her friend in northern thailand. it was beautiful - clean air, mountains, warm days, cool evenings. i was really bummed to only stay for 3 days, and grant stayed for another 2 weeks after.

i spent new year's in kunming with our good friend anna - working on a service trip for april, playing ultimate, and generally relaxing. again - clean air, mountains, but no warm days! i think that's the coldest i've been in 2 years.

that's us in a nutshell. 2 weeks from now will be chinese new year, and we're headed to palawan, philippines - specifically, coron town on busuanga island. then, for my birthday, we're going to boracay for a tournament. i don't think i could celebrate my 25th birthday any better.

camping out... in the living room

2009-12-03T19:44:00.003+08:00

Greetings followers of the Franke blog!

Today was a sunny, warm day in December, and I just went for a 2-mile run with Kristin. It was the first time since my knee operation that I was able to actually RUN! It felt great. I remember just after my surgery in September how I thought I'd never be able to move my left leg freely again. However, with each week, there seems to be subtle improvement, and I'm slowly progressing. In hindsight, I can more clearly see why the doctor and all other torn-ACL-friends say it's a long road to recovery, but I should have hope for a full return.

But that's not exactly what I wanted to tell you.

I really just wanted to say that Kristin and I have been sleeping in our living room since Halloween. Yep. We moved the mattress from our bedroom into the living room, and we've been camping ever since. There was no reason for it, just an adventure. However, I think we're realizing that it also means we haven't had people over to our place in over a month. It would be nice to host again and welcome back our friends' laughter to 11/G. Adventures are fun, but eventually they have to end so that you can start a new one.

thrillah in manila

2009-11-10T08:57:00.003+08:00

that was the theme for this year's manila spirits - biggest asian tournament. i'm going to write this post in terms of wins and losses... because there were several!
losses:
*the women's final by 2 points
*a disc (but grant found it!)
*my teva sandals
*my sports bras and new shorts
*our mixed quarterfinals due to some sh***y calls by the other team. i could go into it in detail, but let's just say it was the worst spirit of the game i've ever played against!

wins:
*a lot of new friends from D-CUUP (our women's team from around China/Taiwan). here's a photo after the finals with Philippines. it's a bit small.

*more new friends on Ninja Cowboy Bear (my mixed team)
*a lot of games - 3 and 1 on Saturday for mixed, 2 and 1 on Friday for women's
*MVP for the women's tournament!! HUGE surprise actually...
*seeing tons of people from all over asia that i've met at other tournaments
*having a good dinner out with grant for his birthday
*good weather! only a tiny sprinkling of rain for a half hour

it was a FANTASTIC weekend. i've still got my fingers crossed that my clothes will come back to me. i gave up on the flip flops though :-(

thrillah in manila

2009-11-09T14:26:00.004+08:00

this weekend was the manila spirits tournament - biggest tournament in asia, i'm fairly certain. for the first time, there was a women's and open division! 9 teams for open, 4 for womens. it was fantastic. my women's team was made up of players from beijing, taiwan, hk, and one girl from shanghai. we got to play in the finals and ended up losing by 2 :-( ah well, so it goes. my highlight moment was a stall-9, inside out flick, upwind(?) to the back of the endzone for a score. heck yeah.

mixed was on saturday and sunday, and i played with a team called "ninja cowboy bear" made up of people from all over. lots of beijing people (the captain was from there), singapore, philippines, japan, hong kong... good times. it was awesome because we did really gel together, and we worked as a team, even though we had some huge stars who could have totally dominated the game.

we made it into the quarters after winning our crossover against the beijing team. we were playing against boracay, and it was going really well (8-5) until the cap... then we just couldn't score. we only had to get to 9, and they got up to 8-8. at which point, all heck broke loose. on a bad throw from me, our player skyed his defender and came down with a disc, and a girl was also trying to get in the mix. he dumped it, there was a swing and a score. go ninjas. we started shaking hands, and the boracay captain noticed his girl on the ground yelling that she had called foul (or injury). no one heard a call, no one knew what the call was. if it was injury, it could have stayed with our guy... turns out she claimed a foul, so it had to come back to me. my mark fouled me, and then i threw it away on my 3rd try. they scored, game over.

someone was taping the game and showed it to us afterwards...

1) there was no foul: he skyed her by about 3 feet, she never left the ground and got in his way as he came down.

2) she never acknowledged any call. she played defense and then went to the ground AFTER the score.

our captain, not known for a calm temperament, took the video straight to the TD and the other captain. after debates, they agreed to talk to the girl and see if she stuck to her story. if she didn't, they'd figure out what to do next. what stunk was that she wouldn't admit to a bad call. so there was nothing we could do, and no acknowledgment of violating the spirit of the game. SUPER frustrating end to our run, especially because they got destroyed in the semis, and we would have had a chance at making the finals against the other team. i voted we put the video on youtube, myspace, friendster, facebook, etc :-)

but, overall, it was a REALLY fun weekend and great to see all the ultimate players we know from all over since basically every team was there (32 mixed teams, 6-700 players!). and now it's back to the real world until the next tournament...

for those still following along...

2009-10-29T09:57:00.003+08:00

i realized that neither of us have updated this blog in quite awhile... though, were you expecting grant to do it? nope, me neither. i also realized that there are still a few people out there who read this. (hi jon-e!)

grant's recovering quite nicely from surgery. he walks without a limp 90% of the time, he's been on the bike every day this week, and he's hoping to play ultimate by the end of february. this is what his physio has told him, so it's not just an obscure date that he chose. meanwhile, he's helping run our fall league and doing ridiculous write-ups after each week.

i, however, am still playing ultimate. my league team is 5-0 so far. whoo whoo! jake-e did a great job drafting almost all my favorite people. he also did a great job recruiting a new girl who's a BEAST (even though she'd never played). last weekend was the HK tournament. team Party Tram won the team costume award. yup, ninjas. and we had fire, courtesy of our resident amateur magician, jeremy. it was definitely fun to be playing a tournament again. i forgot about what a high i get from tourney weekends! good thing manila is next weekend...

professionally, jobs are good. grant's u-14 soccer team is doing well, and he survived planning camp. now he just has week without walls in a few weeks. he's doing a "boys to men" week. manly things like war games, go karts, hiking and camping, the works.

youth group has been going alright. lots of crazy boys in the 11-12 age range... it's a good time.

cheers,

kristin

grant's surgery

2009-09-16T09:16:00.002+08:00

we spent monday and most of tuesday hanging out at the Matilda Hospital in hong kong. this hospital is most commonly known as where the wealthy have their babies :-) however, we were not having a baby... grant was having surgery on his knee having his acl replaced and meniscus trimmed.

i had a request for all the funny things that happened or that grant said, and i thought i should post them.
*not only do they give you an open back robe to wear, you also get "special underwear." these fashion statements are best described as one-size-fits-all mesh adult diapers. i'm not sure why you can't wear regular underwear.
*at this particular hospital, patients also got warm, fluffy robes to stay modest.
*quotes from grant, post-op, that he has no recollection of
-"am i still in surgery?" (about 10 minutes after being in the ward, after the recovery room)
-"cutler is a huge waste of money. what a jerk!" (after being told about the bears game and cutler's interceptions.)
-"you don't want to see all of this. kristin gets excited about it, but you don't want to see it." (to the physio girl when she came to teach him to use his crutches)
*the physio then asked me "is he always like this?" to which, i said "yes..." and she replied "oh, i thought he was on morphine."

the craziest thing that happened was a typhoon came through while grant was in the hospital (on the PEAK!), and the winds went nuts. it went up to a T8 in the evening, so I opted out of heading all the way home across the harbor (traffic and transportation were going to be CRAZY) and called our favorite hong kong family, mike and sheri. they laughed at me, because they'd just been talking about if i would need a place to stay. there was still a t8 in the morning (which meant no taxis), so i stayed around, watched nfl, and ate waffles. it was a GREAT morning, even if I did feel guilty for ditching grant!!

now he's at home, resting, icing his knee, and hobbling around. his most recent facebook status post: "immobility challenge #1: going to the bathroom"

an awesome date followed by unpleasant consequences

2009-09-01T08:56:00.002+08:00

last night, grant planned our weekly "date night." there's a pretty fancy restaurant right under us (or just about) that we regularly walk past called O'Carol's. on mondays and wednesdays, they're having a "ladies eat free" special (if you come with a gentleman). the set menu is an affordable price, and you're only paying for one person. so, we had an appetizer of foie de gras (sounds better than goose liver) and salmon, a seafood and mushroom cappucino, and a main course, followed by coffee. lovely, really. we went home for our own dessert (fruit and nutella!), watched the office, and generally enjoyed ourselves.
until it was bedtime.
then both of our stomachs felt terrible: borderline pukey feeling. you know the one. i'm not sure either of us slept soundly last night.

a great date night gone sour.

in the groove

2009-08-12T08:56:00.002+08:00

grant started school today, and i'm gearing up towards the start of the school year and the youth group calendar. i've got quite a bit to get done, but i'm at a bit of an impasse... wanting to get students' opinions on activities, waiting for dates to be confirmed for events, etc. we're also hiring an intern this year which should be exciting - and nervewracking! sometimes, i barely know what i'm doing, and now i'll have to help someone else do stuff too! i'm really glad to have an extra head to bounce ideas off. that might be the biggest asset to me personally, though she'll be helping with other (much-needed) areas in the church.

