back in hong kong, and welcomed by a typhoon

I've been back in Hong Kong for just over a week now, after spending 6 weeks at home in Colorado. I had a great summer at home with family and friends, and definitely needed a dose of familiarity and comfort, but I was surprised how ready I was to return to Hong Kong. It was a good feeling to land on the ground here and be home.

Right now I'm home from work early because a Typhoon 8 signal was hoisted, which just means a whole lot of rain and wind. When it gets to this level, the public transportation options are much more limited and most stores and restaurants close. If school was in session, it would close... Hong Kong's equivalent of a snowstorm.

The first couple of days I was back here, I noticed all of the little things that I noticed when I first moved here, like how many restaurant choices there are (this is notably one of the BEST cities in the world for food). The humidity hit me, and I was pleasantly surprised by the excellent public transportation system, and I noticed how many people were attached to their phones (there are more cell phones here than there are people in HK). But now things feel back to normal, and I'm back into my routines. I'm definitely glad to be here. I think it will be a very difficult decision when I have to think about re-signing for another year. That decision comes in January, and seems to be the golden question here.

Work did start this week with trainings, meetings, and preparation time. On Monday we have Registration Day, and classes start on Tuesday. I feel much more confident and prepared this year, which has been a very good feeling. I'm actually really excited for the schoolyear to start. I've run into a few students while out in the community and am looking forward to having the same students as last year.

I decided to include a few pictures of my daily life and routines.

This is the busy shopping center I walk through every day to get to the train station (the KCR). Here is the entrance to the trains.
Here is the train stop at FoTan, the area where my school is located. Most of the train stations are underground or inside a closed area, but this one happens to be outside.

pictures of home

This is taken from outside of The Castello...my apartment complex. There are 8 towers with 36 floors each...so about 5,000 people live here.

This is what I see when I walk out the front door of my building. This courtyard in the middle holds many "reflecting pools", benches, and trees. It's quite a peaceful retreat when compared with the rest of Hong Kong. In the back of the picture you can see our clubhouse. It holds two pools (indoor and outdoor), a full gymnasium, a workout gym, several BBQ pits for rent, tennis courts, a study room, many game rooms (pool, raquetball, etc), a dance room, and a bunch of other stuff. There are a lot of classes for kids and activities happening...I guess when there's a few thousand people living in this complex alone, it's treated almost as a small town within itself.

This is just one picture of a typical Hong Kong street....always highrise buildings all around and masses of people. You can't see the noodle shops, mobile phone stores, street vendors, and all of the other small business that line the streets.

Another picture from outside of my apartment complex.

I go up and down escalators like these everyday, all the time. I have never seen any other city with so many escalators. To the left of this particular one is a Haagen-Daaz, which was buzzing with people. To the right is a Godiva Chocolate store, and right on the bottom is a Starbucks. I'm not exactly suffering over here.