a year already?

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

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

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

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!

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

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

 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.