singapore open was last weekend. it was hot, tiring, and lots of ultimate (imagine that!). we had an awesome group of women, including 3 students from the US, a solid, if short, group of men, including a notre dame pickup. we went in seeded pretty low, and finished there (16th) which is really unfortunate. we lost a lot of games we shouldn't have, and that's always frustrating. overall, i think i played pretty well considering i haven't seriously played since june. i even got to be a cutter since we had solid guy handlers and the women had better mismatches in the downfield. that took some getting used to, but it was fun, and i played pretty well in most of our games. my fitness level was definitely lower than usual, so that's high on my priority list to work on. in our last game which was a bit less serious, i put up some decent long passes and ok pulls - gotta work on those for the women's team. grant played well too. he was on the d-line a lot, and they played a lot of zone, which is his LEAST favorite thing, but he still played really well...especially given our recent absence from disc. in quarters though, he went up for a d over a girl in the endzone and came down really wrong and hurt his knee. he's going in to the doctor today, and we'll see what happens. the good thing: she dropped the disc. the ridiculous thing... after laying on the field for a good 3 minutes trying to move over to the shade, eventually getting some ice and moving to our sideline, one of the other players came out with a cramp or some small injury. the captain says, "grant, go in!!" grant replied with, "are you RETARDED?!" i've gotta say, this kind of move defined much of our weekend.

anyways, beach ultimate continues which is lowkey and fun for awhile longer. i'm ready for that - fitness, throws, but non competitive. league will start soon enough, and then the hk tourney will roll around. decisions to be made.

we're past the jetlag which is a good feeling, our house is almost cleaned up from arriving and traveling, but we have no food in our fridge. must work on that!

we're totally open to any and all visitors! come see us in asia :-D

welcome home

2009-08-03T09:41:00.001+08:00

we landed in hong kong yesterday where it was 95 degrees out, and the haze was incredible. we made it safely to our flat where we discovered that the air conditioner in our main room isn't working. luckily our landlady is on top of this for once and is sending someone today. it's bordering on emergency.
i woke up at 2 last night, lay in bed til 3, gave up til 4, and slept til 7. so far, i'm doing ok, but it's only 9:30 AM.
the smells of hong kong are making my stomach churn while i'm jetlagged. i forgot about that sensation.

but, we're mostly unpacked and glad to be back... now back to work

back in the us of a

2009-06-28T19:15:00.002+08:00

grant and i made it safely back to the us. for grant, it's basically been two years since he's been in the us. i was back last fall for a week.
we flew business class. yay for upgrades!! we had enough miles to upgrade one direction, and it was freaking AWESOME. if i can figure out how to do that every time i fly long distances, i will.
the first thing i noticed about the midwest: the flatness. coming in over wisconsin, illinois, chicago suburbs, everything was flat. none of the buildings rose above the treelines, adding to the flat effect. none of the interesting skylines of hong kong (mountains, buildings, etc) for sure!
the second thing i've noticed is size. the largeness of everything! cars, grocery stores, roads, high schools, department stores...
it's crazy seeing how big my brothers and sisters have gotten! erik is just about the same size as chris, and his voice is about as low. rachel is apparently in the midst of a huge growth spurt. mikey wants to be called "mike," and katie is more of a little girl than a toddler.
oh how time goes on!

i did realize that there is basically NO ONE in elkhart that i know anymore, except my friends' parents (who i wouldn't exactly call up as friends!). apparently we all got out...

summer's arriving

2009-06-18T10:07:00.003+08:00

grant's on holiday. it makes me want to be lazy in the mornings.
we went to shanghai over the weekend for a tournament. BEAUTIFUL fields - soft grass to walk barefoot through, to lay out on... and gave me a rash. everywhere the grass touched me, i broke out. dang my allergic body. i'd like to believe it was some sort of pesticide, and not just my general allergies to nature.
the only thing off-setting the great venue was the polluted air. i'm so glad i live in hong kong and not in mainland china. we sometimes have blue skies. there, a clear day means you see an outline of a sun amidst a whole lot of haze.

we go back to the states next week. i'm ready to be away from the heat and humidity. it's a beast this week. we're going to be incredibly out of shape for singapore: de-climatized, jetlagged, and no disc playing for months before. love it.

just a random post

2009-05-17T09:14:00.002+08:00

i realized that, once again, it has been ages since i've updated our blog. whether or not there's actually anything to write about has yet to be seen.

summer has arrived in hong kong. this past week has been consistently hitting 30 degrees (celsius) which is basically high 80's/90...plus humidity. i have to admit, i'm quite excited to visit the States if for nothing else than for the nice weather! i've also realized how well my body has acclimatized as i wore jeans most of the week. scary. when you see me this summer, and i'm complaining about how cold i am while you're in a tank top and shorts... just laugh at me, and have pity on my sub-tropical body.

grant and i went on a hike the other day, and the beauty of this particular hike is that it finishes at a beach. there's no better way to finish a hike than with swimming! in my opinion, all hikes in hong kong should finish with a beach.

as mentioned before, david loomis visited us for a few days back in april. i have to say, it was really fun to see someone from a "former life," if you will. my life has become quite segmented into "high school," "college," "zionsville," and now "hong kong." as there's very little overlap of these lives, when someone crosses over it's a strange experience. probably the epitome of this was sitting on the walk of stars in tst, looking at the skyline of hong kong, and laughing at stories from high school. it's been a long time since i've remembered all that and seeing david brought it all right back as if it were just a year ago...and not 10!! (yeah, get that: 10 years ago, i was finishing my freshman year. i feel old).

for those of you who want to see us this summer, here's our approximate itinerary:
*Grant in Rockford, June 23-July 10
*Both of us in Chicago: July 10
*Door County, WI: July 12-18
*Michigania: July 18-25
*Indianapolis: July 25-28
*Elkhart: July 28-July 31
Fly away to Hong Kong: August 1

sweet, sweet victory

2009-04-22T16:42:00.003+08:00

i don't often post about our ultimate league, and today is a great day to do so :-) i've had nowhere to brag as much as i've wanted to.

last season, my blue team took on the name "smurfs," simply because i couldn't come up with anything better with blue. we finished on top of the regular season standings over black, 5-5-2 vs 5-5-1 or something ridiculous like that. anyways, we lost in the finals with a lot of our players being gone.

this season, my blue team was allowed to stick together if they wanted to, and we had 11 players stay with the smurfs, and picked up a few more great people (ie, grant) which made for some fun comraderie and also teamwork. all season, we've been regularly winning against the red and white teams, but never against black. the black teams relies solely on a non-traditional zone defense that exploits weaker players. the last time we played them, we came within 2 points... sooooo close!

last night, we finally did what we've needed to all season: eliminated our own drops and errors and played with solid teamwork. one of the newer players commented to me, "i keep cutting but i'm never open! should i stop?" we told her, "NO! keep going, because you're letting other people get open!" sure enough, she kept running her butt off without touching the disc, but keeping defenders occupied. anyways, we beat our nemesis black by about 6 points because every person on our team played to the top of their abilities.

not gonna lie, it felt REALLY good...
and, for some personal bragging, because i can:
grant played like a man on fire, and like someone who's been playing a lot longer than just under 2 years. he was cool, confident, and quick as a handler. i'm in love... ;-)
i put up 3 huge throws (against wind too!), 2 of which were caught by my receivers. (the other one was a bad throw). and, i got to run deep for a goal. that RARELY happens, and i still can't believe my legs moved as fast as they did.

oh and david loomis, who's visiting this week in the midst of his travels, played with us and scored 2 points for us. pretty sweet.

i love the smurfs.

boracay open 2009

2009-03-30T12:58:00.003+08:00

last weekend (21-22/3), we went to boracay (see the other posts about that glorious place) for a frisbee tournament. it was a short trip: we arrived saturday morning early and left midday monday, but 100% worth it. frisbee tournaments are always fun, added to the beauty of boracay, we couldn't go wrong.

there were 6 of us from hong kong, and then we picked up 3 peace corps volunteers stationed in the philippines, including laura van't land from valpo. they'd seeded our team 9th, which made us the top of the b bracket. it meant we got to win a lot :-) overall on the weekend, we were 6-1, but that only made us the b bracket champs since we didn't play the top teams (who would have DESTROYED us).

amazing time, and then grant left last week for kota kinabalu for a teacher conference (he can post on that if he gets to it!!)

here's a photo of the hong kong musclemen (and woman)
(l-r) mike, rob, jeremy, grant, kristin, sandy

11 march 2009

2009-03-12T10:18:00.002+08:00

it was a very good day.
i slept in an extra half hour, for no reason at all.
grant bought me about 12 new books to start reading and left them all over the floor for me to see when i woke up.
i talked to kari, erik, mom and michelle.
i went to work and accomplished a little bit, but spent time reading the facebook messages that kept popping up at me.
but spent 2 hours at lunch with pastor marybeth and sheri.
then we had tea with the rest of staff and olin, complete with homemade carrot cake. mmmmm
i hung out with natalie and sharon and played guitar hero... oh, and did some mentoring lessons.
then we went out to dinner in soho with lots and lots of friends. we ate lots of tasty lebanese tapas and smoked a hookah.
janice gave me the funniest book present ever- veggietales birthday!
came home and fell into bed happy and blessed.
oh, and facebook left me a birthday message.

thanks everyone for your love, near and far.

