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NEWS

Each month I will keep a running list of news items, including info on my schedule, etc. It's in order from LATEST entry at the top on down to the OLDEST entry at the bottom. I can't promise how often I'll add things, but I'll try as often as I can.

Here are the "News" archives, feel free to browse them for some interesting tidbits:

***This is the archive of the November 2002 news***

26 November 2002

Seems it's really turned cold (the HK version of "almost really cold") -- so I'm liking that BIG TIME. 

(My friend Rob Edwards and I used to really joke about using that phrase, "big time"... as in, "I'm gonna hook up with some of these pretty babies after work -- BIG TIME!")

Last night it was cool enough I almost broke out my heater -- but it didn't quite make it yet. You have probably heard me say how much I HATE the HK weather, and I really do. In summer it's hot and wet and crappy, and I am miserable. In winter, it's cold and wet and crappy, and I am miserable. And since they only have 2 seasons, that's all you get. Crappy hot or crappy cold. 

But of course I'm just joking (mostly). No, really -- if that's all I've got to complain about then I'm one of the most blessed 5% of people in the world, you know?!?

But it kills me how this is literally one of the most cosmopolitan places in the world -- the WORLD, you see?!? -- but they don't have any central air (heat or air-con). Try to picture 50 teachers in a school, all sitting in the staff room at their desks, wearing parkas and knit scarves, grading papers in their mittens and with ear-muffs on. Every time they talk steam comes out of their mouth. It's like something you'd expect in CHINA, not Hong Kong... Well, whatever. 

My internet connection has been off for a few days, so some of the stuff here on this page has been done in the meantime, that's why it might seem to have appeared "suddenly" -- I added it but wasn't able to upload it to my server. So read the news below about the picnic day, and also go check out the VIDEO PAGE for the school -- I've added several things there and if you have a fast connection I really wish you'd go watch some of them. 

24 November 2002

Last Thursday we had our school picnic. The school picnic is a HUGE tradition in HK, and every school goes on one in the fall, that's like 1,500 schools all going on school-wide picnics in October and November! This time of year it's very common to see the parks packed with school kids on weekdays.

Anyway, with 1,100 kids in our school alone, we can't send them all to the same place, no park is really big enough to handle all of our kids PLUS the kids from the other schools. So we split the school into the lower forms (P1-P3) and upper forms (P4-P6) -- this year I went with the lower forms to the big park in Tai Po, on Tolo Harbour. 

But no need to worry. We couldn't stay for the whole thing because we needed to make the big trip all the way from Tuen Mun to Tai Po, but we heard about 30 of the 35 kids -- AND HARRIS SMOKED THEM ALL!! Wow, I just couldn't believe how great he did, and the thing was, he was good PERIOD, not just "compared to the others" -- his voice was loud and clear, the actions he did (that went along with the poem) were natural and smooth, his pronunciation was VERY good. Basically, he was awesome. I was SO proud of him, and happy for him, too. Now, we won't actually get the results for another week, but I'm being very honest and objective when I say that if he doesn't get first-place it's a ridiculous shame. REALLY. He was THAT MUCH better than the others. 

To the picnic:
Okay, so we made our way all the way back to Tai Po and we made such good time that when we got there (about 11am) the busses were just arriving from the school with everyone else. In other words, we didn't miss a thing!

So the picnic was a big success, everyone felt great about it, and I'll just leave it at that and let you see some photos. Click on any of them to see LARGER versions.

The first thing everyone did was climb the big tower at the park for some "wild" photos... This is Class 3F, one of my favorites.	This is Class 3C with their teacher -- you can see they like her!	Here some of the crazy kids in Class 1E get in on the act -- if there was any way for you to know these kids, wow...
After climbing the tower it was time to get to work on LUNCH. Check the healthy meal these kids brought.	Our kids love having their photos taken, but this girl is too wild to be like everyone else.	Here are some total sweeties from P2, the one in the middle is really a cute kid, she LOVES our story time each week!
The little shop at the park sold kites, and this guy did a GREAT job of getting his up and flying!	The kids from Class 1D played a great relay game where they had to pass a rubber band on straws -- lots of fun.	After playing the rubber band game (left), the guys in 1D wanted a class photo. We took several of these photos, and the kid jumping in the middle was airborne in every single one.
This is just a snapshot of one of the girls from 1D posing for their "class photo" -- she sat like this for about 4 minutes while everyone got ready.	This is another one of my favorite girls from our P2 classes -- she is a doll, and this is how I want to remember her -- giving me the "V" sign...	This is a P2 girl, and she is one of the craziest kids we have. She has no idea what my name is, she just calls me, "Ah-sir!"
Do you think this sweaty guy is having fun at the picnic?!?	After a long day of running around screaming, what better than a relaxing break on the concrete?	We had fun, we really did -- but at some point you just want to go HOME...

