Here are some more pictures of our little excursion down to Hong Kong.

Smoke Scene.

Now before I go any further, I want to say that the smoke in the above picture is not my smoke. The picture is not even mine. It all belongs to Tim, our fellow American friend, who taught with us in Fuyang and is now teaching in Jinhua. He didn’t mean for this effect to happen. He just happened to puffing away when he snapped the picture. When the smoke got in the way of the flash it was illuminated. I think it gave the picture artistic flare. The buildings in the background are of course just a few of the many giants Hong Kong has hovering over the bustling population.

Remind you of game? Think of red and black checker board full of holes and sits up right.

Here is another picture belonging to Tim. He always takes the coolest pictures; makes me jealous. My camera is hit and miss. Sometimes is takes a good picture and some time it doesn’t. My camera has a hard time dealing with light. A lot of the time my pictures come out to dark or too bright. I can’t seem to win in anything it seems. Picture taking or children games. Does this particular building make you think of an old game that maybe you used to play? As soon as we came across it in Hong Kong, the first thing that came into my mind was that checker game that came out a long time ago called Connect Four. It would have been really awesome if I could have climbed on top of that building and played a game with someone. Those checkers would have been freaking HUGE! But regardless of how big they would have been, I would have still lost. I don’t think I have ever won a game of Connect Four. After playing and losing a dozen games against the computer in the past few minutes, I know that this is still the case. Heh.

It’s Connect Four. Like the lottery in South Carolina – I can’t seem to win.

I tried taking pictures of the lit up buildings as I walked past them because some of them were pretty amazing. If my camera liked taking night pictures better and could deal with all of the flickering “Vegas” lights, more than this one would have come out. Like most of my China pictures, my little Kodak camera just doesn’t do the lights justice. I don’t think any camera or picture could. There is always so much more to the picture than it shows you. I just wish my memory could always stay as fresh as the day I experience something. I hate how memories fade.

Everyone needs a pet dragon. Wouldn’t you agree?

Once again, this is not my picture. It belongs to Tim. This has been one of the few dragon heads that I have seen since coming to China. I haven’t seen any of the dancing dragons that you see plastered all over the TV as a symbol of Asian culture. I wonder what part of China I have to go to see one? Maybe there is a festival where they have them. We found this dragon in the middle of Hong Kong Park. When we first came across it, there were a lot of people crowding around it and we couldn’t figure out why. Then we saw the drum sitting out beside the dragon. Everyone was waiting there turn in a unorganized line to beat on a few times. I waited my turn behind a little girl.

Random lit up street in Hong Kong.

I think the above picture is pretty much self-explanatory. It’s a street, it’s dark, and all of the lights are on. I took the picture because I liked all the neon and the Chinese characters. And I guess that’s that. We are still waiting to get Internet in our apartment. When we do, I’ll start posting about Shenyang. These just happened to be the only pictures I uploaded before we left Beijing – the city that would never let us go. I think I may rename the capital of China, Black Hole, for it sure as heck acted like one for several days. Sometimes I think I am still dreaming and that I will wake up to find myself still sleeping in my Er Wai(Beijing International Studies University) bed. Although, if this is a dream, this is one realistic dream.