30-hour famine (union church version)

2009-03-04T10:02:00.004+08:00

see if this link works:
http://www.facebook.com/home.php?ref=home#/album.php?id=693318141&aid=92249
or this one:
http://www.facebook.com/home.php?ref=home#/album.php?id=693318141&aid=92250

these are my awesome kiddos doing the 30-hour famine this year, photos compliment of garland, my awesome volunteer. (there are more hiding somewhere).
we had 20 kids participate for church, and i'm guessing they raised over $80,000 HKD to be donated to World Vision. incredible. they were great sports, in good moods, and willing to do everything!
we had a local ministry group come and lead a simulation exercise called "monsoon" which simulated being rural farmers dependent on the monsoon for our livelihood. my family had one member die :-(
we also made blankets for another local ministry. wrangling middle school boys to be interested in something like that is NOT easy.
played lots of games, and spent quiet times learning from Scripture.
i still think my favorite prayer of the weekend was "dear God, thank you for giving us all different abilities...and disabilities."
some quotes from the evaluations on what they learned:
"god loves everyone equally, no matter how clever, smart, rich, or poor they are. it isn't god's fault [that there's poverty] - we can't blame him for something we don't help."
"there is no way to give too much"
"He (God) is worried about everything but it is us that have to help."
"it is hard being hungry. but i have faith in god and he gave me strength."
"that when you really concentrated on God, nothing else seems to matter. when i felt hungry, i thought about God and forgot about being hungry."

oh, and all these kids were junior high age. pretty amazing to hear how God was working on their hearts.

grant did a 30-hour famine with his students this month too, but i'll let him give details if he wants ;-) i don't know what highlights he saw from his students.
also, for those of you who heard grant was having knee problems: he got his MRI done last Saturday, and he has NOT torn his ACL, PCL or anything else. he did tear a tendon that rehealed itself, and he does have inflammation, but no surgery needed. yay!!

the mundane

2009-02-20T14:01:00.002+08:00

i've had a realization lately that nearly all of our posts revolve around somewhere we've recently travelled. i can't deny that we've been incredibly blessed financially since we moved to hk. both of us have steady salaries, and very few expenses or debts (darn school loans!). we end up travelling a lot, and then we post about our travels, because those seem like the most interesting parts of our lives.

and recently, i've become really sensitive to the fact of how unusual this is - we travel about once a month, and we love it. but the truth is that most of you who read this blog are living in the states where unemployment is rising, recession is really hitting hard, and finances aren't as loose as ours are right now.

it makes me wonder if we're insensitive for posting frequently about all these great places?
in truth, this blog started as a way to keep our family and friends updated about our lives as we started off life in hong kong, a new culture, another continent, another way of life. now we've been here for approaching two years (1 year, 7 months), and the novelty and shock has worn off.

since the novelty has worn off, writing about daily life feels less interesting to us. ferries, taxis, subways, double decker buses are ways of transport and life for us. seeing skyscrapers is expected. an 11th floor, 558 square foot apartment is home. we go to work, we play frisbee, we hang out with friends, we sleep, we eat. life in hong kong settles into a routine, and, in many ways, is not so different from a life we'd live in the US.

for instance, i went to outback for lunch with our friend anna who lives and works in china. she was visiting hong kong to get her visa renewed.

outback, lunch with a university friend who's passing through, catching up on life stories. all normal occurences in our lives.

visa runs, maybe different.

at this point, i think we focus on our travels in our blogging because they are the new, the novel, the exciting, the interesting spices in our lives.

in short, i apologize if writing about travels seems insensitive in these economic times. i apologize if you've wanted to hear more about our daily lives. if you let us know that, we can try to work harder at sharing those events.

chinese new year 2009

2009-02-05T12:26:00.002+08:00

it's the year of the ox... my year baby!

to celebrate, grant and i left gray, smoggy, chilled hong kong for boracay island. here's the island from the plane. we were hanging out in the narrow strip in the middle, but on the farther side from this angle. google boracay, and i believe it's one of the best beaches in the world.

to get there, we flew to manila, then caticlan, then took a boat across the channel to the island...

so i forgot to rotate the picture before uploading... oops! here's one of the really good sunsets.

while we were there, we got to hang out with laura van't land, who's in the peace corps near-ish to boracay. go valpo!!

we also did a lot of skimboarding (so fun!!), sleeping in, laying on the beach, reading books, cribbage, drinking fruit shakes, and eating big dinners. what a life. back to the grind now!

on a more entertaining note

2009-01-22T10:38:00.002+08:00

on a less weighty note from my last post of recommendations...

grant and i are currently addicted to 30 rock, the tina fey sitcom that's won massive numbers of awards. we bought seasons 1 and 2 in shenzhen last time we were there, and it has been my favorite evening activity for a week now. we've finished season 1 and part of season 2. absolutely hysterical.

my favorite part of our set of discs is that each disc starts with the FBI anti-piracy warning.
ironic really, if you notice where we bought them...

new books

2009-01-21T15:51:00.005+08:00

at the national youth workers' conference in pittsburgh last fall, i was able to hear a lot of great pastors, writers, theologians, etc teach in seminars and in general sessions. two who stuck with me were margaret feinberg and phyllis tickle.

at the conference, i bought one of margaret feinberg's books: the organic god. loved it. if i had to pick an author that i'd love to sit down and have coffee with, she might be the one. her basic question is "Why do you love jesus?" now think about that for a few seconds...

it's much harder than you anticipate. i can think of all the proofs,

examples, reasons that god (and therefore jesus) love me, and i can think

of reasons why i worship him... but love him? that opens up an entirely different picture of jesus all of the sudden. what i liked about this book was it took you back to some of the basic characteristics of god and who he is. check it out... i'm hopefully going to start reading another book by her soon. (sacred echoes)

next interesting book i just finished: the great emergence by phyllis tickle.

this one is probably a bit more polarizing than my other choice. her premise is that we are in the middle of a semi-millenial "rummage sale" by the church. when it's over, we'll have a new expression of the church as we know it, as well as a re-formed and re-traditioned version of the church that

we previously knew (in this case, protestantism and roman catholicism). i appreciated how she looked at seemingly unrelated cultural phenomena and pointed out how they have changed the church over the past century. from inventions such as the automobile, to philosophies ab

out life and the soul: all of them have (in some way) affected christianity. the other thing i appreciated was that she didn't make a judgment about whether or not this "emergence" is wrong or right in culture or in the church. simply that it is, and as a church we will have to learn how to understand what it will be and how it will affect christianity as we know it.

am i an "emergent" or an "emerging christian?" (because these apparently have different meanings, though i'm still unclear on the difference). maybe? probably? i'm not exactly sure, though i do feel that my theology and my practice of religion tend to be a blend of denominations and practices. do i believe in the authority of scripture?

yes. do i believe that faith alone saves? yes. but do i also believe that we need to be the living embodiment of jesus's teachings? yes... and if that puts me in the category of "social justice" christians, then so be it. do i have liturgical leanings? at times, yes. based on my very limited understanding of this "emergence," i probably fit, as i can't clearly be categorized in one "quadrant" of the north american christian map. (see the image, taken from her book).

anyone else have any thoughts on books for me to read? :-D

my monthly ramblings

2009-01-13T14:27:00.005+08:00

Good grief, my ability to upload blog entries in a timely fashion is terrible.

Christmas this year was lovely. Lots of time at church and with friends. As much as a downer as it is to be "working" on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day (and I don't even have to preach!), it really is a blessing in disguise. In this strange city of warm weather, commercial focus without cultural/spiritual significance, and leaving for vacations, church services that I'm "required" to attend become a centering experience. From a family service with "The Best Christmas Pageant Ever," to an all candlelight evening service, and then back again in the morning for a celebration of Christmas Day, I felt like I was able to really live and experience the Christmas story in many forms.

Grant loved his iphone. I'm such a nice wife ;-)

We left for Vietnam on Christmas night with some friends. There was a hat tournament in Ho Chi Minh City that we went to last year also. Lots of fun, sunshine, and ultimate :-D Grant's team won, and my team did alright :-P Following the tournament, we went to Mui Ne, a beach town nearby. VERY relaxing, and there were about 12 frisbee people there (more or less, depending on the day) who we hung out with.

It was a good holiday indeed.

I've had an interesting month of learning, discussing and thinking about church, ministry, theology, etc. It's been fun, challenging and overall good times. It's also helped me learn to be gracious with people who have differences from me. Difficult lesson, really, but super important. Some days I wish that I could do that all the time - read, think, discuss. I know, I'm an eternal scholar at heart.

I'm really excited for our upcoming "Faith Discovery Course." It's a chance for our students to meet with a mentor and prepare for baptism or confirmation. So far we have 8 students doing it! Keep them in your prayers :-)

As opposed to Grant's last blog entry about the "cold" warning, it actually has gotten cooler lately. This morning, temperatures were in the 40's across Hong Kong, and there was a frost warning even! I know that most of you in the States think I'm a wuss, but I am eternally grateful for space heaters in my flat and my office!

I've been dreaming and thinking a bit lately about the future, in several ways - leisure time and professional time! Various ideas and thoughts I've had (most have been briefly discussed with Grant!)

*doing a summer around Europe next year by rail (unpaid leave maybe?)

*planning a huge excursion the summer we decide to leave (no idea when)

*perhaps going to school for a teaching license - it makes Grant more marketable, and gives me a "practical" skill if I decide to change professions

*being more diligent about writing - journaling, blogging, etc (probably more in the journal than the blog)

*ditto on the reading

*what is my life calling? I'm not convinced that it's youth ministry forever, though I'm not questioning the call God has on my life at this moment. Part of me really wants to know what might be next! I suppose it's better that I don't know, so I can't get over excited looking forward and forgetting where I am.

ridiculous

2008-12-23T10:52:00.003+08:00

merry christmas to all of our friends and family that read this!

anyway, i just noticed something that reminded me of how weird hong kong can be. it's currently 13 degrees celsius (or 55 fahrenheit) and our official HK weather site posted the following:

"COLD WEATHER WARNING
Cold Weather Warning

The Cold Weather Warning is now in force.

The Hong Kong Observatory is forecasting cold weather in
Hong Kong today.

As Hong Kong is being affected by a cold winter monsoon,
people are advised to put on warm clothes and to avoid
adverse health effects due to the cold weather. You must
also ensure adequate indoor ventilation.

If you must go out, please avoid prolonged exposure to
wintry winds.

If you know of elderly persons or persons with chronic
medical conditions staying alone, please call or visit them
occasionally to check if they need any assistance.