There is also a short video I shot at the picnic, if you have a fast internet connection I especially encourage you to check it out. You can find the link to it on my pages for the school -- http://www.hongkongbrother.com/school/photos

So that was our 2002 picnic. I won't forget it soon -- hopefully our kids won't, either... 

23 November 2002

It's Saturday (for another 5 minutes, anyway), and I've been up since 5:30am this morning. So I'm REALLY tired.

But I just finished one of the Christmas songs for our kids who will be performing next month -- in English! You can download the .mp3 by simply clicking on the title below (or right-click on it and "Save As..." or "Save Target As...").

O Come O Come Emmanuel - approx. 1.3MB download

Give it a listen, and then check back in a few days to hear the other Christmas songs, which I'll hopefully be finishing this week.

Also check back to see some photos of our school picnic from last Thursday, there are some cool shots -- and I also have a VERY short video you will be able to watch...

...but right NOW I'm going to BED...

20 November 2002

Well, for some reason I had about one of the WORST teaching days of this year today. Geez. I mean, in my first class I had what I considered (and had proven to be so far) a "fool-proof" lesson for my first-graders -- but it flopped like a wet pancake. Then that disaster was followed by 3 classes of third graders -- and I swear not a single class went like it was supposed to go. 

So I just felt HORRIBLE. Until, that is, I remembered that now I have tomorrow and Friday off -- so who cares?!? (ha ha)

No, anyway.... 

I don't have much to say tonight. I've heard (via e-mail) from several "long-lost" friends and family members today, and that is really cool. I'll probably spend an hour or so trying to catch up and answer those messages tonight, and then follow it up with several hours of work on the Christmas music I'm trying to get together for our students.

Tomorrow is the school picnic, but FIRST I have to be at school at 7:30am to get ready to take Harris (one of our 3rd grade students) to his performance in the HK Speech Festival. He's the only unlucky dude in our entire school who ended up having to do his performance on our picnic day! So the poor fellow had no one to take him to the venue until they remembered that old Mr. Grenn is a prime candidate for such a job. Anyway, we'll go down to Tuen Mun for his 9:15 performance and then catch a ride all the way back to Tai Po park where the lower form classes (P1 - P3 grades) will be having the picnic. We should get there just in time for some crappy cup noodles...

Ben Hayes
My little buddy Ben has sent me an update today -- well, he had his mom type it out since he's just 11 months old. He is really growing gang-busters, he's over 15 pounds now! They say he grew so little for so long that maybe now he is just "catching up." Right now he has croup (the coughing thing that kids get) -- it's not that big of a deal, but with someone like Ben who has had so many OTHER problems, everything has the potential to be serious. He's taking steroids for the cough, so I told him to "go for it" and hit the gym -- maybe add a few kilos to his bench press -- but I think he's pretty busy the next few days, so he probably won't do it. He never does what his Ummo Glenn tells him (though I told him it would help him get the CHICKS like ole Ummo does!! Va-va-VOOM! ... Oh, wait, ... maybe that's why he never does what Ummo Glenn says)...

Alabama Says "NO" to Ten-Ton Ten
Now, I don't know if you've heard of the recent court case in Alabama about the judge who snuck a Ten Commandments monument into the courthouse. Do you know about this? 

Well, I'm not sure of all the details, but it seems like this judge is basically on a "pro-Ten Commandments" crusade and so one night in the summer of 2001 he had crews literally sneak into the courthouse, after hours, and place this huge monument in a prominent position in the foyer. 

Okay, so whatever, they've had all these court cases about it with the other judges and people really up in arms about it, they feel it was a violation of the separation of church and state, something which we hold "sacred" in the U.S., right?

But the thing that REALLY caught my eye in the news story was a quote from some "Rev." who was a leader in the fight against this monument, and trying to have it removed.

Hmmmm... It's VERY interesting, because Lynn's position (and life's work) centers around the argument that our separation of church and state has given us the greatest religious freedom that any society has ever known in the history of mankind. In other words, he PERSONALLY is all for the Ten Commandments (at least I think we can assume that) -- but he crusades against any possible blurring of the lines between church and state for fear that allowing such conflicts would ultimately compromise our religious freedom. He makes compelling arguments -- but I'll be danged if, somehow, it still don't make me feel a little funny...  

