The Sister Visit, Week 1.1

I am several months behind now on my blog postings, but I am going to be diligent in the next few months to get us caught back up to current time. In April, my sisters made the grand gesture of coming to visit us here for several weeks. The outline of the trip went something like this. For the first week, Stephanie and Leah visited solo, and we spent our time doing more cultural kooky things around Hong Kong. The second week, both Kane and Stuart arrived, and we toured Hong Kong from more of a foodie and nature perspective. The third week of the trip, which was around Easter, all 6 of us went to the Philippines for a scuba diving and beach adventure. Overall, it was a wonderful trip, and I can't thank my family enough for spending so much hard earned money and vacation to come here and see us.

This first blog will focus on the first half of the first week, where it was just us girls. On Saturday, we went to the same Chi Lin Nunnery and Park that we discovered with Grandma Pat and Kelli. It happened to be a particularly nice day, so we also went to the Avenue of Stars to see the view of the Hong Kong waterfront and skyline.

On Sunday, we spiced things up (hehe, you'll get that pun in a second) by having a cooking competition with our good friends Andrew and Tiffany. We split into three teams of two, and each team was responsible for an app, a salad, or a main. Each course had a secret ingredient and a budget. I tried to make this competition very official. We all met at a giant grocery store, which happens to be a madhouse on the weekends, to shop for our ingredients, then went back to our place to cook. We assumed that we could each have about 30-45 minutes to make our dishes, but from the competition side of things, it fell apart here. First, Andrew and Tiffany made a crab cake that was so filling and delicious that we barely had room for anything else. By the time we got to Steph and my mushroom and green bean salad we were too full to go for Drew and Leah's fish tacos. So Andrew and Tiffany were declared the winners, because we all knew we wouldn't have been able to match their tastiness even if we had tried. Andrew won us over even further by presenting a decadent chocolate cake for dessert. (There is always room for dessert). This might have been the best chocolate cake I have ever had in my life, incredibly moist and, well, chocolately. It was heaven. Top the evening off with a showing of "Steel Magnolias" and you have one hell of a rainy Hong Kong day.

On Monday, we went to the History Museum, where we got to see pictures of old Hong Kong. It was really really neat to see how much the city has changed over the years, in particular the land reclamation. Because Hong Kong has so many hills, flat ground is a rare thing. So, over the years, they have reclaimed land from the harbor, slowly shrinking the waterway. In the pic below, the red, green, and light blue areas are what have been reclaimed in the past 150 years. Amazing huh? 

The museum also had lots of life size displays of a Chinese Temple, a Cheung Chau bun tower, a Cantonese Opera House, all sorts of things. It was actually a super interesting museum. I will admit, the beginning section on Geology was a bit slow, and we all know Stephie isn't the biggest museum goer. She was getting a bit bored in this section when another British couple walked by and the wife uttered the following. "I didn't fly half-way around the world to stare at rocks. I REALLY didn't." We all burst out laughing at that, and Stephie agreed. After speeding through the geology section, however, the rest of the museum was really fantastic. After the museum we stopped for a well deserved cuppa. We also stopped by 1881 Heritage Square to a quick look around. The had it decorated with a giant bouquet of purple roses. No idea why.