hong kong dwelling

our stay in hk can be divided into two parts, the first part much shorter than the second. for the first week and a half we resided at my friend's aunt's house in shatin, about 35 minutes by train from hong kong island. maylin was so wonderful to us. first of all, she allowed complete strangers to come stay in her home. the great thing was that from the first night we arrived (at 12 or 1 in the middle of the night) we didn't feel like strangers. she took such good care of us.

her home was on the 26th floor of a building in this amazing complex. the views were something else. i think simon liked it too.



hk is small. but there are millions of people. so they build things up, and are very efficient with space. these are views of our two rooms, taken from outside our bedroom door. as you can see there is very little floor space in the bedrooms. between the bed and the window is a small bay. simon slept there when he was getting over jet lag. but mostly he just looked outside to watch the buses.


our two rooms were separated by a wooden sliding door. thank goodness there was enough room for simon's pack 'n play. needless to say, we didn't need the baby monitor. we could hear simon's every peep.


this is a shot of the complex we lived in. there were 5 high rises like the one we lived in, and then two shorter buildings with larger apartments (buildings at top and bottom of following picture). the one toward the bottom was two levels. the ground level apartments even have back yards and the top level apartments have roof access. this was a very nice place. between the two smaller buildings you can see the clubhouse. the clubhouse provided access to three pools, one indoors, an indoor play area for kids, a gym, a dance room, and banquet rooms. i think that is everything.



i wanted to take more pictures of the apartment, and i thought i would have plenty of time to do it. we moved out rather abruptly. sunday night a week and two days after we arrived, robert received a phone call from his boss saying the church had an empty, furnished apartment that they still had a lease on and asked him if we wanted to move in. we talked about it that night, robert told him yes the next day, and we moved on tuesday. we hated to leave maylin, but knew it would mean more time together since it was only a 10 minute walk away from work at the new place. we were truly blessed, to both be able to stay with maylin and stay at the church apartment.

on one of my morning walks while still in shatin i came across this. i just thought it was interesting. to the right are people exiting from the mtr (hk's mass transit railway). in the center are people handing out little packets of kleenex. what a bottleneck. so many people crammed to the right just trying to get through, and so few people filtering out on the left.


also during the first part of our trip we visited the building that robert attended church in when he was a boy living in hk (1984-1988). it is now a museum for sun yat sen, but it pays a wonderful tribute to the church. they even show a historical video that talks about how well the church preserved the building.




and this is the font that robert's brother was baptized in. it has been preserved in the museum.



robert did mention the inside seemed a lot smaller than he remembered it.

this just about all i have from the first part of our trip, except for disneyland, which deserves its own blog post.