"M-J"... (No, the OTHER "M-J")...

19 November 2002

Another week has gone by without me really updating anything here, sorry. So here go some random items in no particular order.

The Little Rabbits
On Saturday the Little Rabbits group ("2002-2203 Version") took part in a huge English Folk Song Singing Competition down in Mongkok/Kowloon Tong, in the heart of HK. The teacher who is their sponsor, Yam Tan (Gill), had REALLY been practicing with these guys for WEEKS, and I mean they were meeting before school and during recess and after school, too, on some days, trying to learn this song called "Carry On Till Tomorrow" (click on the title to download the .mp3 of it, or if that doesn't work then right click and "Save As... " or "Save Target As..."). 

FORTUNATELY, these kids are all about FUN, and they also have (obviously) no short-term memory -- so they didn't actually notice that they were horrible. They thought it was really good! And as soon as the competition was over (we went first followed by the other 6 groups in our category), they went running out the door laughing and singing like they'd just WON the dumb thing. Gill said, "Oh, it's all about fun, right?" -- and she's right, of course! Somehow it's always us grown-ups who get all worked up over the "competition" part, isn't it?

A funny ending to the story... Before we got on the bus to leave I said, "Wait, let me get a photo" and they ran over to the steps of the big church next door. If you click on the photo above with ME and the kids (the one on the right), you will see the larger version which shows the wedding decorations on the front of the church. Now, Gill insisted that I get those flowers in the photo with them, and that was all it took for the girls to realize, "HEY! There's a wedding going on in there!" You can kind of see that the front door to the church was wide open, so of COURSE before Gill or I realized what was happening, they had all run into the church right in the middle of the ceremony!! I couldn't believe it. But remember these are kids who NEVER see anything like that, they were AMAZED, for them it was like something out of a movie, really -- please try to understand that. And just as they were poking their heads in, the big pipe organ cranked up with a blasting song, and wow, they just couldn't handle it! They were REALLY excited about that, "So beautiful!" they kept saying in Chinese and English. 

So it was funny the way they reacted... but LATER, the more I thought about it, I realized how these girls can really only DREAM about that kind of life, of having a big wedding with lots of flowers in a big church with a pipe organ, etc. Only God knows what's in store for these kids, and yeah, I know, there are more important things than "did you have a big beautiful wedding"... but I just left that moment thinking how much I hope some of these kids get to taste a little of that themselves someday...

The Big Box
My folks just sent me a HUGE box from home that arrived tonight -- cool. It had a bunch of stuff I had to leave behind when I was visiting home in August, but even MORE cool is it had some photos of my niece, Madelyne -- who I've never met, her having been born ONE DAY after I left (the little stinker). I wish I had a scanner or you'd be looking at photos of HER right now... Maybe someday I'll spring the dough for a good flatbed and get some of these shots online.

School Picnic
Our school picnic is coming up on Thursday, so the whole school is gearing up for that. The school picnic is a major HK tradition for primary schools, and maybe secondary schools, too -- I'll have to ask about that one. But anyway, the whole school goes off to wherever for a picnic that day, and then we get the next day off. So, considering that's two days where classes are cancelled, I'm all FOR the school picnic idea. 

My First Visitors!
It looks like my first visitors have finally confirmed. Rev. Bert Owen, the Moderator of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church this year, and his wife Pat, are scheduled to come to HK in February of 2003! I am really, REALLY excited because they are also bringing their grandkids, who happen to be some of my closest friends in the world. We are going to ROCK this town, (i.e.--rock it inside out).

They will also be going to Japan after leaving HK, and I'm gonna do whatever I can do to figure out a way to go with them, most likely as a stowaway in their hand luggage. 

I'll keep you posted on that one.

13 November 2002

Patricia Butler
I heard via e-mail that my friend Patricia Butler went home today, this is about 1 week after her open-heart surgery. They tell me she is as fine as someone can be after you've had a bunch of people cut open your chest, break your ribs, force those broken ribs apart with a big aluminum "jaws-of-life" thing, and then cut all your arteries around your heart and sew them back together with other pieces of arteries that they ripped out of your leg or wherever. When I just now think of it that way, it doesn't seem so bad, does it?

Anyway, I'm WAY thankful she's home and now the even HARDER part comes -- where she will be tempted to go back to being "mom" and everything else in her house, when she REALLY just needs to be RESTING and getting better.

