Today was a pretty good day in Hong Kong, aside from the jet lag still kicking in pretty good. I have been waking up about 2am and tossing turning and not getting back to sleep until about 4:30. Starla has been sleeping a little bit better but we both still feel wiped out by mid afternoon. That is just part of it but I really thought we would transition smoother. Today we started the day with a wonderful breakfast buffet at the hotel. Today was the “official” start with our agency so everyone was here this morning, about 50 people between the 3 groups. I really don’t see how people can have gotten here yesterday and think they will be OK with jet lag by today, I am SO thankful we got here a couple days early. We also had the opportunity to hang out with some new friends, I just wish we were traveling to Hunan together- we have developed quite the camaraderie. Sorry… I digress… after breakfast we toured Victoria Peak which allowed for beautiful views of Hong Kong and Hong Kong Harbor. It was a little hazy but our guide said it was overall good viewing compared to some days, so we were thankful for that. And, I got my Hard Rock souvenirs. I have this thing about collecting Hard Rock shot glasses from all the cities I go to, I am not so much a Hard Rock fan but I have sort of turned it into a destination for myself.

After Victoria Peak we went to the Aberdeen fishing village. This was really cool as it let us see another way of life. Basically it is a village of people that live on the boats in one part of the harbor and then get on their fishing boats to go to work. They don’t really have much to do with land and in fact many of the older people will not move to land even though they can because they will get “land sick”, just like we get sea sick. We took a tour on one of the Sampans and it took us through the channels for an up close and personal look. These are really poor people and are very hard workers, and like the farmers in China, their children are no longer staying on the boats and moving to land to the more progressive parts of the city to make a better life for themselves. As such the fishing population is really beginning to become sparse. There is also a floating dining boat in the harbor that serves 4600 people at a time, it was huge and quite the site in the harbor of very poor. Although, there was actually a strange contrast, on one side of the channel were the run down housing boats of the fisherman, on the other side (actually separated by the restaurant) were very nice large yachts.

Next came the jade market. First you go into their workshop to see how they make the jewelry, which honestly was a joke. It was a couple guys sitting there working on the jewelry a little bit. It quickly became obvious that the reason for the “workshop” was so they could get tour groups to stop there to sell them jewelry, and it works. Lots of people were buying jewelry and we were actually very reasonable on what we bought. Just a little stone for Mikayla to give her when she gets older. I do think we will find much better deals later on but this was our “just in case”.

After that was the Stanley market. This is just a big market area with lots of local stuff I think. We honestly didn’t go down into the market area because of Starla’s knee, we didn’t want to do a lot of walking. We did go into one shop and there was a parrot in there. Very funny really as the shop owners spoke Chinese and very very broken English. And the bird out of nowhere says “Hello”?!?!? Not Ni Hao, but Hello, the irony had me laughing quite hard inside. There were a lot of booths and shops though and lots of people.

And then onto a Dim Sum lunch, which was very good. We had shrimp, pork, and I don’t even know what kind of Dim Sum, fried noodles, fried rice, the best and freshest broccoli I have ever had, shrimp egg rolls. The food just kept coming, they bring stuff out one thing at a time so as you are finishing one thing thinking how good it was here comes the next thing.

Tomorrow we fly onto Changsha and finally get to unpack, I really am already tired of living out of the suitcases, it is tough. Since we have moved every 2 days so far we haven’t unpacked at all. Tomorrow will be a day to get ready because Monday is the day, in a little more than 36 hours! OMG, I can’t even believe it. I don’t know when this becomes “real” but I have thought about it more today then in the past few days- I just can’t believe it and really think I am pretty scared too- but I think in a good way.