Make sure heaters are safe before use, and place them away
from any combustibles. Do not light fires indoors as a
means to keep warm.

Whatever the temperature, please ensure that there is
plenty of fresh air in your room when you are using an
old-type gas water heater.

DISPATCHED BY HONG KONG OBSERVATORY AT 06:02 HKT ON 23.12.2008"

can you believe it!?
it's well above freezing, and we're experiencing "wintery monsoons!"
i can only imagine what they might say if HK looked like illinois or indiana right now... "run for your lives! set anything combustible on fire! do whatever is necessary to stay warm from this apocalyptic nightmare!"

then again, i suppose that kristin and i are heading to vietnam to escape the cold and relax on a beach. wish us safe travels, and we'll post some pictures when we return!

:)

why i am picture-less

2008-12-05T10:32:00.002+08:00

i realized that i regularly write "pictures to come," and i was planning to do that again. then, i realized it's all one big lie. i write my blog posts at work, and i don't have access to my photo library since it's on our laptop. someday that will change. either i will upload photos to my work computer, or i will stop blogging at work. (sorry charles, you've discovered my secret now).

last week was thanksgiving. the holiday itself was very anticlimactic. as in, we didn't do anything. kathy, scott and grant went to the light show - does that count as exciting? nope, probably not. saturday, i cooked my first thanksgiving turkey. whoohoo! the picture of that one is on stu's mobile phone. i'm not sure he'll ever email it to me. i felt like i needed proof of a cooked turkey - mostly because that's what mom and dad always did. anyways, the turkey was great, if a bit pink in the middle. oops, the microwave has since killed off all salmonella, e coli, and whatever else comes in raw turkey. we had an american thanksgiving - turkey, stuffing, potatoes and gravy, sweet potatoes, and veggies - at a british flat.
for those of you who missed the turkey saga... i bought the smallest (and only) turkey i found at our grocery store. weighing in at a massive 8.8 pounds (for nearly 20 USD), i thought i better snatch it up. once i arrived at home, i realized that mr. turkey was about one inch too tall for our oven. luckily, i'd already invited michele and stu to eat with us, so we ate at their flat and cooked there as well. yay for bigger ovens than mine!
we had apple crumble for dessert, courtesy of michele and stu - and grant was requesting whipped cream or vanilla ice cream prior to the meal. when i asked them about this, i was given a blank look. apparently british people don't put cold cream on their hot apple crumble. instead they make hot custard. it was a first for me, but tasty indeed.

that's all i've got for thanksgiving. now life is calmer, but christmas is starting soon. funny how that happens.

hasta luego amigos...

pictures to come...

2008-11-06T10:12:00.005+08:00

i went to the US for a week and left my camera in Hong Kong... go figure. i'm relying on family and friends to give me their pictures, and i need to upload a few off my phone.
quick highlights:
*playing cards with the siblings
*being amazed at how grown up they all are

*kim driving 6 hours round trip to hang out

*dinner with the zpc ladies and lindsey d, aka lindsey muntz (i can't not call you that!)
*coffee at the malott home
*sunrises, driving, music, long conversations
*coffee with steven wilco, the coolest ever
*the conference: well done youthspecialties. margaret feinberg is my new fave, audio adrenaline reclaimed a place of love in my music fan-dom, and my motivation and inspiration for reaching out to kids and wanting them to experience the transformation of the Lord
*a campfire, hotdogs, and s'mores at the larew home
*watching a colts game - i do love american football, it's true
*getting a free book by meeting an author at the airport
*making all my connections in both directions and having no problems with the airlines!!
*getting home and seeing grant
it was a beautiful, relaxing, amazing trip, and it was easy to slip back into normalcy of the US - being at home with my family, and driving around and going to a conference with joy. conversations came easily with people i haven't seen in over a year (or longer!), and i was encouraged just by seeing people and talking about life, marriage, work, faith. yet, at the end of the week, at the airport with joy, i was excited to be getting back on the plane. i had a husband to see, a ministry to work on, kids to love, and frisbee to play. some of my heart will forever be in the USofA, but my home truly is in Hong Kong.

grant and i leave for indonesia on monday - pray for the kids' hearts to be transformed through service, and for safety.
oh, and grant's birthday is tomorrow (november 7). send him an email or a facebook message. frankeg [at] ics [dot] com.

one more side note, Go Obama! :-D i know that he's not a messiah/savior/fixer of all evils in america, but i am excited to see what happens under his leadership.

a wild weekend

2008-10-19T22:52:00.003+08:00

thursday night was passion: hong kong. absolutely amazing and fun!! the venue was small enough, and set up in such a way that you could CLEARLY see the stage, no matter where you were sitting. the blog said there were 2100 people present - mostly young people.

i haven't been to a huge worship event in a long while, of jumping up and down, singing loudly, and hearing a great preacher (hats off to louie giglio... may we all be fruitcakes for jesus!). it was really clear that the Spirit was present. grant and i were talking about the challenge of slipping into emotional highs in those kinds of settings, but i also know that there is something refreshing in having those moments from time to time. no, my faith doesn't thrive on exciting, high paced, crazy moving, loud, lights, pizzazz, and such... but those events are a chance to be lost in worship, singing to the King of all, and celebrating with thousands of others around you. and then those moments provide refreshment for later. i think one difference between something like passion and church worship is that i don't have to think about anything when it's not at church :-) when i'm at my own church, i'm sometimes leading, always aware of the students i'm with, etc. when i'm at someone else's church, i'm looking at how they do things, noticing what's different, unique, cool, could be adapted for our church, etc... at a big event like passion, those distractions aren't present - we can't put that in our church, problem solved! :-)

the whole thing got done at 11:30 or later, and then getting home on a school night was pretty late. our sleep schedules are so messed up. when we got home, i was still on a bit of a rush from the concert - ears ringing, eyes tired, but wide awake inside. i said to grant, "concerts give me a better buzz than drinking does!"

for more photos and the "official" blog, visit this blog.

less than 24 hours later, i was at a youth camp in fanling (aka, almost china, in the new territories) for a youth retreat. we had just over 40 high school students from at least 4 different churches attend this retreat: love actually - aka, a relationships and purity retreat. praise Jesus that He can take care of logistical issues, nitty gritty details that we haven't planned for!!! saturday night was a prime-time example. we decided it would be a cool idea for the guys to surprise the girls with a "nice" dinner - dress up, flowers, escorts, etc. the camp said "no, you can't bring in nice food. you have to eat in the cafeteria. maybe you can decorate tables...." well, saturday night rolled around, and we were about a half hour behind schedule and found out that the cafeteria would be closed, and there was no chance of us eating in the cafeteria. the teens and adult guys hauled tables and chairs to our meeting room, set up candles and roses, and ordered pizza and soda while the girls primped. in other words, the whole thing happened exactly the way we'd wanted in the first place!! what was cool was that the girls were able to feel really treasured, valuable, and special - even though they were being served and treated by guys they may have only barely known. anyways, God really did work, and i heard enough kids comment on my talk saturday night that i can just pray God lets it stick, take hold of their hearts, and remind them to stay committed to purity and living in the light!

now, it's time to sleep a lot tonight on a SOFT bed (you thought camp beds in the US were bad? wait til you try hong kong...) and not do ANYTHING tomorrow!!

september recap

2008-10-14T21:17:00.008+08:00

wow, it's been a long time since we posted.

blank blog pages have started becoming a source of writer's block for me. looking at the blank entry, i feel a need to write something exciting, profound, unusual, unique. in truth, life feels fairly normal right now. though, normal is go-go-go. we've had a lot going on in the past month. youth group kicked off at the beginning of september with messy games and a junk trip on friday-saturday.

that Sunday, there was a beach hat tournament for frisbee. i played as a pick-up after church was done, and grant captained team fluorescent yellow:

the next weekend, there was a public holiday, and grant volunteered his time to help me with a youth ultimate tournament for kids at our church and around other churches and schools.

just when things seemed they would get calm for me, grant was in the throes of planning middle school camp. 200 students plus faculty and adults!! oh, and it had to be replanned twice because a typhoon came through, cancelling school. of course.

here's a picture of grant in his fat suit:

the other big event of september was "super 'stache september." grant and a bunch of other teachers decided to have a moustache contest. they grew beards, goatees, etc, until the one monday when they had to shave them into a moustache for people to vote on the best one. (we used mascara to darken grant's). grant landed somewhere in the middle. here's a picture of the moustachioed men.

i think those are basically the highlights of september. we had a few typhoons, lots of frisbee, and general life. the next few months don't look any slower either. this weekend will be the "Love Actually V" retreat - an annual HK youth retreat for high schoolers talking about dating, relationships, and purity. next weekend is the hong kong tournament. the day after, i visit the states for a week for a conference. mid-november will bring grant's school service trip to indonesia (and i'll be a chaperone). then a few days later, kathy and scott visit!!

don't expect lots of posts anytime soon :-) sorry we've been so slow!

singapore: mud, food, and frisbee

2008-09-04T15:56:00.004+08:00

we went to singapore last weekend for a tournament. i'd say it was probably one of my favorite tournaments this year. we played fairly well as a team, won more games than we lost (4-3), finished 5th (per usual), and had a good time. less anxiety and tensions overall :-) the first day we won our first and last game, which put us 3rd in our pool going into Sunday. this meant sleeping in and getting a first round bye! we won our pre-quarters game, and then lost a close quarterfinals game :-( that was the most frustrating game, by far.

grant had an amazing tournament - great defense, lots of blocks, lots of layouts, and great cuts. oh, and a great huck to the endzone for a score!

my play wasn't spectacular or terrible. i was happy (overally) with how i played, minus a few stupid drops. we played a lot of zone o and d. zone d is super tiring, and somehow i end up in the cup a lot which runs the most... on o, i handled a lot, and i don't think i really turned it over in a zone as handler, so that was good, right? :-)

food in singapore is so good. the fields were across the street from a hawker market: cooked food stalls with singaporean, chinese, indian, sri lankan, and more for REALLY cheap prices. then, saturday night, lily and jon invited us to go with them to chinatown for food (we skipped the party... oops :-P) basically there were two streets that were nothing but food stands, so we ate our way down the row! good times. lily has all those pictures on her camera... (if you read this, i want those!)

but here are a few pictures from the second day of the tournament:

*i'm not altogether certain what grant's doing in that picture

*can you find the feet under the mud? tough, i know.

update...

