Malls and people and food

I was so busy before we left that I didn't think too much about what Hong Kong might be like. It's crazy, but really what I've noticed most so far is SO MUCH SHOPPING. Obviously Jon is not here for that, and who knows if he even notices it. His current area is pretty far north (google it if you haven't yet) so I bet it's different up there.

Today we made it up to Kowloon Tong to drop off the 5 pounds or so of stuff I had accumulated for him. And that's forgetting the postcards (noooo - I just wanted to give people a hope to be answered this century!) It's a super nice area. Their mall has an ice skating rink. That may just be for winter, who knows. I met Sister Kesler, who's been here for 17 months with her husband. I really wonder how often their kids get "whatever you say, Kesler," but I didn't ask. She said that Jon is always cheerful and brightens her day when he comes into the mission home. It's actually in the same building as the ward (or stake?) building, but has a different entrance. She gave me a guide that someone put together about things to do in Hong Kong. There is one mention of shopping - that the whole city is basically a giant mall. It's nice to have another source of other stuff to do, and we've actually already done a lot of their suggestions.

 I hope that Jon enjoys all of the things we left, especially the silly ones. They really do have loads of  Western things in the stores - Miracle whip, coke, Oreos, bread, pasta and pasta sauce, chocolates, cookies, Ferrero rocher and even...... Almond Roca. They are easier to find here than in Texas!! Expensive, but available. So when he says they can get 'everything' here, you still don't need to believe him, but it's enough that I bet he's not dying for any foods from home.

I have been amazed by the consumerism. Tonight we saw a 1 carat diamond. And a 3. And 5. And 8. And 10. Yes, 10, it was ginormous and heart-shaped. There are jewelry stores EVERYWHERE and they are proud of their diamonds. David was tall enough to read the price tag on the 8 carat one, if you guess it right you win.... Something, I don't know.

We also had dinner at a really tasty dim sum place.  We left absolutely stuffed, it was delicious. I think the hardest part about deciding what to eat here is just narrowing it down since we can't have it all. I also left Jon some money to go out to eat because sister Kesler said they can go pretty much wherever on p-day, the only limitation would be budget. And I don't even think Seattle has so many good, easy food options. But I could be wrong.

Hong Kong!!!

We finally made it! Thailand was great, once we got done being sick. I would try to recap, but honestly then I would just get behind on Hong Kong. And if you're reading this, you're probably more interested in that anyway.

Last night we had planned to arrive in Macau, a short ferry ride away, and get to our hotel in Hong Kong. The ferry boat had other plans - was all full til 2:30am, no way to know if hotel would let us check in then, whole long frustrarting story ends in staying in a fancy suite in a best western (kept the free stuff, of course) as it was the cheapest room left for the night. Yay new years?

But now, we are in our lovely beautiful room in Hong Kong! We are near Victoria Peak and the SOHO district, for those who like maps. Very trendy, very international. Looking for a lunch spot we passed everything you can imagine except anything from Africa. And honestly, that's probably everything that you would have imagined. Seriously, had lunch at a French bistro, but passed Italian, Indian, Chinese, Argentinean, Lebanese, Portuguese, Spanish, Mexican, American, Thai.... It goes on.

And now my cursor won't go to after what I typed, but time to shower and get dressed to go out for New Year!!! Happy 2013 to all! (pretend this was at the end. Thanks.)

And
Jon of course does not have time for much detail, like how monstrous the buildings are. Well, tall, but skinny. The one we're in has room for just 3 rooms per floor (and they're neatly packed in) with the elevator and stairs, and is 26 stories. Whoa

We made it!!!

Well, after over 28 hours of traveling, we landed in Phuket, Thailand. Really, I didn't know what to expect and it still seems kind of unreal. The only thing that makes me think that it IS real is that our bags were lost. Yep, both of us. So.... We got to deal with that til 3 am, and then had to find a hotel close to the airport because it was too late to go out to where we are actually staying. Which means that we spent a chunk of our first day buying flip flops and underwear and clothes. Gee, thanks air china. They said they can get them to us on the 24th and will bring them to the hotel. Um, yeah, you had better!!

