Our 1st Christmas in Hong Kong

It's Dec. 26th and we've had a great 1st Christmas in Hong Kong. (The picture above on the right is the front of our apartment building with all it's festive decorations.) The day was very low key and relaxed with virtually no stress and it all culminated in a huge, stuff-yourself-until-you-feel-like-your-pants-will-burst Christmas meal. I didn't even cook or bake one thing this year which actually was pretty nice, especially since Sue is such a great cook and made the fabulous Christmas dinner and all we had to do was eat it.

We had Christmas dinner over at my boss Sue's house along with Laura and Richard and Sue's dogs Charlie Brown and Bam Bam. Charlie is a 14 year old beagle and just like every other beagle in the world, he only has one thing on his mind, FOOD. That means this big dinner was torture for him and, he couldn't stay away even after Sue put a cone on his head to stop him from chewing on his feet. Too cute.

The Food!
Sue is also the mother of Jody, who is one of my friends and former co-workers back in the U.S One of Jody's favorite things to do after a great meal is to describe it in great detail. So, for Jody's benefit, here's the amazing meal you missed. Sue made everything from scratch and we started with nibbles of crackers, pate, hummus and olives, followed by pumpkin soup with a yummy ginger kick to it and parma ham with cantaloupe (or as the Aussie's call it, Rock Melon). The main course was beef roast AND turkey, roasted pumpkin, roasted carrots and sweet potato, roasted greens, potato and onion, and cauliflower with cheese. Dessert was traditional English Christmas pudding with clotted cream and custard. For all those Americans like me who have never had that before, Christmas pudding is actually a cake, and it tastes like a mixture of gingerbread and fruit cake and clotted cream is really heavy, unsweetened cream. It was delicious! Sorry you missed it Jody, but don't worry, I ate some for you.

How the rest of Hong Kong celebrated Christmas
Just as expected, no one else made much of a big deal out of the day. It was a comfortable 68 F and was sunny and beautiful. Of course, to the locals, 68 degrees F is freezing so everyone on the streets is all bundled in wool jackets, hats and gloves.

All stores, restaurants and businesses stayed open just like it was a normal day and I even went to the mall for a bit of shopping mid-day. It was packed!

One year-long Chinese tradition is to burn paper "money" (not really money) in cans on the side of the street in honor of a loved one who died or something like that. Not sure if this had anything to do with Christmas, but while out and about, I saw quite a few more than usual on Christmas Eve. You can see it behind all the taxis in the picture to the left.

Skype bring Christmas to us
We talked on Skype with our families back home several times over the past few days and it's nice to be able to see them over the computer as we talk. I even left Skype on overnight so my family could call me while they opened their presents on Christmas morning (Remember, we are 16 hours ahead of the west coast, so Christmas morning for my family was 1:30 a.m. for me.) It was worth it though, even if my nieces did laugh at my crazy bed head hair.

The only bad thing to report is Mark caught a cold or the flu and is feeling really cruddy today. He had a sore throat all day yesterday and it's just getting worse. The silver lining on that is that he won't have to substitute teach tomorrow as he had scheduled. (His new job doesn't start until Jan 8th.)

We'll consider that his Christmas present from Santa. Merry Christmas!