2008-08-24T22:13:00.005+08:00

so that typhoon 8 we had? escalated to typhoon 9 - the first time in 5 years that the T9 has been called by the HK observatory. cool. we had a direct hit by typhoon nuri. now as exciting as this could have been, it was a bit of a letdown, we felt. i think our last typhoon 8 felt much windier and rainier overall. still, pretty cool to have a day off work and school. a bunch of teachers came over to our flat for lunch, olympics, nerts, and hang out time.

speaking of olympics [digression begins here]... i'm very sad they're over. nothing left on TV to watch and discuss! i also have a really mixed perspective on this year's. on one hand, there were some AWESOME events, athletes, etc to follow. and really, china did pull them off without a tactical or organizational hitch (except having swimming and gymnastics during the work day... boo NBC). at the same time, i read a lot of the news articles surrounding some of the human rights issues with the olympics, protesters, volunteers, etc. and that then makes me sad. maybe it's the western, individual culture side of me that says "each person should have their basic rights" whereas china views the overall group/state/government as more important. i don't know. but some of it was pure showmanship. "sure, we'll have protest zones. look, nobody is using them!... did we mention that we hadn't approved any of the protest applications?"

so am i against the olympics? no way. i think china did a heck of a job, but at what cost? (a yahoo article).

back to actual life in hong kong: probably the best thing about the typhoon was saturday's weather: cool, low humidity, and absolutely stunning views because of the air clarity. in other words, a great day for each disc, dinner in the plaza, and a night out in soho with the new teachers (and some old ones).

i love weekends!!

T-8

2008-08-22T08:23:00.001+08:00

I think this is our 3rd T-8 this summer. I'm excited.

[Clarification: T-8 means there are high winds because there's a typhoon in the neighborhood. Everything shuts down, you're not required to go to work, etc.]

Grant's even more excited. He had a late night last night at Back-to-School night, and now he gets to sleep in!

Rumor has it, there may be a direct hit on HK tonight. Could be exciting!!!

a week of superlatives in hong kong

2008-08-11T00:27:00.005+08:00

saturday, august 3 = most perfect summer day

we woke up early and went wakeboarding for our first time with john and lily. (wakeboarding = snowboarding on water) very very fun. grant got up relatively quickly, and i'd had a tiny bit of practice one other time, so i had no problems, until i would try to go outside the wake, and then i would fall. can't wait to try again!

we stopped by lily and jon's flat, then changed clothes for a day out on a junk trip. junks are pleasure boats that people take out for a day (either renting or owning), stock up on food and drinks, and drive out to a bay somewhere around the many (200) islands of Hong Kong. our boat had about 45 people on it, was paired up with another boat of the same number, and i knew about 15 :-) good times. lots of sun, diving into the water, trying to catch frisbees while diving, diving through inner tubes, etc etc. in other words, a perfect summer day. here's a picture of michele and me towards the end of the day.

Wednesday = Craziest weather

it was a typhoon 8 day! where we live, nothing too exciting happens, but windspeeds in parts of hong kong reached 150km/hour. however, it meant that grant's first day back to work was cancelled, i didn't go into the office, and we stayed home and watched the three Bourne movies.

Friday = awesome Olympics opening

i'm an olympic junkie. i'll admit it without shame. every four years, i get very excited in the sports i don't follow the rest of the time - gymnastics, diving, swimming, even volleyball and basketball! so when the opening ceremonies come on, i try to watch the whole thing, and i love the pageantry and showiness of it all. this year's was amazing. we'll give china some props for that. my personal favorite? the little 9 year old carrying the flags next to yao ming from china.

Saturday = best beach ultimate

every saturday (almost) we play beach ultimate in the summer. this week was my favorite. we went to a beach that grant and i hadn't been to yet called shek o. the sand was super soft and didn't hurt my feet, the water was clean (or as clean as it gets in HK) when you wanted to cool off, and there was a great thai restaurant nearby.

Sunday = best food day

dim sum for lunch, and sushi for dinner. could it get any better? no, no it couldn't.

a year already?

2008-07-22T09:48:00.003+08:00

last week, grant and i took a 5 day trip to get away from rainy hong kong and to celebrate one year together! whoohoo!
the trip: good overall, with lots of hangups along the way that got sorted out. i'd show you pictures, but that was one of the hangups. while wading a bit deep in water, grant forgot his bag was in the ocean and carrying the camera. we'll get that one sorted out soon! the ocean was full of seaweed/algae, but the pools were beautiful at our hotel. lagoon shaped, flowers, waterfalls, shallow ledges you could lay on, etc. we spent a LOT of time by the side of the pool!
i've moved past my anti-seafood days. it started back in september with sushi, followed by my first trip to the philippines and tuna, and now i think i'm over it. though i still prefer chicken! for our anniversary dinner, we went to a seafood restaurant where they have the fish swimming around, you pick what you want, and they grill it for you. so delicious!

it's really hard to believe that it's been a full year since we got married, and only a few days short of a full year in hong kong. the weather is doing a good job reminding me of our arrival here - hot, hot, and more hot! i think that because we're always meeting new people and new friends, it seems like we've just become settled. perhaps that will keep on going the whole time we live here with the amount of transience in this city.

it's been a blessed year!

youth mission trip to cambodia

2008-07-17T12:35:00.003+08:00

we spent 6 days in cambodia with 8 youth and 2 other adults on a mission trip with Foursquare Children of Promise. our goal: to paint the inside and outside of one of their orphan homes in Battambang Province. our bigger goal: to introduce our students to service and deeper relationships with the Lord. we definitely accomplished the bigger goal, and sort of accomplished the first goal!

here's a bunch of pictures in no particular order

*Grant scaring the geese - also known as the Pharisees, according to one student.

**Sharon having a thumb war with a student

**Olin and the guys

**the Our Kcheay orphan kids praying a blessing over us as we prepared to leave

**Olin and Grant behaving VERY well...

**the Our Kcheay home, prepainting

**the Our Kcheay home post-painting!

**our team

**Distributing clothes we brought from HK

**Playing lots of frisbee

frisbee my love

2008-06-23T11:21:00.002+08:00

we spent this weekend in shanghai for a frisbee tournament. sadly, we left the camera at home... it would have been awesome to capture a few moments. our flight and hotel package was the best deal we could have imagined. essentially the package cost the same amount as the flight would have cost on its own. the hotel included in the package wasn't your run-down motel 6 either. we're talking amazing, awesome, beautiful, huge breakfast buffet, hot tub and pool, mini spa changing rooms, etc. not bad for basically free!

the tournament was great too. it's been raining a LOT in hong kong, so our practice fields have been mudpits (with a little bit of sewer stench), so it was a great change of pace to play on actual grass - cushy, a little slick with rain, and perfect for layouts!

our team did alright in the end. i think we got 5th? we went 1-3 the first day (bummer), and 2-1 the second day (much better). both grant and i felt ok about our play, but not great. some games were really good for me, some really awful. games where i could catch anything, and games where i dropped everything. my favorite part was our "honey score." grant had the disc near the right side of the field, and i was wide open in the left corner of the endzone. he totally faked out his defender for a beautiful backhand pass across the field to me. :-D yay!

the 2nd day was a lot more relaxed, fun, and silly. lots of vipers, our captain finally got pantsed (after bragging about being "impregnable"), and some fun spirited teams to play. between the semifinals and the finals, they held a women's exhibition game where any women from all the teams got together and played basically a pickup game of women only. awesome!! i'd love to play a bit more ladies' ultimate.

i love frisbee.

now we're getting ready for a mission trip to cambodia with our youth! lots to do this week...

pictures from joy and chris's visit

2008-06-14T11:11:00.004+08:00

As promised, the photos from joy and chris's visit

I love dim sum!!

waiting for the ferry

looking cute at church

on our hike

katie, joy, chris and me. we don't want to touch each other because it's SOOO hot!

at the temple street night market

the sullivans come to visit!

2008-06-13T14:32:00.002+08:00

for those of you following along with our blog (and i'm not sure how many of you there are - leave a comment!), you may remember my dear friend joy from zionsville?
joy and i were interns together in 06-07 at zionsville pres. church, and we were, self-admittedly, pretty much each other's friend in town. (though we had a few other contacts, don't worry, we weren't that big of dorks!)

while joy and i were being great friends, we made our fiances tag along and become friends as well on the weekends. and oh how well it worked. a great scheme of ours, i believe.

well, these two lovely people - joy and chris- got married almost a year ago (yay congrats!), and we got married a month later and left for the other side of the world. they promised a visit out to us, and it actually was able to happen!

they got here last friday and stayed for a week, just leaving this morning. i'll put up pictures from our exploits in HK later (when i get the photos uploaded), but it was an awesome week of playing cards, going to the beach, seeing the tourist sights, and just being able to live life together for a week.

friends are a blessing from God. i'm thoroughly convinced of it, and this week was an amazing reminder of it. i remember a sermon that pastor glenn gave last year at zpc about friends. he talked about how God grants us 2 kinds of good friends: friends of the road and friends of the heart. friends of the road are those people that come into our life for a short time and are so incredibly important during that phase in our life: the friend from summer camp, the classmates who helped you through that tough course, or even a great acquaintance that comes into our life at one time. these people are incredibly valuable and important to us, if only for a season. and God uses them to touch our life in that moment. but then there are friends of the heart who last through all seasons of life. these are friends who we may grow apart in interests or career, but who remain "soul friends." thank God for those people as well!

we will rock you

2008-06-06T11:30:00.002+08:00

Last night, Grant and I went to see We Will Rock You - the musical based on Queen's music. It was everything you could want in a musical: recognizable songs to sing along with, sensory overload in the scenery, costumes, dance numbers, clapping along with the actors during "We will rock you," singing to "We are the Champions," etc. Definitely a blast. We went with two of our frisbee friends, Stu and Michele, so that was good times as well.

