from the land of badminton and confusing bus systems

something new!:

our apartment received a new washing machine this week. this sounds not that exciting, but let me tell you, it's great to have clothes come out of the wash the same color that you put them in as, and to not think your machine is going to explode when it's on the spin cycle. (that's a terrible sentence..sorry natalie!!!) it was quite an ordeal getting it to our apartment and getting the old one out as well. thanks to our dedicated office elders, they did it all by themselves and hauled the machines up and down stairs and took off our kitchen door!

something funny:

ok, so the buses here can sometimes be confusing here in Hong Kong. at leat, that is my excuse for what happened yesterday. we got on bus #80 expecting to head to mei tin chyun. no problem. it was the right bus number. well, what i forgot is that sometimes you have the same bus number that goes in 2 different directions, on different sides of the street. so you have to check the route to make sure you have the right one, which i thought i did, but apparently i read it incorrectly. this normally isn't a problem, as you can get off at the next stop and switch to the other side of the street and catch the bus going the other direction...except this time. unfornately, the next stop was about 10 minutes away and in a place completely out of my area! yes, my companion and i left our area accidently and went all the way to Kowloon. oops. no wonder it charged my card so much when i first got on the bus!...:) hee hee

something sports...like:

everyone who is chinese knows how to play badminton. well, that is at least my generalization. that and ping pong. every tuesday night we meet at this chinese temple place where there is a soccor court and a large open space where the elders play soccor with members of our church and friends learning about the church and the sisters play badminton and volleyball. we invite anyone and everyone to come play with us, including the 88 year old woman (popo) who comes to just sit and watch us. this week we had several miracles at sports night. 3 families came and played with, talked to us and said they would come again next week. all of them loved to play badminton and exercise, so hopefully we will see them again. some of them are going to come to our english class as well. so exciting! there is also this cute old man who packs a load of cold drinks on his little rickety bike and brings them to sell to us at exactly 8:55pm when we are wrapping up the night, which is always a life saver as we are by that time drenched in sweat and very thirsty. he knows we are LDS missionaries too, so he doesn't bring us tea or anything with coffee in it....:) so cute! i love this routine and now practically a tradition every tuesday night.

something food:

this last monday night we had FHE (family home evening) at our ward bishop's house. his wife is amazing and made the most amazing homemade bread i have had in...forever it feels like. the bread here in china is pretty good and you love it at first, but it is very sponge like and not like american bread at all. this bread reminded me of home and all the goodness of american food that i miss. we also attempted to make pancakes this week with one of our new members. it was disastrous as there were no proper pans to be found to make them. they all ended up scrambled and terrible looking. so mandy, our new member, said that she would try it the chinese way....which included a lot of oil of course. no good. so then sister mander said she would do it the australian way and just poured the whole rest of the bowl of batter into the pan and scrambled it all up that way. it was pretty depressing as far as pancakes go, but it tasted the same and we enjoyed out attempt at trying to eat something america....:)