Hibbets' Happenings

It's 9:30 at night for us, Thursday night. We have had a very long day, but a very good day. Joshua is the most well-adjusted of the 4 of us, sleep-wise. He's doing really well. David and Jayden were up around 3:00 this morning (I think primarily because of Jayden, not David); he brought her back to bed around 4:30 and neither she nor I ever went back to sleep after that. I managed to rest some, but not sleep. I laid there until daylight and decided to get up, but neither David nor I were feeling quite right. Not sick, but not good either. Mostly for me I just felt kind of in a fog. I managed to get some school work done but not grading -- I wasn't in a good mindset for grading. We worked until about 11:00 and then got ready to leave for a while. But first, around noon, David and his family were able to figure out how to talk on the "phone" through the computer, so we got to visit with them for a few minutes. That was pretty neat! Jayden wasn't sure what to think about it at first, evidently -- she just looked at the computer and looked at David -- but by the end she began to talk a little bit. She had been jabbering all morning (since 4:30, practically!) but then it's time to talk when it really counts -- and nothing. That's how it tends to go, I guess! When we got off the phone we were ready to head out. First we went for a walk; we decided to try to walk to the nearest MTR (subway) station, Fortress Hill. It is all downhill! We made it fine, but it took us about 45 minutes to get there. The other option is to take a taxi down to the MTR station; we wanted to see for ourselves how far it was. We discovered it's do-able, and it was a pleasant walk (we enjoy walking, we don't get to do that much in Monroe), but we definitely knew we couldn't do it uphill. Downhill is so much easier. It's hard enough as it is. There are mini-busses which go down the hill and the stop is right at the Park n Shop, so not far at all, but they're not equipped for wheelchairs. So that limits us to taxis, pretty much, at least at the beginning of our journey. Many things in town are wheelchair accessible (Hong Kong for the most part is very accessible), but we have that initial issue of getting into town from Shue Yan. (The college is further inland and uphill from the main tourist/shopping areas.) Once we made it to the Fortress Hill station, we had to wait outside for an MTR employee to come with a neat lift device (I wanted to take a picture but couldn't get to the camera after Joshua was loaded on the lift) to take him down the stairs. It took a while to wait, and then to actually get him to the train. But the man was SO helpful and nice. I have been very impressed with the courtesy of people here. The best part of the trip, or at least one of the most valuable things we got today, was here -- the man gave us a brochure that lists the accessbility of each MTR station. Great! We'll have to keep that one in a safe place. Apparently all of the stations are accessible, but some are like Fortress Hill in that you have to ask for (and wait for) assistance. That doesn't sit well with Mrs. Independent here, if I can avoid it. But the bigger stations all have "lifts" so they are accessible without assistance. We've decided we will go to the North Point station now from the apartment (we've been told the North Point and Fortress Hill stations are about equal distance from Shue Yan), since it has lifts. We haven't been to that station yet, but we will see it on Sunday when we go to church. Once we get to the station (and we'll take a taxi to the MTR station) the rest we can do by ourselves on the MTR. Using the stations with lifts also meant that we rode the MTR today an extra stop to get to our connecting train; two lines overlap at two stops, but the first of those that we came to didn't have elevators. So we rode the extra stop since the second one did have elevators. Then we changed lines, rode back to the station we had skipped, and then the next stop was ours to go the tailor's. Today we made our first trip to Winston's Tailors to get David a suit, a custom-tailored suit (his Christmas present). Dr. Hodge at ULM had told us about this. And from the looks of things here, it is a very common thing to get a suit in Hong Kong -- there are tailors everywhere! It is very cheap, for a well-made, well-fitting custom suit. What a neat experience. I don't mind telling you how much (it's really not much at all), but just in case you're uncomfortable knowing for some reason, I'll let you ask, I guess. And this is really cool -- now that he has David's measurements, David can email him and get another suit made and shipped to him in the States; he doesn't have to come back to Hong Kong to get it! I think that is incredible. It