Probably the best part was our seats. We bought the cheap tickets - 2nd floor gallery on the side, row L or something... We were moved to the lower floor, row S! Our ticket value went from HK350 to HK700 simply by showing the usher our ticket and being directed to the upgrade booth. :-D

The libretto of the musical was a lot of fun because there were SO many pop culture references - mostly mocking the boy bands, the girl bands, the pop stars, etc. Also, random lyrics from well-known songs thrown in: quotes from Queen (obviously), the Beatles, and more. They even did some tailored HK references a few times to Cantopop stars and places in HK. Added value for the audience.

If the show is ever anywhere near you, go see it!

random thoughts

2008-05-30T09:13:00.001+08:00

we ordered pizza hut last night with the students. the boxes were still on the table this morning, and i noticed the box. "Experience European Sensation." Who are you kidding?! Pizza Hut is a purely American invention. sigh.

On an unrelated note, i think God is trying to teach me to quit sleeping in. this is the 2nd day in the row where it's started raining as soon as I've thought of leaving the house. If i had left at my normal time today, I'd already be at work. instead, i'm going to go slog through the rain again. dangit.

michelle's visit

2008-05-26T13:26:00.005+08:00

michelle (my sister) came to visit for about 10 days. she just left today :-/ so i'm taking the opportunity to use all her photos that she uploaded on our computer and post them on here!

we ate dim sum, sushi, mongolian barbecue, and cheap cantonese food

rode the tram to the peak

shopped in the markets

hiked to a beach in sai kung

went to another beach and took a junk boat back to the harbour for the light show.

played ultimate

went to museums (it rained a lot)

took a cruise with grant's 8th graders

watched indiana jones, enchanted, and juno

played a lot of guitar hero

taught michelle cribbage

see what you're missing? i know you want to visit now!!

Photos in non-chronological order:

**Grant likes Indiana Jones

**On the ferry after hiking to the beach and back

**Out in Sai Kung

**Grant fights Bruce Lee

**Such cute sisters

**There was a comic book exhibition

**under the fountain at HK park

**The Peak Tram

**Waiting for a table at Sushi One. It's a Lily sandwich!

**Big Buddha

**Grant likes Indiana Jones

i've been meaning to link to this blog

2008-05-07T09:43:00.004+08:00

i was introduced to a funny blog by the youthspecialties updates i get each week. this blog is all about "stuff christians like." it follows after the theme of "stuff white people like." this post was the best though:

http://stufffchristianslike.blogspot.com/2008/05/205-frisbee-gods-favorite-sport.html

check it out.

a quick update since it's been awhile

2008-05-06T14:04:00.004+08:00

it's been awhile, so i thought i'd throw a few highlights up... i don't have any pictures really, since i'm at work :-D

*in the beginning of April, we went to the states for garret's wedding. garret was the best man in our wedding, and grant's best friend of all his life. it was beautiful, warm, sunny, blue skies, clear air, being able to drive a mazda 3, shop at target, sit at a pool and hot tub, see kathy and scott, celebrate love and weddings, and then make our quick trip back to hong kong.

*grant did the 30 hour famine with his 8th grade students, including an overnight the week we got back. i was only able to be there for a short time, but it was a blast spending the night with the kids! they all seemed to have really been impacted by the fasting and the games they had played.

*confirmation sunday came and went, and was quite awesome. 5 kids were confirmed, after spending about 3 months with mentors from the congregation. grant was a mentor for a cool kid named jannes.this is me and a couple of our kids: olin and jannes (not related! not even the same nationality!!)

*our friend from university, anna, came to visit from china during a long weekend, and we went and watched the olympic torch run through hong kong.

*this weekend, we visited the "billiards house" down the street from our flat. very quiet, somber, and serious pool playing. the guys didn't end up playing pool, but rather a game called "snooker" that's british. crazy.

*michelle comes to visit in 2 weeks!

other than that, it's been a lot of frisbee, church and youth group, grading for grant and getting ready for the end of the year!

our summer plans so far: one weekend trip to shanghai for a tournament, one week mission trip to cambodia, and hopefully a one week vacation trip to phuket, thailand in mid-july.

when i was talking to a friend recently, he pointed out the strange juxtaposition that is life for us (and him, as he is in egypt). on one hand, we have daily life that is no different (really) from what it would have been in the states - hanging out with friends, playing frisbee, and working. on the other hand, our life sounds wild with travels, olympic torches, and becoming accustomed to hong kong. i realized as i walked down a busy road the other day that the abundance of neon lights and people barely fazed me.

the wonders of cambodia

2008-04-03T17:34:00.002+08:00

we spent 6 days in cambodia, 3 in phnom penh, and 3 in siem reap (near angkor wat).

the first half of the trip was to scout the mission trip that we're taking the youth on this summer. we were able to visit the genocide museum (haunting), and then drive out to the orphanage where we'll be helping paint.

the second half was pure enjoyment :-D

i feel like the Angkor kingdom is one you never hear about in western history - it was big, but not necessarily big enough to learn about. anyways, they left these massive ruins and temples. only gods could live in stone and bricks, so there's no buildings left from everyday life.

for once, grant and i took lots of pictures. over 400 to be precise. so, i'm not going to load them into blogger, because it takes FOREVER!! instead, here's the links to the facebook albums (which are quicker when connected through iphoto! :-D)

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2036224&l=44458&id=40800939

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2036225&l=d485f&id=40800939

easter skies

2008-03-23T08:59:00.002+08:00

today as i walked to the ferry for church, i realized that it felt like a new day. besides the fact that the streets were basically empty before 8 AM on a Sunday, something else was in the air.
or rather, was not in the air!
since thursday, it's been grey outside, with threats of rain, low lying clouds, and lots of smog. in short, terrible visibility and dreariness abounded.
but not today.
as i got to the ferry pier, i realized that i could see in perfect clarity the colors of the buildings in every direction as far as the mountains on both kowloon side and the island. it's been awhile since i could see the tops of buildings, or their shapes, instead seeing indistinct forms of what might be buildings.
in short, amazing.

reminded me ofthe easter resurrection, new life, and new creations from the death, despair and dirt of good friday.

may we always live in the resurrection
the promises of life
without forgetting the pains of good friday

he is risen indeed!

observations on hong kong, based loosely out of yahoo! news

2008-03-18T14:04:00.003+08:00

for the second or third time this month, hong kong made it into the yahoo! news headlines, which surprised me. generally, american media (digital and print) is heavily concentrated on the states, and on western politics (europe, latin america, things that directly affect the US, in other words). i can't remember reading much about hong kong under the "top world stories" in recent years (then again, I wasn't looking for it). anyways, here's the top 3 things that you would have learned about hong kong from yahoo news in recent days:

1) there was a big scandal with compromising photos being released of some young celebrities. i didn't see them, but i can't imagine they were anything worse than most of the US stuff that gets released "accidentally."

2) there was a flu outbreak. for the record, this massive outbreak has not affected my everyday life. there's plastic over the buttons in the elevator to ease sterilization efforts. that's it. while my heart goes out to the families who did lose children, there have only been 10 cases admitted to the hospital in the past week. that's out of the approximately 7 million people who live in hong kong. don't worry about us, the odds are with us right now.

3) there's now a serial killer on the loose, who has killed 4 sex workers. first, the fact that we use such a euphemism here gives you an idea of the prevalence of such an "industry." i read today that there are approximately 100,000 sex workers in hong kong. that's ridiculous. i understand being concerned about the murderer on the loose, but what's our reaction to the sex industry? nothing. meanwhile, we're up in arms about some photos of some celebs let out online. get real folks!

primary school madness

2008-03-13T14:41:00.002+08:00

i think this week is when Grant wishes he were a primary school teacher.

In Hong Kong, there was a flu outbreak at a primary school, with something like 35 kids showing symptoms. one of those kids died. there have been 4 deaths of kids under age 8 from flu like symptoms (and sometimes also other complications). i think the government is pretty nervous because this is the 5th anniversary of SARS, so they're taking extra measures to not let something like that happen again.

first, they closed the school where all the kids were sick.

as of today, every primary school, kindergarten, preschool, and special ed school is closed for the next two weeks. they figure that little kids are impossible to keep hygienic - they touch everything, everyone, and spread germs rather quickly.

i can't imagine being a parent. it's one thing in the states to have an unexpected snow DAY because usually the parents have troubles getting to work as well... but an unexpected two week holiday? there were loads of kids being dragged around the grocery store today, out playing basketball, etc.

very strange, very strange indeed...

the story of my life

2008-03-06T11:46:00.003+08:00

isn't that the truth?

for more fun garfield comics, minus the garfield (thanks for the link lily!) check this site:

http://garfieldminusgarfield.tumblr.com/

free chatting

2008-03-03T15:04:00.001+08:00

hey!

just a quick reminder... if anyone has a microphone or a camera on their computer, we can talk over the internet for free...

www.skype.com

our username is grantandkristin :-) just add us to your contacts if you add skype!

