adventures after the heart

[I learned the importance of being aware of my surroundings yesterday while we were traveling. I went into a small open air bakery to buy chocalate cake (not nearly as satisfying as it looked) and when I came out, I could not find my wallet anywhere. It wasn't in my purse (which was unzipped) and it wasn't on a shelf in the bakery or the counter. It was gone. I alerted people around me as I started to freak out. It didn't have my license or all of my money, but it still had a lot in it. After about 3 or 4 minutes, I realized, however, that it had been under my arm with my tourist brochures. Yes, I had stolen my own wallet. Funny now, but not at the time.]

Yesterday  I went sightseeing with a group of about 70 other teachers. It felt as though I might as well have been a carnival barker yelling at the bustling crowd around us, “look at all the tourists!”

But so it goes.

We traveled by foot to a nearby park, then walked to the Walled City in Kowloon, where the old city of crime and poverty had been torn down and a park had been resurrected in 1995. It was a park/garden/museum. It was one place I had really wanted to go, so I was very excited about reading all of the plaques and trying to grasp the fact that less than twenty years ago, 30,000 people lived in this area that equaled 6.6 acres.

We were told about the woman, Jackie Pullinger, who had done so much to revive the city and to reach out to the broken drug addicts and the gangs, at the price of all she had. She wrote a book called “Chasing the Dragon,” which was highly recommended to me by another student who has read it.

After the park, we hopped on a bus which took us to the MTR (the public subway system) which took us to the temple. However, due to circumstances of people getting lost and separated from the huge crowd, we didn’t make it in time and we missed the opportunity to peruse the temple grounds by 15 minutes. 

After that we went back on the MTR to Diamond Hill exit, which had the most beautiful gardens with a golden building surrounded with water and red bridge on either side, and pagodas scattered throughout. It echoed with the strains of active waterfalls which lent a natural soundtrack to the gardens. Anywhere you looked up, however, you could see verdant mountains and towering buildings.

After the garden, several of us went to a mall where we shopped and ate dinner. Food has been interesting so far (we eat in the cantene here on campus, and let’s just say that cantenes are the same all over the world), but we opted for Pizza Hut (yes, the American Experience pizza has corn on it).

Hong Kong so far has proved to be a city of contradictions. Of spiritual and secular, of malls and gardens, of history and modernity, of mountains and 100% luxury tax on cars, of harbour and towering skyscrapers.