I think that's it for now, I just wanted to let a large portion of people know we made it safely. Also, I can't get into my regular email for some reason, so email my school mail if you have it. If I remembered t and v's email right, I emailed them, so you could ask them. Time to look for dinner!

Token update

If you hadn't guessed, classes and teaching have eaten my life. I think I've had a max of 6 free hours a week this semester. And by 'free' I mean time other than classes, homework, and grading, or life-sustaining actions like eating, showering, cleaning my room. And I'm about to go grab lunch, and teach some more. But thought I would tell you. I don't really know why..... Enjoy!

This is what I do for my building

Google apparently ate some of my careful divisions of recipes, which is really obnoxious as it took too long to do in the first place. I don't really feel like doing it all again, so I moved them all do a different site.

If you want to see what keeps me busy for 5-6 hours on the weekends, this is the link. It should take you to a website with tons of folders and often 'loose' recipes that I haven't moved to folders yet. It's on a site called Dropbox, which is a pretty popular file/cloud sharing site that I'm hoping will simplify things a bit with google docs not wanting to do what I am looking for.


If you're looking for large group recipes, then this may just help!

Bom Dia from Lisbon

K, I have no idea if I spelled that right. I bought 30 minutes of internet access because a Moroccan guy was going to be rejected from boarding the plane if he didn't have the address of a hotel in the US where he'd be staying. (It was just 2 euro, and I'd hate to be in his place.) But now I'll get to post what I was writing before he started talking to me!

******
Sooooo tired. I think that I slept about two hours last night. Luckily, I got to the airport safely and in plenty of time. Then I went and got a bottle of water (since I didn't want to risk tap water in a new city right before flying for 24 hours - high disaster potential) and after a bit got on the plane and fell asleep as we were taking off. I woke up a couple of times because I was uncomfortable, but only really woke up 90 minutes later when we were landing. I'm typing this from the Lisbon airport, waiting for my flight to Newark.

Casablanca was interesting. Big, busy, and dirty are the adjectives that come to mind first. We stayed in the youth hostel there, which was surprisingly nice. For 75Dh a night, got a clean room with two twin beds, wifi in the common area, and a typical hostel breakfast in the morning (bread with butter & jam, cheap OJ, and tea or coffee.) They also were able to call a taxi for me so that I didn't have to spend the night at the airport as my flight was leaving too early to catch a train. The taxi cost a lot more, and is very expensive by Moroccan standards but when you convert it to dollars - less than $55 for my last two nights and then the taxi - I can't really complain.

A lot of the students in Fes were saying "oh, it'll be so hard to go back to dollars!" because when you compare them directly Morocco is so much less expensive. But I haven't felt like that yet. I don't know if I will. I feel like we just get lucky there in a way, but it's due to the fact that the people there are so economically UNlucky. Yeah, you can get an amazing peanut 'macaron' on the street for 25 cents (and I am so figuring out how to make those!) but there's a lot you can't get, and a lot that the people who live there and the little boys (8 or 12 at the very oldest) who wander around and sell those will never get or see or do.

Sometimes when bartering in the medina it's hard because part of me wants to show that you can't just tell tourists ridiculous prices and expect them to pay it, but sometimes I'm shocked at the low prices of things. I kind of want to say, "value your time more, you're a person!" But I know that they do think they're getting what they can. I mean, there's no way I'd pay much for a screen-printed t-shirt. I got one yesterday for 60Dh in Casablanca and I'm pretty sure I could have had it for less if I had thought about it more carefully at first (the guy started at 120Dh, which is absolutely ridiculous, but so much so that he dropped it to 100 when I just gave him a look and said that was a lot. In Fez they never drop that quickly, but they venders are known for being tougher.) I can accept that the restaurant next door in Austin sells me a breakfast for around $7 instead of 7Dh because we all get paid reasonable wages in the US. And while inflation is weird to me - like why should food costs be THAT different - that's the way the world works. And I can pay $7 now and then when I really want it because I have access to so many different opportunities.