Celeste Yuen
Okay, well, two of my absolute favorite people in HK are Dr. Celeste Yuen and her British husband David (and for the LIFE of me I suddenly can't remember David's last name -- this is WEIRD, it's like forgetting your own birthday or something, geez). Anyway, they have been really good friends, and of course David and I have a special connection since we are the only foreign devils who attend the Xi Lin CP Church in Shueng Shui. 

Anyway, David is working on his PhD in the U.K., he left a few weeks ago to do more research and writing, and meanwhile Celeste is pregnant with their first child. The plan all along was for David to go ahead of Celeste to the U.K. and then she was supposed to follow him just in time to give birth THERE in late December. She was scheduled to leave next Wednesday, but because she is feeling some real discomfort (and also because next Wednesday is technically two days PAST the time when pregnant women are allowed to fly by the airlines), she has changed her plans and is leaving tomorrow. The reason for her being able to suddenly change her schedule is that a co-worker at the HK Institute of Education has offered to cover her teaching schedule (she has been working a full schedule up until now). What a gift! She didn't want to ask someone to cover since EVERYONE is overloaded already, but this colleague offered to help and that suddenly allows her to leave immediately. 

Please pray for her in her travels, and also, of course, for their little girl, who should be with us shortly... They are all three scheduled to return to HK in late January, and I can't WAIT... 

Everywhere You Go
The band Crowded House has a great song about "Everywhere you go, you always take the weather with you..." -- I love that song, I think the album is called Woodface, I can't remember since I didn't bring it with me to HK, but you should check it out if you are so inclined. 

But anyway, I have said before and will say many, many times again that I really LOVE Hong Kong -- but I absolutely can not STAND the stupid weather. It is too hot for my stupid butt, I just hate it. 

Well, last week we got this strange respite, I got all excited, for 4 days it was so nice and mild and even COOL, wow... I even took a sweater to school like last year to store in my locker for when it gets cooler (there's no heat so in the winter months it can get quite cool and damp). But, true to form, the weather is back to gross. 

Whatever. 

I'm reminded of another song, I think it goes: "Take this weather and SHOVE it..." 

(I guess that's not "missionary talk" but whatever)...

Music
I posted some .mp3's of the songs I've been working on for the kids yesterday (see yesterday's post below), but now I can also include the track for "This Is The Day" -- our school uses this song every day at lunch. What happens is the bell rings for lunch time, and then they announce, "Okay, all you students, stand up" (except it's in Chinese, duh!), and then they play this song over the PA and the whole school sings it -- I mean, really, like 1100 kids and the teachers, all singing it at once. It's a pretty wild sound, to stand out on the playground and hear a whole building of kids singing that song. Anyway, they wanted me to do an arrangement of it, it's pretty short and totally straightforward, but I thought you might want to hear it, too:

This Is The Day -- about .5MB download

Maybe you'll want to stand at your desk in your office and sing out loud before lunch every day...

12 November 2002

Well, sorry I've been off so long, but a lot's been going on and I've just been REALLY busy this last week.

For one thing, I've been working on the music projects I've talked about here before (see earlier posts). I've pretty much finished the two biggest ones, so I've got the .mp3's to post here so you can listen. The first one is our official School Song -- they asked me to work up an arrangement and record it, so here it is. In the spirit of school songs everywhere, I made it a march... The second song is for the Little Rabbits group -- they will be singing in an "English Folk Song Competition" this coming Saturday afternoon, and they needed me to make up the background music. It's for a song called Carry On Till Tomorrow and if it's a famous folk song then sorry, I don't know anything about folk songs (I've never heard of it). Neither of these songs have vocals, just the melody played on the piano -- these are the exact songs they will use, except obviously the copies they use will sound better because they aren't smashed into .mp3's to be downloaded on the internet.

Yao Dao School Song -- about 1MB download

Carry On Till Tomorrow -- about 2.3MB download

And don't worry, I spent like a zillion hours on these things so if they sound not-so-great, well, then, here's my calling card (call someone who cares -- ha ha).

