Christmas and New Year
Trip Start
Aug 2003
1
14
19
Trip End
Aug 2004
Sai Kung, Hong Kong
Tuesday, January 6, 2004
I shall begin with Christmas eve, unfortuately i was working starting at 05:45 and supposedly finishing at 22:30 but as it was Christmas eve and there was no courses in the school my boss didn't care that i finished early and in fact told me to close the gate when i came home!! After work Amy and I cooked our own mini xmas dinner "xmas the best bits" which means turkey breast no brown meat yuck, yorkshire puds, roast potatoes, brocoli as we felt we should have some veg and neither of us was going to eat sprouts! eww! It was a total success and we were a little supprised as to how good it was. Once we'd eaten as much as we could we got changed and trotted of into town to the pub where we met up with some friends of ours. As you can imagine as the evening rolled on and the more we drank the more friends we made. The best thing about pubs in Hong Kong is that they don't have a closing time, so by 3am the bar maids were getting tired so we got ushered out. That didn't stop us though, off we went to 7-11 (newsagent) to buy more drinks, we sat on some benches overlooking the sea while we drank these (another great thing about hong kong there are no laws preventing you from drinking in public although it is a bit odd when you see an old man sitting on the bus with a bottle of beer in his hand). I think we eventually made it home by about 5:30 where we crashed into bed.
Christmas morning started to my severe annoyance at 8am. This was as a result of the normal considerarin of the other girl crashing around in the kitchen with no consideration that we had only got home a few hours before. The three of us sat around the tree to open our presents which kept us insanely happy for nearly 2 hours. Once all the presents had been opened we put on a film, however i failed to see more than about 10mins of it as i fell asleep. I awoke to the telephone ringing, it was my lovely parents who had woken up (i think mum stayed up and then woken dad up)as for them it was 5am!! This gave me just enough time to get dressed and cook some food to take to dinner. We all went to dinner at our big big boss' house along with about 15 other people, a mix of nationalities British, Dutch, South African, Canadian and no doubt some others too but all english speakers. The strangest feeling was the temperature, about 25 degrees if i remember. Here we stayed eating, drinking, sunbathing and chatting unti about 8pm. The remainder of the evening I spent on the phone to many of my darling friends out there (it was good to speak to you all).
Boxing day and i was back to work again. The next week i spent in another base for the school. It was an island called Wong Wan Chau. There are no inhabitants on the island other than the cartaker of the school and his wife. So as you can imagine it was an incredibly quiet place (except when the generator was running). One day when there were no groups in the school the four of us who were on support went out to lunch. We took the speed boat to a nearby fishing village where i could see straight across to mainland China. After lunch i was taken to a temple to have my fortune told. I had to light a stick of insense, pick up a box of sticks, kneel down, close my eyes and shake the box until a stick jumped out. You then read the number on the stick (or get your chinese friend to help you out as its not written in english) and take a peice of paper corresponding to that number, on this paper is writte your fortune. However apparently they are incredibly difficult to translate so i am still non the wiser for all my efforts other than it wasn't all that good, so maybe better i don't know!
New Year I also spent on Wong Wan Chau. However all the groups and other staff had left and the caretaker was on holiday, leaving just me and Amy. We had the entire island to ourselves for 2 days during which we spent the majority of the time sunbathing and reading. We also went for a swim but that was relatively freezing so we quickly abandoned that! Late in the evening of new years even we lit a bonfire which we danced around (fully clothed....mum!), singing and blowing whistles to bring in the new year. In the afternoon of the 1st our taxi arrive, well it was more of a speed boat driven by a fisherman but hey. This took us to Wong Shek Pier where we caught a bus taking us back to the Outward Bound School.
2nd of Jan was time for another staff meeting, groan! Thankfuly it was inturrupted by a delivery of 50 new kayaks, the lorry carrying them was unable to get down the drive so we had to pause the meeting to unpack them and carry them to the store. The meeting also finished early due to err arrangements for staff games. We all went out to a kinda concrete pitch in the local town. We began with a game up ulimate frisbee (supposedlyy) as a warm up. However as no on had any idea of the rules it was more of a cross between rugby and...... well i suppose it was a game of rugy with a frisbee!!!! Then followed the football, it was a good laugh with not one person actually being able to play very well at all!!! Finally the team that lost the football (not mine) were given pictures of skanitly clad women to tie to the bums. They were then positioned in the goal, each member of the winning team (my team) got to take a penatly kick with the intention of hitting one of the errr women (bums) somehow i managed to be the only person able to acurately hit the bum (everyone else got feet, legs or just missed the goal totally) so i won a melon, yes you heard my right i won a melon! i think i got the best deal one of the other prizes was an old plimsole (used at the school as water shoes by participants, this one had been left behind) sprayed gold!! As you can imagine all the staff here are totally sane and take everything seriously!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The next couple of weeks i shall be spending working in the workshop doing who know what.