The last two days in Casa gave me several quick impressions that exemplify Morocco:

• Creepy guys walking 2-3 steps behind you, asking where you're from and if you want to drink tea with him in a voice that's quiet enough to be deniable. Welcome to Morocco.
• Helpful guy walking same distance behind, same level of voice, warning of pickpockets. Welcome to Morocco.
• Taxi driver telling you the pharmacy open on Sunday is very far away and offering to take you for 50Dh. Welcome to Morocco. And then lowering it to 40, then 30 as you walk away.
• Another taxi driver giving you directions to said pharmacy, complete with road names and landmarks. Welcome to Morocco.
• People almost getting in fights late in the day during Ramadan, and getting water splashed on your foot from a NASTY bucket as a guy goes to throw it on someone else. Welcome to Morocco.
• Spotting a little hole-in-the-wall restaurant about 10 minutes before breaking the fast and being allowed to sit with 5 Moroccan men and have harira with mint green tea with them (which cost a total of 8Dh for the two of us) after we hear the local call to prayer. Welcome to Morocco.
• Visiting an $800 million (Yes, DOLLAR) mosque paid for with public funds.... which isn't very far from some borderline slums. Welcome to morocco.
• Catching a ride with a car of Chinese guys that took pity on you as you tried to catch a cab once you realized you were close to an area that you probably should *not* walk through. Welcome to Morocco.
• The taxi driver at 3AM also saying he's in a famous Berber folkloria (sp??) group and has played around the country, in other countries and for the king. Welcome to Morocco.

I don't know how much more time I might have on my 30 minutes, so that's all you get for now! If I'm awake at all during the flight home, I might write you more. Or I might study Arabic. Or maybe watch whatever movie they put on. I guess you'll have to wait and see!

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That's how I was feeling about 20 minutes ago. Where was I? Looking for the Casablanca Youth Hostel, and realizing that I had headed the wrong way to get there. As in the OPPOSITE direction of where I wanted to be. Lugging my 50-ish pound suitcase behind me. (Ok, I don't really know how much it weighs, but I'm nervous that it's going to be over my 50-lb limit and I keep re-writing a mental list of what I'll ditch if it's only a little over, b/c if it's too much over I'll have to suck it up and pay some crazy fee of $60 or sthg.)

Streets in Morocco tend not to be clearly marked with a name. It's apparently not a big deal. Here in Casa, from what I've seen so far they are marked a bit better than in other areas, but the map I was using (in the lonely planet) didn't show many of the street names, so that wasn't much help anyway. But then we realized (me and Michael, I picked him up in Rabat - ok, he was at ALIF, too) that we were walking parallel to the train tracks. And the map showed that the tracks should have stopped behind us. NOOO. So there were a few guys around, so he asked for directions. Yup, the other way, then turn right the guys says. Turning right does not seem accurate, but we do believe the 'go back where you were' part.

We headed back and saw a couple of girls, which meant it was my turn to ask. Yep, keep heading straight. The road forked and they had gestured to the left fork, but we weren't sure so we stopped to check the map. Yup, indeed that one would take us to the medina... and the opposite side from where the youth hostel was. Good thing we checked. We crossed the street to the correct fork and kept walking. After a bit we checked the map again, still looked right.

Then, what is that? Could it be? A SIGN, directing us to the hostel?? Amazing! We followed it and saw a cute, clean place. With women working there speaking English, French and Arabic. And being friendly. And it's got wifi. And a big, clean sitting space. And apparently breakfast, even during Ramadan. I bet it's just tea and bread with jam, but I have been dying for tea now every time I get up. Got too used to it with the host family, I guess. My body can't cope without the daily jumpstart of a tablespoon of sugar. I'll break it of that when I get back home.

We may be lucky enough to be able to stay two nights, but it's unclear as apparently the online reservation system seems to let them know each day who is coming, even though you have to reserve online 3 days ahead. Although I will have to ask anyway if they can call me a taxi at 2AM tomorrow because I have to be at the train station at around 4. Ridiculous, I know, but it's either that or take a train that would get me there at 11pm and make me wait ALL NIGHT. And the chance of a little sleep is better than no chance at all. I think.