ANOTHER problem I've had is that the server for one of the mailing lists I'm on got a virus, and for the last 4 or 5 days I've gotten about 20 e-mails PER HOUR from this organization. It is a total mess, and other people on the list are thinking that some guy is sending them e-mails, so they reply to the e-mails that they get but they don't realize that THEY are then sending messages to the whole list, too, which just quadruples the number of e-mails. It's like, one guy gets "fed up" with all these dopey virus messages from the server, and so he sends an angry e-mail (which he doesn't realize goes to everyone on the list) saying, "You stop sending me these e-mails, you jerk! I'm gonna rip your head off!" and then some OTHER idiot (who is ALSO getting all these e-mails) sees the first guy's angry e-mail, and thinks it's to HIM, so now HE sends another message, "What?!? I'm not the one sending these messages! You'd better watch yourself!" -- except you've got to understand that like a thousand people are reading all these messages and about 5% think that it's someone talking to THEM. So imagine the THIRD guy seeing these messages from the first two and now HE's mad because he thinks someone is telling him to stop sending the messages!!! AAAAaaaaargh. Geez, it's driving me NUTS. 

So, bottom line, I finally got "mailblock" on my e-mail account, which will also block most of the advertisements I get in my e-mail. OH, well, I guess I won't be able to get any more Nigerian bank account money, or whatever the heck that old scam is (I still get that one from time to time).

I've heard NOTHING about Patricia Butler for a whole week, but I'm assuming no news is good news in this case...

Okay, got to run, I've been working all day, and need something to EAT.

6 November 2002

7:00am Hong Kong time:
Patricia's surgery went okay and as of about 2pm Louisville time she was in recovery with a "things went well" prognosis. Keep thinking of them...

5 November 2002

Patricia Butler
Okay, geez. They have had ANOTHER problem, the doctor overbooked his surgeries, so Patricia will have her surgery TODAY, which is actually "tonight" for me so that's kind of weird to think about all that -- it is supposed to be 7:30am Eastern time, which is 8:30pm for me, basically about one hour from when I'm typing this.

But I got an e-mail from my friend Evan, who is Patricia's son. He is in sixth grade, and he has NOT given me permission to share this with you, but I'm going to anyway because when I read this it just broke my heart:

Evan, there are people all over the PLANET praying for your mom, and now they'll be praying for you, too. Hang in there, buddy! 

Reinaldo
When I was studying in Florida back in March of 2001, I met a friend from Columbia (South America) named Reinaldo. He had JUST arrived in Miami the week before I got there (I was there for a month of study in English teaching methods), and since his English was not so great we spent HOURS sitting around, him asking me questions about English and me trying out my new teaching techniques that I learned that day. 

Well, we have kept in touch all this time, and he wrote me today telling me he is really in a fix. This ENTIRE TIME he has been here in the States without his family, who he could not afford to bring with him -- I'm talking about his wife and two daughters, who (if I understand this correctly), he has not even seen since March of 2001!

Now the end of his time in the States is coming up, the deadlines on his latest visas, I mean, and he may have some business opportunity which would allow him to go back to Columbia in a positive way. 

So here's his dilemma -- does he:
     a) stay in the U.S. and continue working like a dog for meager pay and hope that someday he saves enough to bring his family over
            OR,
     b) return to one of the most dangerous countries in the world and go back into business again?

I don't know if you realize how dangerous Columbia is, but I hear a lot about it because some friends of mine are there. It's very, very bad. Even Reinaldo has told me stories of being stopped on the highway by guerilla bands -- remember, these are guys who MAKE THEIR LIVING by killing and kidnapping and stealing. He always made it through somehow, but you know what? Being in a situation where you genuinely think you will be killed changes you, and Reinaldo always made me think of that when he would tell me those stories. They always ended with, "and then they let us go" -- but he didn't tell those stories like you'd tell a story about the cops pulling you over... he told them like, "and that was ANOTHER day that I thought someone was going to shoot and kill me"... (I hope I'm not being melodramatic, it's just that that's what I felt when he would tell me those stories).

Anyway, so the point is, this isn't an easy decision. I'm hoping he'll really trust God to guide him. He has said he wants prayers by the kajillion (I guess in Spanish the term is "kajilliones"?), so please PRAY for him, that he will not try to be clever or wise, just TRUSTING.

4 November 2002

URGENT: Patricia Butler
My friend Patricia has been told that she will now have open-heart surgery TODAY, that's Monday, 4 November, in Louisville. This will be, as I understand it, a QUADRUPLE BYPASS, so it's very severe. She will be the second case of the day, which means the surgery will be sometime after lunch, Eastern time. PLEASE PRAY for her, and doctors, and her family. They sure do mean an awful lot to me...

