Revelry and Confusion

Late Saturday night (that would be early Saturday morning for those of you in the states) I managed to meet up with Megan and Tri.
On Sunday morning we all went and wandered around Nathan street to find internet access so we could determine when and where we had to meet with the higher ups in our program. After doing so we went into a building and started hitting random buttons on the elevator--each floor was a different dim sum restaurant (it's quite bizarre, the door would shut then open and you'd be standing in the middle of the same SHAPED restaurant with different decorations). We decided on the sixth floor and ate dim sum for about two hours--the hargaw and the bao were the best I've ever had, but all in all the empress in Los Angeles now seems pretty authentic.

We had to meet with Michelle (the woman "in charge"--that is to say, she's in control in the same way that the guy who throws the ball onto the roulette wheel controls where it lands) at 4PM in the Hong Kong Central MTR station--which we did after some confusion. The first question Michelle asks me and Meg is where is our luggage as we are supposed to be leaving right after dinner for Yunnan. We eventually explained that it was stupid for us to split up (we leave and then the others follow)--so now the whole group will be going to Yunan leaving tomorrow (short train to Shenzhen, then an overnight train to Yunnan).

We will be working at a former leper colony (no longer any leprosy, I promise) either doing habitat for humanity type work (building houses for the people there) or we will be helping out with the summer harvest for two weeks. At first I was a little upset about this plan--because I came to China to teach. But when will I ever get a chance to travel to rural, Western China to work the wheat harvest. This is as foreign a place as I coudl get, I think. So I'm very excited, and a bit nervous (read, happy some people I know are coming with). The people who live in this area WERE lepers many years ago--they're now cured--but there is such stigma against them that they cannot return to their former lives.

Yesterday, July 1st 2007, was both the 10th anniversary of Hong Kong's return to China and National Chinese Communist Party Day. After a very long Cantonese dinner that Michelle got for the group Tri and Meg and I went to watch the fireworks. Tri has just graduated from the Kennedy School of Government so we went to the flat of one of his friends from the K-school who is now a diplomat in Hong Kong (the Chinese government gives you REALLY REALLY REALLY awesome apartments if you're a diplomat, this place is huge). We watched the fireworks from the roof of the building (there were fireworks firing from the tops of five buildings, three on the Hong Kong side, one on the kowloon side) as well as a HUGE display fired from a barge in the bay. We couldn't actually see the ones from the barge (another building blocked us)--but I could hear that it was the biggest display of my experience. We then came back downstairs where we played HKSAR (Hong Kong Special Administrative Region) 10th Anniversary Monopoly. I was really into the game, but around 1AM my jetlag caught up with me (I'm amazed I managed to stay awake from 8AM to 1AM the day after landing in Hong Kong, basically my jetlag is gone) so I left the game and fell asleep on a couch. After the game ended an hour later we decided that it would be too hard to get back to Kowloon (where we are staying) and so we stayed in the apartment (thank god, real air conditioning). I've just woken up, and am about to take a shower (all of the showers in the Kowloon guest house are "wet bathrooms" where the whole bathroom is the shower). Then we'll spend the day in Hong Kong (I am going to try to get a few of us out to Lantau Island).

I don't know if I'll be able to post from Yunnan (I doubt it) as we've been told there may be no electricity or running water. I am going to be one smelly person when I get back.