Here we are in Hong Kong!!! WOW…I can not believe we are here. We have been here for almost 24 hours and the reality still has not hit me yet…that I am in China. Our 15.5 hour plane ride was really not bad at all. We all got up early Wednesday morning and all headed to the airport in LA to get checked in and ready to board our plane. I do have to admit that it was pretty nice to not be in such a rush because this part of our travel was not a race.
All the Americans teams were on the same flight, so we were able to help each other out and share info and details with each other. (We normally keep everything pretty secretive.)
We arrived at 7pm last night. We headed straight to baggage claim where Jessica and I began to freak out a bit. Our luggage was NOT there. As I was about to start to cray, I turned around and saw a man pushing a cart with our bags on it. Our bags were so heavy that they couldn’t go on the belt, a man had to bring them out to us. (Good things she and I made an essential investments in traveling rolling carts.) We strap everything to our cart and we are off. All of our other team members were extremely jealous that they had not thought of our idea.
So…We finally find our way to the bus stop where we loaded a bus to head to our hotel. It was interesting getting all 15 of us plus everything we own for an entire year onto a bus along with several other Chinese people. As we were riding one lady told us that several people that had been on the plane with us all had bets with each other as to if we were on the Amazing Race or not. It was all pretty funny.
We finally make it to our hotel and find that it is not like America…reality check. Our hotel is a 20 story building with about 60 hotels in it. The question is, where is the one we are suppose to be staying at? All of the men start pointing us in thousands of different directions, while young guys try and speak English to us girls and “welcome” us to Hong Kong, and as we try and push our way through seas of people with thousands of pounds in luggage. It was CRAZY.
We finally find one guy that point us in the right direction. We get in line for the elevator that has at least 50 other people in it. It finally comes to our turn and we start sending people up. Because the elevator is so small and we have so much crap we can only fit 3 people at a time. By the time we get about 9 people up to the 13th floor we find out they do not have room for us, so we have to go to the 16th floor. BUT the elevator does not go there…you have to walk. Yeah…Walk…so off we go to the 16th floor, as we try and find the other people in our group, so they will know where we are.
We finally get everyone together by about 11:30. Needless to say we were all pretty tired, so we all crashed and got ready to get up bright and early this morning.
This morning we all got up and got ready to go and get our visas. We met the guy that we will be working with at the visa place at around 7:30. Come to find out, they didn’t open until 8:30… we were early…so what do we do…eat. What do we eat? We are Americans…we are in Hong Kong…we eat McDonalds!!!!
After eating our very American breakfast we go and get our visas and hang out the rest of the day.
Some people checked emails and blogged, some went shopping, some went on a boat to see some of Hong Kong, others rested.
I did a little of it all and here are SOME of the places I went shopping…
Saturday we will be chilling out some more and resting up for our day on Sunday.
Sunday we are leaving to go to the part of China that we will be ministering in. We will leave here bright and early Sunday morning to get on a bus for about 3 hours to go to the train station, where we will board the train for 36 hours, and from there board another bus for about another 3 hours. We have estimated a total of about 50 hours!!!! …Yeah…I know what you are thinking, better you than me, so thanks for choosing me…someone has to do it.
I will keep you updated and let you know how things are. Please keep us in your thoughts and prayers.
Look at browse my photos…I have added pictures from LA.
Ahhhh… Thought I would leave you with a lovely pic.