45,000 HKD

2008-02-27T17:57:00.004+08:00

45,000 HKD was the goal for the 30 hour famine. not entirely an arbitrary number. It takes very near to 3,000 HKD to feed a child for a year through World Vision. My goal was to have 15 kids from our youth group participate in the 30HF this year. 15x3,000= 45,000.

The deal was that if they raised that money, I would dye my hair the color of their choice. We're well over that amount, and they haven't all turned in their money.

So I went to the hair salon today to uphold my end of the deal....

a very long 30 hours

2008-02-24T21:33:00.007+08:00

This past Friday-Saturday, we joined 20+ kids from church in doing a 30 hour fast to raise money for World Vision. Most of them didn't think they could do it, and I think they were surprised that they could. They ate breakfast before school, and then came to church in the evening to spend the night til lunch on Saturday. We started off with some board games, and then went into opening worship, welcome, and a short quiet time.

**twister is a popular game**

**doing a devotional**

There's a lady at our church, Debbie, who works for a Christian charity called Crossroads International. Crossroads collects unwanted goods from Hong Kong and ships them around the world - furniture, clothes, toys, you name it. They also run simulations to teach about world poverty, so she did that for us at the church. This simulation was based on a true story of a family in India who makes a living making paper bags. The family groups had to make enough paper bags to pay for food and rent each week, while facing medical problems, etc.

**a family group making paper bags out of newspaper, and glue (flour and water)**

**Grant was Mr. Deepahdebt - the loan shark who lived under the bridge**

The rest of the night we wrote letters to students in the Philippines whose education is sponsored by our church, played "Romans and Christians," did a short quiet time, and then a midnight candlelight worship service (don't look at the carpet in the sanctuary anymore...)

In the morning, we had a prolonged quiet time, and then some time for just hanging out - scrabble, chess, jenga, and slacklining...

**Olin (a high school student) owns a slackline - something similar to a tightrope, so he taught and spotted a bunch of the kids**

We then broke into groups for a photo scavenger hunt around various sites in Hong Kong.

**one group at the "cataract"**

**The Peak Tram in the background**

**another "waterfall" photo

When we returned, we had enough time to clean up, do some reflection, and prepare for lunch. Before lunch, a pastor from another church came to lead the kids in some worship time, as well as communion as a way to break the fast. It was both meaningful and difficult - meaningful because he really had them thinking about sacrifice, the blessings of food, and Christ's love; difficult because they sat around the lunch table (with food on it) while he talked to them!

**chowing down on pasta, rice, fruit, veggies, chicken, and dessert!**

**some of the kids who "survived"**

Overall, my prayer for the weekend had been for kids to really meet God during the fasting - after all, that's the true reason why we fast. As I was looking through some of their reflections, it seemed like some of them were starting to really get to know God - a very cool thing. One outward sign that I noticed was their willingness to step outside of their comfort zone and actually sing during worship :-) We don't do worship (musical) that often during our youth group times (mostly because i don't play an instrument or lead worship), so it's something very uncomfortable for many of them. It was really neat to see them go from not singing AT ALL on Friday evening, to being willing to sing (almost loudly) on Saturday afternoon. I know that's just an outside sign, but at least it's comfort with worshipping together. Another cool thing - I have a student who is very puzzling to me. Some times he's a real punk, and sometimes he's really a cool kid. He's loud, so he's either misbehaving or contributing really well. This morning at church, we arrived in between the 2 services, and he was leaving from the 1st service (traditional worship), and told us he'd already gone to church. I assumed that a) his parents were there for something else, or b) he had been told he had to go to church if he wanted to go out with friends. Interestingly, his family wasn't at church at either service so it seems like that was his own choice!

Another cool thing is that the kids really outdid themselves fundraising, and the church really showed its willingness to give to the youth for something like this. We (I) had set our fundraising goal at HK 45,000 - enough to feed 15 kids for a year (approx.). At the moment, I haven't counted it all, and the kids haven't turned in all their money, but we're looking at near HK 50-60,000 that will be donated to World Vision.

Actually, the real reason the kids were so gung-ho about raising money (except for maybe 2 of them), was because I gave them outside incentive... If they raised HKD 45,000, I told them I would dye my hair whatever color they wanted....

the next post will be photos of my hot pink hair.

I'm super thankful to God for the whole weekend -

-all the adults who brought food, led worship, stayed the night, came for bits and pieces

-kids bringing friends who were (whether they wanted to or not) introduced to a side of God that loves and cares for everyone in the world

-the whole weekend went rather smoothly, and it was my first "big" event that I'd ever had to do on my own

-the Holy Spirit's strong presence at the midnight worship and the Communion break-fast

Praise God :-D

a February vacation

2008-02-11T14:10:00.002+08:00

a great thing about working in Hong Kong is public holidays. there are a lot of them. Christmas, New Year's, Easter, plus a bunch of religious festivals, and then, the best yet, Chinese New Year - 3 days off for everyone. (and more if you're a teacher). in December, we found out that 3 of the teachers grant works with and a teacher from another school were going to Boracay in the Philippines for the holidays, so we decided to go with them. Boracay has an amazing reputation for white sand beaches, so we thought that sounded pretty perfect in February. And how it was...

the good things:
*great food and eating on the beach
*playing Scrabble and reading on the beach
*playing beach ultimate with the Boracay team
*sunny weather
*snorkeling and lots of fish!
*jonah's fruitshakes
*hanging out at the other girls' hotel
*very minimal sunburns for both of us!

the bad things:
*our hotel room. i suppose we only paid $30 a night, but still... a sink would have been nice, as well as a seat on the toilet bowl! at least things seemed clean, if not comfortable.
*both of us catching colds - how does that work?! luckily we're both nearly over them.

I think the good outweighs the bad... here are the photos:

This is the boat that took us from the island where the airport was to Boracay

we booked a boat to go snorkeling, but they stopped off at a little island first, where we had to pay (of course) to see some caves. there were also some random statues of bulls. I don't know why, but the natural thing to do is ride the bull, right?
this was the stairwell in and out of the caves
grant and the weird statue man
inside one of the caves

an accurate representation of how we spent our time (that's a great book, by the way)

the water is the same color as a pool would be!

I thought this picture looked like one of the backgrounds they would give you as a default on your computer

the 5 girls on the trip - 4 teachers and me!

sunset!

at night, local families would make intricate sand castles and creations. taking a picture basically meant giving a donation.

whoops...

2008-02-02T15:20:00.000+08:00

sorry it's been awhile! grant started a post after vietnam, but blogger wasn't working too well, so it never got posted (perhaps it will come another day). until then, here's a photoblog of our trip to Vietnam and the tournament, some January fun, and Steven's visit and our daytrip to Macau :-)

grant and the fruit shakes - he averaged 2-3 a day... not a huge expense at $.60 each!

a plane from the vietnam war

on the boat tour with our cool hats :-)

the tiny cu chi tunnels. the village of cu chi was near saigon, and the communist army built these tunnels to hide and fight the south. very interesting!

our royal blue team at the hat tournament... too bad we lost a lot!

however, grant scored the most points of anyone in the tournament!

teena lee, the sister of an ICS teacher, came to visit!!

a cathedral and art museum in macau

Jesus was put in a box!!

grant, me and steven in front of the st. paul's ruins. once a nice church and school, there was a fire, leaving only the stone facade.

in macau, i guess they think you can make your pets use one toilet only.

a close up of the sign

look! we're in venice! Or, a few thousand miles away...the venetian casino in macau is THE place to go right now, so we did too!

massage chairs at the ferry terminal! that's what i like to see...

at a pub in HK, watching the AFC playoff games... think he can fit it in his mouth? yes he can!

It's been freezing in Hong Kong - and you might laugh, but it's true. the temps have barely gone over 50 in the past two weeks, and it's been drizzly and misty and gray. oh, and there's not great heat in any building, so space heaters are our best friends. however, i love walking through hong kong park, because they've planted loads of flowers!! beautiful warmth in the middle of the dreariness. I also get a kick out of laughing at all the people getting their wedding portraits done - a pitying, "boy i'm glad i'm not you" kind of laugh...

so, this week, it's chinese new year - the biggest holiday here. someone said, "it's like thanksgiving and christmas rolled into one." we decided to head somewhere warm with some of the other teachers... boracay, here we come! (white beaches, snorkeling... i'm excited)

Merry Christmas!

2007-12-21T15:32:00.001+08:00

We've had a few friends send us e-Christmas cards, so this one is for all our family and friends! :-)

http://www.elfyourself.com/?id=1636791566

watch the nice dance steps we learned!!

snowballs grow into avalanches

2007-12-13T17:03:00.000+08:00

our white team started as the underdogs - all new to HK ultimate leagues, not knowing each other, and looking pretty weak...especially with a name like "snowball." (i still think of white furry kittens).
after our first game 12 weeks ago, we looked like we would fit that name.
then we became snowmen (we got to graduate) when we beat red soundly...
but when a snowball gets going, it quickly turns into an avalanche :-)

and we avalanched our way into the finals last night, playing against the only team that's beat us! (3 times out of 4...) sadly for them, we weren't a snowball or snowpeople. 15-4 baby!!

grant and i loved our white team - what a great introduction to HK ultimate with awesome people. we didn't yell at each other, our captain was encouraging (in his own cynical way), and we made some great friends. alas, the beauty that is avalanche will never be again!

*soon to come, a team photo from the finals...

an expensive mistake...

