CHRISTMAS 2009

Our family spent the 2009 Christmas season and New Year's Day in Hong Kong. Although we desired to travel to Thailand or some other place, we decided against the idea. The reason was partly financial and partly because we are hoping to travel to South Africa and Namibia during the summer of 2010. We know the summer trip will need quite some money. So we are trying to curtail other travels to try to increase our chances of taking the trip.
We volunteered at the Cross-roads, a non-profit organization based in Hong Kong. Crossroads Foundation ships supplies to different parts of the world to help the poor, homeless, and orphans. They also work in collaboration with other organizations. We assisted them with sorting of donated items and with furniture inventory.

Although we tried to reduce expenses by not traveling out of Hong Kong, we got two new bicycles, the game of Blokus and the game of Life. The boys got Tamari a book, and Henry mints (yeah!). Flora's church bought us a set of bed sheet and duvet cover, which is nice. Tamari got 12 boxes of chocolates. She said, "...... now seriously do I look like I need 12 boxes of chocolates ????" Anyway, she re-gifted them and added a prepaid octopus (multi-purpose ) card to each package for our refugee population that the church organized Christmas lunch for. So it worked out very nicely!!

God is so good .... I (Tamari) had not counted the packages as we were rushing baking cookies for the Christmas service bake sale (proceeds to go to our new church building in Hong Kong), and wrapping chocolates and then I left the wrapped packages behind for Alex and Chika to bring, as I had armloads of cookies. Then I got to the train station and realized that I did not really know how many octopus cards I should buy. So I asked the woman for 10 cards. As she got them all charged and ready, the Holy Spirit said, "Buy two more." I told the lady to add two more, and then I went off to church. At the end of service I sat down with my box of greeting cards, octopus cards, and the boxes of chocolates and sure enough there were 12 boxes! Yeah!!! Perfect dear!!! And I will not even be gaining one pound from all of that chocolate!!

The Christmas vacation has been a restful time for us. We have been riding our bikes, and have played both games, watched too much "Seinfeld" shows, checked out a movie called "Stranger than Fiction" (pretty strange but pretty good movie) .

Back to Hong Kong '09

The summer is over and we are back to Hong Kong, starting our third year here. It is amazing how we have come to see Hong Kong as home. It seems home to us now is wherever our family is together.

The 2009/2010 school year has started, and in fact, we are more than one fourth into the school year. Both Chika and Alex are in the middle school now. As usual, our first semester is loaded with many activities – spiritual emphasis week, camp, Fall Festival/Walkaton, and of course, the Week Without Walls.

Our middle school chapel theme for this year is “Transformed”, essentially looking at how God transforms mankind through salvation in Jesus Christ. The elementary school chapel theme is “Be a Servant” encouraging kids to serve others and is modeled after Jesus who washed the disciples feet to teach them about this important charter trait.

The school camp went better than last year’s. The camp involves all teachers and students in the secondary. Last year we had had a typhoon that disrupted and shortened the camp from three to two days. This year’s was better in that we had fair weather and three days. There were numerous events including ropes course, archery, soccer, swimming, treasure hunt, tug of war, and capture the flag, among others. The boys got to sleep in a cabin with other boys and had a blast, eating too much junk food, and staying up too late.

The Fall Festival and Walkaton are twin events held on the same day. They serve as a fundraiser for our school. The school is focusing on raising money to give tuition assistance to ICS families that are struggling financially.

The Week Without Walls program will take place in about two weeks. Henry is coordinating the trips for the middle school. This year there are 12 trips in all, some local within Hong Kong, and others international. Alex will be going to Yangshou, mainland China (on a trip that has some service – he and other students, will be ‘teaching’ kids in Elementary schools English, and some fun – hiking, rock climbing, mountain biking, caving, etc), Chika is going to Malaysia (on a recreational trip that Alex went on last year, so it came highly recommended from a reputable authority), while Henry will be going to the Philippines. Well you might ask, “What about Tamari?” She and Flora, our helper, will be in Hong Kong enjoying themselves in the absence of the boys.

Our family is well. God has been helping us.

Summer Vacation in the United States

On Saturday June 13th 2009, we traveled to the US to spend the summer vacation. It was a long flight. We went through the Pacific Ocean and the west coast, to Chicago O’Hare Airport, where, after some hours, we boarded our next flight to Boston, Massachusetts. We arrived at South Berwick a little after midnight, about 25 hours after leaving our house in Hong Kong.
The last time we were in the US was two years ago and so we were really looking forward to going there. Alex and Chika just could not wait to get there. Upon arrival there had been many plans to go camping, have play dates or visit fun places, but it rained and rained. There was hardly any day that it did not rain during our first two and a half weeks.
At this point the rains have abated and we are beginning to get some sunlight. Thank God! Alex and Chika are having a lot of fun with their friends. Sometimes their friends come over to visit, play or sleep over. At other times they go to their friend’s houses.
As a family, we have been staying with Tamari’s sister Joni, who has been a real blessing in offering us two rooms in her house for the summer so we can use her house as our base as we visit with our friends. We have also taken advantage of a couple of house-sitting opportunities for two families. It has been nice to catch up on events or situations that took place while we were gone.
God has been gracious to us. He has been providing for us, protecting us and delivering us. He did a great miracle when Chika fell off his skate board and injured his head – a situation that could have incapacitated him in a number of ways. God delivered him and responded to the prayers made on his behalf, by healing his fractured skull without any needs for surgery or strong medications. Praise God that Chika’s brain has remained fully functional and by his mercy, there are no serious ramifications from this accident! We serve a good God!!
We will be spending our last two weeks doing some camping at Pine Acres campground in New Hampshire, and getting together with friends one last time before returning to Hong Kong on August 1st. We start professional development work on August 3rd and the boys will have two weeks to get back into the groove of Hong Kong life before they start school in the middle of August.