2 November 2002

Patricia Butler
Okay, the latest regarding my friend Patricia (wife of my pastor in the States), as I understand her situation, is that they have postponed her quadruple bypass surgery because she has a blocked carotid artery, and it is serious enough that they don't feel they can do the full bypass without FIRST taking care of this problem, and only THEN going on to the other blockages.

This has all come up suddenly, as far as I know no one even knew there was much of a problem until just a few weeks ago, and I think it's fair to say it's caught us all off-guard a bit. They tell me Patricia is really feeling stressed and concerned about her family (husband Jim and kids Evan and Rhonda). They do rely on her a lot! But I'm hoping and praying that she will be able to trust that THEY WILL BE FINE, and that SHE is the one we're all worried about right now!

Ben and Peter Hayes Some of you know about my godson Peter Hayes, he's the oldest son of my friends Chris and Michele Hayes who live in Athens, OH. Ben is his younger brother, who was born in December 2001 severely premature.  Well, they sent me some photos of Ben and Peter in their Halloween costumes, and you've GOT to love 'em. (Click on either photo to see a larger version)... You'll notice that Ben is wearing glasses, a result of operations on his eyes, and he also still must use an oxygen tank for breathing. That little guy has been through the ringer (as have Chris and Michele), but you wouldn't be able to tell looking at his smile, would you?!?

Click either photo to see a LARGER version!

Busy Times
I'm in the middle of a WAY busy weekend. Last night I went over to the Peak to meet up with Warren and Velma Hardig, some sweet friends of mine from Greenwood, IN. They work at a missions organization there (called OMS International), and in fact before I was going to come to HK I was pretty much decided that I was going to be moving to Greenwood to work at OMS -- if things had gone that way, Warren would be my boss right now... Whatever, so they hold a unique place in my heart, for that reason, I guess. 

Anyway, they have been on a whirlwind trip through China ending up in HK on Thursday (through tomorrow) with about 24 people in the OMS tour group (which they were leading, by the way). So I went over to the Peak with no more info than "we think we'll be at the Peak around 6pm" -- now, understand, the Peak is a pretty big place! But I found them, thank Heaven (since it took me 2 hours to get there I would have been MAJORLY bummed if I didn't even find them!), ... and we had dinner up at the Peak, then took the Peak Tram down to Central, took an open-top double-decker bus to the Star Ferry pier, then took the Star Ferry across to Tsim Sha Tsui. This was definitely the most "touristy" I've been in the entire 14 months I've been here! 

But it was REALLY fun and it was GREAT to see Warren and Velma, and I also got to meet Dave and Cindy Aufrance, the OMS Field Directors for HK. The Aufrances have lived here 27 years! They started out on just a short-term 3-year assignment, and here they are, still, almost 3 decades later -- Dave told me, "Watch out, this place gets under your skin."

(I know, I know)...

Then in a few minutes from now (it's 9:30am as I type), I'm off to school for 2.5 hours of trying to rehearse our choral speaking group -- it's 60 (!) first, second and third grade boys who will say an English poem together in a contest at the end of November. I am working with two other teachers who happen to be some of my favorite ones at the school to work with, so it's fun, even though the kids REALLY are struggling. 

After that I'm off to Kowloon Tong for lunch and to buy a house gift for my student tomorrow (more below), then at 4:45pm I'm at Shatin Church for my Chinese lesson (yes!) and then at 6pm we have the fellowship meeting there. At 8pm Nancy B., a former CPC missionary to HK who worked with the group from Shatin, will stop by -- she's in town for some meetings -- and we'll probably all go for something to eat.

Okay, then tomorrow morning it's off to Sheung Shui to church and Sunday School, then after that we'll have a meeting where they elect their church leaders for the coming year (the first time this new church has done that!), followed by a prayer meeting for my friend Morra (who is at high risk of cancer, we have just been told -- a tumor removed a few weeks ago has shown "abnormal" signs in testing). 

After that I will rush off to Tai Po Market to meet a new English student at 2:30pm, I've never met them so you can imagine that might be weird. We will talk over how I can help them study and improve their conversational English since they want to go to the States for study. I will also have dinner at their home with their family, which is why today I need to go to Kowloon Tong to buy a small house gift for them (probably some candy or something). That's Chinese custom, by the way, that when you visit someone's home (especially for the first time) you need to take a small token gift, usually fruit or cookies or chocolate or whatever.

THEN, after meeting with that student for a few hours, I will rush down to Jordan to the Prudential Hotel for a (hopefully) HUGE buffet dinner at 6:30pm with all the guys from Shatin Church and Nancy B. 

Whew.

So I'd better run, see you later...

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