took us just over 2 hours to get from the apartment to the tailor's; part of that was getting turned around a few times, though, and having to wait at Fortress Hill -- which now we know how to avoid that (very nice!). We weren't actually at the tailor's very long. David will go back for his first fitting on Monday afternoon. So we'll be in Kowloon again on Sunday for church and then Monday for the tailor's. But there were several shops that caught our eye that we'd like to check out, so maybe we can do that while we're over there on Monday. We haven't bought any souvenirs yet (with the exception of the suit now, I guess); David bought the headphones for the computer and a pencil for his math homework, and other than that we've just bought food and groceries. After leaving the tailor's we were pretty hungry and needing a break, so we started walking around trying to find a place to eat. It was a little difficult to find a place that we could get into easily with the wheelchair. Ultimately we found The Spaghetti House which only had 4 steps and then an elevator. David's getting very good at manuevering Joshua's chair with escalators AND stairs! (After we ate at the Indonesian restaurant the other night, there were two escalators, one on either side -- but they both went UP! The only way down was stairs, yikes. But David did well. Oh, and to get to the tailor's today he had to take the wheelchair up a flight of stairs. Whew!) The Spaghetti House was very nice. I had seen another one of these in Causeway Bay and was curious about it, so I thought it was neat we got to eat there tonight. We were very hungry and had a hard time deciding, but ultimately got two bowls of minestrone soup and one plate of lasagna to share. The total was just under $20US, which seems a little pricey to me, but it was very good. Jayden thought so too! After leaving the restaurant we intended to circle around to some of those shops again, but we got turned around and ended up directly where we needed to be for the MTR. So rather than leave the MTR entrance and go shopping, especially since we'll be back on Monday, we just decided to get on the train. In the train terminal I stopped at a bakery and bought two things: a coconut bread/roll thing and an almond roll thing. They were both very good, but I liked the almond one the best. I want to try the breads while I'm here, they look very good and they are different from what we have in the States. We decided to get off the MTR at Causeway Bay, walk around for a bit, and then catch the taxi from there. Well, we got really turned around, which wasn't a problem except we were beginning to get pretty tired, but the good news is we saw more of Causeway Bay than we had the previous time. There are lots of restaurants and shopping -- and people! We went inside the 24-Hr Wellcome store (supermarket) but we didn't spend a lot of time looking around. For one thing it was very crowded, we were tired, and we didn't have much space for groceries (we had David's backpack and then some space in Joshua's backpack). By the time we bought 6 bottles of water, which is what we needed the most, there's not much room or back strength for much else. We did also get some bananas (Jayden loves bananas, and we do too) and a "local pumpkin" -- which is shaped more like a squash and not as stringy as our pumpkins. I have it on the stove cooking for Joshua right now. Finally we made it home. The kids played for a few minutes but went on to bed pretty quickly and easily (Jayden fought it the most, as usual). Now David's in bed, too. I was really in the mood for coffee tonight; I fought it for a while, but then gave in. Besides, I do have work to do. So I'll be up for a while, I guess. Have you seen the new pictures at shutterfly? (www.hibbets.shutterfly.com) I posted the pics I have from our two day trips out, including the pics from today -- they're already out there. Make sure you let me know that you can see them so I'll know I'm not doing something wrong. Also, don't forget about Christmas party suggestions, if you can think of anything. One thing I had thought about was Chex mix, but I didn't see any Chex cereal at the Wellcome store tonight. We weren't in there very long, though, and I could have overlooked it. Plus I could use Cheerios or some other kind of cereal -- but then it woudln't be authentic, would it? Also, I'm assuming I can get Worchestershire sauce -- but I bet I can. If I saw Tabasco, surely there's also Worchestershire, right? (But if I bought it for Chex Mix, what in the world would I do with the rest of a bottle of Worchestershire sauce??) Keep those emails coming. It is great to hear from all of you. Our time here is already flying by. My third class meeting is tomorrow night.... Aleecia