Visit To Malaysia

We had a one-week spring break from April 21st to 28th, and spent it in Malaysia. Tamari and I had a teachers’ conference to attend from 23rd -25th, but we decided to go on the 21st so that we can get a few days of vacation, before the conference started. We actually went with our entire household, including Flora, the woman who works for us, and helps to take care of the family.
It was an excellent vacation and we enjoyed many activities in Kota Kinabalu, a community on the South China Sea. First, we took a day trip to the islands and got to enjoy snorkeling near the coast – where we got to see beautiful fish, sea urchins, sea cucumbers, and so much amazing coral. The reefs there are excellent and right off the beach – so it made snorkeling so accessible – even for those of us who do not really swim much! Alex and Chika also got to try scuba diving at another island - which they really enjoyed! Another highlight for them was the “Krazy Ken’s Adventure Park”. We were the only ones there for most of the day (guess it was off-season?) and this place had the flying squirrel, bungee trampolines, and quad bikes (for the boys), beach buggies (for Flora and Henry) a high ropes course (for Henry) and a beach full of sand dollars (for Tamari). Something for everyone. The boys definitely had the time of their lives there. They had their quad bikes and were the only ones on the beach. Their “package deal” included three rides through muddy trails and ‘round and ‘round the beach, followed by a shower and clean towel to clean up afterward. Needless to say they got their money’s worth and ended up so dirty and so exhilarated.
We also met a couple of Nigerian guys – one man named Andy at church, and another one named Daniel through the first. We ended up going out to dinner with their families a couple times and spent some time getting to know them. Both of them are married to Malaysian women and have sons as well. So the dinners were quite lively as we all got to know one another.
The last full day in Malaysia the boys and Flora came over to the resort that the conference was being held at – to enjoy the pool while we finished off the conference. This is definitely a place worth visiting again – if only for the beautiful coral reefs and the friendly people.

Christmas And New Year In Australia

We left Hong Kong on Friday 19th December 2008 evening on a Thai Airways flight via Bangkok to Perth, Western Australia. Upon arrival at Perth Airport Saturday morning, we took a shuttle bus to the middle of the city and spent for a few hours touring the city of Perth. Then we boarded a coach (luxury passenger bus) and traveled to Margaret River, a town located south of Perth.
Saturday was pretty much spent traveling. We got to Margaret River after about five hours of traveling. We checked into Basildene Manor, the resort in which we had accommodation, and after that, went out for dinner. The dinner was nothing fancy; just some fish and chips, and pizza.
The next day Sunday, we worshipped at a local Baptist church in Margaret River. The service was good, although there were more elderly people in attendance than young people and children.
We spent one week in Margaret River, lounging around the resort and visiting places of interest in the neighboring towns. The resort has a beautiful garden with very soft grass, shrubs and flowers. We used the swimming pool and Alex and Chika spend time reading by the fire place.
We also went on a “Bushtucker Tour” - a canoe trip along the Margaret River. We had two tour guides who told us the history of Margaret River. We also visited a cave during the tour. Alex and Chika had fun crawling through one of the cave’s tunnels.
On Wednesday we rented a car and went to a few tourist places, including a sheep shearing place, a chocolate shop, dairy and cheese shop, Cape Leuwein lighthouse where the Indian Ocean meets the Southern Ocean. The Southern Ocean is the body of water that surrounds Antarctica.
Thursday was Christmas day. Shops were closed as people were home celebrating with their families. We had a barbeque for lunch and later went to the pool.
We rented a car on Friday (Boxing Day) and visited the Jewel Cave and Mammoth Cave. These are huge caves. The Jewel Cave is about 42 meters deep while the Mammoth Cave is about 32 meters deep. They are very wide, although the width varies from point to point. We also drove along the scenic route through the forest, seeing some huge red gum trees and kangaroos.
The second week of our visit was spent mostly in Busselton. Our accommodation in Busselton was more family- and children-friendly. It had more facilities - swimming pool, Jacuzzi, games room, and tennis courts. More importantly, it had a furnished kitchen. So were able to make our own food. That was very nice!
The longest jetty in the southern hemisphere and the second longest in the world is the Busselton jetty. It is 1.7 km long. We took a walk on it out to the sea, where an underwater aquarium is located. The aquarium is good, but not extensive. Our tour of the aquarium lasted a short time, only about 15 minutes.
Walking back from the aquarium, we visited an adjoining fun place called Simmon’s. There Alex, Chika and I did car racing. Then the boys went on a long waterslide. They did the waterslide quite a number of times, and then did car racing again, and finally, Chika went to jump on trampolines.
We returned to Hong Kong on Friday 2nd January 2009 night. We resumed work on Monday the 5th.