2007-11-27T21:17:00.001+08:00

grant left for indonesia monday morning!! pray for him - he's in a remote island with 17 middle schoolers: 14 boys, and 3 girls... yikes. they get back friday night at 10:45.

i went with grant to the airport on monday morning, since i didn't have to work. we got up, rushed out the door to the bus, stopped at the ATM for money - for his trip and my shopping date with katie (a youth intern at another church). we were the second to last of the group to arrive at the airport (the 3rd teacher was the last). i hung out at the airport for about an hour, then hopped on the hourlong busride home (with some burger king)... called steven wilco and talked for awhile... then called john unrath on the last leg of the trip. i got back to my flat and sat outside to finish my conversation with john. then, i needed to be leaving to go see katie, but i wanted to drop some stuff off and desperately needed the restroom (diet coke on a busride does that to you).

take the lift up to our flat... dig through my bag. twice. no keys. ahhhh!!!! grant locked the door, and i pushed the elevator button when we left.

so i had to communicate this error to the security guard who spoke very little english, and i eventually got pointed to the locksmith near our building. they sent someone with me up to my flat - and it was supposed to be $150. sure, fine, whatever -the only set of keys available are in indonesia! then he sees the grate on the front of our door and says, nope 200 for that lock. ok, sure, no big deal.
he picks, fiddles, etc with the lock, and finally gets the grate open. the lock we use on our front door is the deadbolt. he looks at the deadbolt and tells me that it's a computerized key, and i'll have to get a new lock. ok, sure, i really need to get in, whatever works!!! he proceeds to get a screwdriver, hammer, and wrench out of his bag and completely demolish the lock and pull it off the door. i was so glad to see my keys on the kitchen table (i was semi-afraid i'd dropped them somewhere). then i find out it's $800 for the whole situation! $400 to open the door, and $400 for the new lock... well, i had to say yes. luckily, i had $770 in my wallet (remember the atm trip?). he didn't take credit card, but he said that 770 was fine.

what a great beginning to a day...

at least i got to go shopping!! katie and i went to the markets in mong kok and stanley - i finally got new jeans: 15USD for a pair of American Eagle jeans, and 9 USD for an Abercrombie sweater. oh, and some xmas presents. plus some fun hangout time with katie (a new friend:D)

a couple additions

2007-11-24T09:23:00.000+08:00

yay grant made a post!

a couple things in recent times -
we spent last weekend in manila at another frisbee tournament. it's fantastic to find relatively cheap flights to places that are really warm and sunny (ie sunburns!!). our hong kong team only took 8 people (which is pretty brutal), but we picked up 5 when we got there, and we had a great time. Overall, we got 9th... but we won 5 out of 6 games :-) it was just a blast to hang out with frisbee kids, play some good muddy ultimate, and get some sun. (grant fell asleep at saturday dinner).

contrary to popular belief, we actually do a lot of things other than frisbee :-)
we're involved in a small group on tuesday nights with (mostly) other ICS teachers - and that's been fantastic. we've been working through 1 John this year using a study guide, rotating who leads the discussion. it's just nice to get togehter with other people our age, in similar positions of life, and talk about spirituality and faith. good stuff.

youth stuff has been alright - trying to spend time wth kids outside of church (sometimes easy, sometimes not). painting was (mostly) successful last night, so my office/youth room is now orange (with one white wall with handprints). it livens it up a bit.

and it's the weekend! so we're off for groceries....

painting turkeys

2007-11-23T14:07:00.000+08:00

hey family and friends!

it's about time that i post to this site again. it's only been a couple of months or so. :)

updates...
krisitn and i have now been in hong kong for about 4 months.
marriage is great! - full of fun, things to learn, a few down times here and there, lots of conversation, and much teamwork.

school is also well. in case you forgot, i'm teaching 8th grade algebra and bible. the kids are mostly hard-working, and we've been able to have some fun in class. i coached the U14 soccer team, and when it was done, i moved right into the U14 basketball season. unfortunately, the soccer team was much more successful than the basketball team thus far.

coming up in just a couple days, i'm leaving the country. i'm taking a group of 17 kids to indonesia for a week to do service projects and missionary work! there are two other teachers coming along, and we're pretty pumped. if you take a moment, i'd much appreciate some prayers for our safety, growth, and group cohesion.

before i leave for indonesia, kristin and i have been busy preparing for youth group tonight (friday, 24 nov). the kids are coming to the church to paint the youth room and bring some life to its walls! we moved furniture, cleaned, and whitewashed one of the walls where the kids are going to do handprints.

finally, kristin and i decided to celebrate a little thanksgiving in hong kong. fortunately, i received the day off and the rest of hong kong did not. it made for a great day trip to an island called cheung chau. we took an hour-long ferry and occupied our time playing cribbage. thankfully, we weren't hassled for "gambling." once we docked, we hiked around, explored a "cave," checked out some temples, and had some delightful seafood on the harbor-side. i'll post a few pictures.

well, i did it.
i made a post.
hope you're happy.
now go play outside.

love you,
grant

ps, kristin and i are now addicted to boggle, another wonderful word game. rest assured though - we still find much joy in scrabble. :)

frisbee tournament pictures from janice

2007-11-10T10:30:00.000+08:00

as i promised, a few pictures from the tournament. these are from janice's camera - i took a few, and she took the rest. not as many action shots, but they're hard to catch

aww.... it's a frisbee couple!

grant, paulie, toby, and guy. paulie and guy were fantastic captains for the star fairies, and guy does a great job with white team during the league!

the star fairies!

Junk huddle

Kenny and Grant have secret handshakes

kristin on defense

our junk captain calling a play against singapore

this is when paulie (the star fairies captain) and tim (the junk captain) got in a fight about rules and started yelling at each other in the middle of the HK showdown between our two teams.... it was awkward....

i've become a warm blooded creature...

2007-11-02T13:49:00.000+08:00

fall is upon us, even here in hong kong.

last week, the highs were about 28-29C (do your math folks - multiply by 5/9, then add 32. it will be good for your brain!) so it was quite warm, but about average, and at least it wasn't going into the 32-33 range!

all of a sudden this week it took a 10 degree plunge, and the high for the past two days has been 19C. The low last night was even 14!

now, if you're following along with me and doing your math, you'll realize that this is quite moderate - by no means cold.

people in hong kong have broken out their thick jackets, warm scarves, and sweaters (or jumpers, if you're British). and me? i've got long sleeves and a denim jacket today. what am i going to do when winter hits? ;-)

love you all!

i wish i'd taken pictures....

2007-10-29T11:57:00.000+08:00

but since i didn't, we're going to stick with words. however, i'm hoping for some photos from one of the other girls, at which point they'll end up on here.

this weekend, grant and i spent all day saturday and sunday out playing ultimate at the HK pan-asian tournament. 12 teams from shanghai, beijing, singapore, bangkok, manila, korea, and other asian places all converged upon the tiny SAR of hong kong for some awesome tourney fun.

highlights:
*grant's team (star fairies) went 4-1 for the weekend, not including one other loss when they combined with the 3rd HK team for a fun game at the end of the day.
*an awesome star fairies game that was 8-8 at the cap, ending with a win by star fairies!
*grant was mentioned by many of his teammates as an unofficial mvp for his team (heck yeah, that's MY husband!! bet you wish you were that lucky...;-))
*an unfortunate 0-3 start by kristin's team (junk), but a second day that was 2-1 (the only loss coming to the eventual runner-ups in the tournament).
*a demolishing win against singapore (13-5) in the consolation round for 5th place. highlight of that game - one of our teammates making a defensive interception off their first pass for a point! (aka, a callahan). frickin awesome.
*the commentary on the final game: ringers of fire v. shanghai...especially, "let's hope [anonymous ringers player] has better luck with the disc than he did with either of the kristins"...did he really say that out loud?? yes, yes he did..
*grant's principal coming out to watch our games! how cool is that...
*free beer at the end of each day
*free food and drinks at parties friday and saturday nights
*free crocs and new discs
*good weather!

bet you wish you played ultimate :-D

church and frisbee.... that's kristin's life

2007-10-15T16:44:00.001+08:00

it was a good times at youth group this past week. 8 senior high students - 2 of whom were first timers to the high school group (not first timers to the church though). it ended with olin and jannes toilet papering my fan, which shot the tp all over the office. nicely done guys.

then friday night, we had about 15 junior high kids come to watch the lion, the witch and the wardrobe, including a few new friends who were brought. also, good times.

saturday, we had 8 kids join us to go out to play frisbee on the beach. you would think more would come, but hey, we'll start with that!! we also invited a few people from our frisbee team to come, and that was great to have them along as well (thanks uli and alicia!)

yup that's my husband

some good defense :-D

youth event = junk food

after the beach time, grant and i went out with uli and alicia twice - once for dinner, and then way later (after a nap) for a 3AM rugby viewing - world cup semifinals england v. france.

we also found out that we did make teams for the tournament at the end of the month... little less than 2 weeks! sadly, we're not on the same team, but it'll be tons of fun anyways :-D

the crisp fall air....

2007-10-11T11:07:00.000+08:00

well, not quite, but it's definitely cooler this week than it's been yet, and it feels great! (by cooler, i mean 23-28 degrees Celsius, so still around 80.)
it's hard to believe that we're in October, and nearly half way through!
grant and i are still beating up our bodies in training for the HK tournament at the end of the month - 3 hour sunday practices, 1-2 hour conditioning on Tuesdays, and league games on wednesdays. it's flippin sweet. but, unfortunately, sleep is being cut out of our schedules quickly!

hanging out with kids is still a blast. a lot of my time is spent at the church, but also doing some stuff at ics with meeting kids for lunch once in awhile and helping with swim team. (hopefully more often at some point).

i'm off to the philippines again next month, this time with a group of about 10 people, including 4 youth. prayers for their eyes to be open, their hearts to be soft would be stellar.

and prayers for my heart to be soft and my mind to stand firm would also be most appreciated. i've had a rough few weeks for no reason other than my mind and my heart fighting a lot.

until next time,
bye-bye!*

*standard closing to any conversation in hk