Fun, Festivals and Food!

Because life can never be boring or dull, this past weekend, the faucet in our water room (definition for this: room containing both your toilet and shower, which is very common over here) decided to break and water was flowing full blast from the faucet all weekend until our Landlord came Monday morning to fix it.  In the meantime, I  came up with and James implemented this "creative" fix:

Redneck?  Maybe.  Effective?  Definitely.

And after all that "hard work", James needed a cheeseburger.  There is a restaurant right by our apartment called Shake Em Buns.  We have been twice and when I walk in the owners say "Hey!  It's the vegetarian!!"  Very Sweet and James LOVES the burgers:

Gross.

After dinner we went to the Mid-Autumn Festival, via the Metro.  We had been warned it would be packed...

For those who don't know, the Mid-Autumn Festival is a public holiday and a time for families to get together.    The legend behind all the lanterns is: One day a long time ago, a man bought some pills that would make him have eternal life if he took it after fasting and praying for a year.  He brought them home and hid it.  But his wife found them and took them.  The pills made her so light that she could fly, but when she got to the moon, she coughed half the pill up and is now stuck on the moon. The festival is always held around the autumnal equinox.

People used to put messages or wishes in the lanterns and send them "up to the moon", but because that is VERY bad for the environment, they now write down their wishes and put them on a community wall in Victoria Park and hang lanterns everywhere.

So, once we made it through the masses to Victoria Park, these lanterns and lights were EVERYWHERE!

This lantern was HUGE and actually won the Guinness World Record for World's Largest Lantern.  At first we were underwhelmed at the huge fish made from many lanterns:

But then we realized it changed colors and were adequately impressed!

 Ooooo... Ahhhhhhh!

But, one can only stare at lanterns for so long, so we started heading back home.  The streets were crowded. I overheard a man say, "I feel like I'm walking into a Tsunami."  Accurate description in my opinion:

The next day was a public holiday and for lunch, we went with Kristen and met up with a fellow Rotarian and her family.  They were all very sweet and gracious, so we were so thankful to have a family with whom to spend the holiday!!  We had lunch at a yummy Chinese restaurant (which was conveniently run by one of the hosts, so the service was impeccable).

They also offered us some of Hong Kong's classic delicacies.  Below is a picture of James eating what is called "A thousand year-old egg", which CNN at some point angered China by calling it one of the world's most disgusting foods.  It's a duck egg, uncooked but preserved, that is packed in mud for several months, turning the egg into a dark gray/brown color with a bluish yoke (that is still runny, I might add, as it isn't cooked...).  James and Kristen found it quite tasty:

I graciously declined....

But we did have Peking Duck, and I DID try that (yes yes, be impressed).  It actually tasted a good bit like Thanksgiving Turkey, but with a crispy tasting skin.  Not my favorite fowl, but not bad and hey, you can't eat potatoes every meal...

For dessert, we had moon cakes, which is a Chinese tradition for the Festival.  These were used during the revolution to send messages (the messages were placed in the center of the cake).  We also had this jello-ish dessert that was amazing.  It is like very sweet jello with flowers in it.  That's right - REAL FLOWERS.  It is soooo good and the first word everyone uses to describe it is "refreshing" and it is SO true.

So much fun and such a great day!

NOODLE!