Hong Kong!

So, I had the opportunity to go to Hong Kong in April with Noteworthy, the a cappella group I have been in for two years at BYU. This was my first time out of the country and it was such a cool experience! We spent the week there performing and experiencing the culture and shopping... boy did we shop!

We were invited by the Hong Kong Federation of Youth Groups to perform in a Festival there. We had to miss the last week of winter semester classes... again. We had to miss the last week of fall semester classes because of The Sing Off. That's another post for another day.

It's been a long time coming, but I wanted to post some pictures from our trip to Hong Kong! We left on a Tuesday morning and flew to San Fransisco. I was almost stuck in the airport because of some issues with my ticket. It was issued using my maiden name, but my passport had my married name on it. Luckily, we were able to get it fixed with a monstrous fee for the name change. We were able to make it to San Fran and then we left for our 14 hour flight to Hong Kong. We arrived on Tuesday morning. Weird, I know. The jet lag was aweful!

This was my way of communicating with Alec. I love Skype. :) It was a lot harder leaving him than I thought it would be!

This is the view from our hostel. We were on the 12th floor. Every building in Hong Kong is huge!! The area of the island isn't very big so they just build up.

These are some of the girls who hung out with us and showed us around during our free time. You can kind of see the lobby of the hostel in the background. The hostel was amazing!! We had a huge room with 6 beds (which were hard as a rock) and a wall that was just a huge window! There were 7 of us there so Amy and I ended up having to share a bed. We didn't mind because we were always so tired we just crashed as soon as we laid down.



Here's the group with Kenneth. He is awesome! He was the one who originally contacted us about coming to Hong Kong.


Notice my hair in this picture? This was my hairstyle the ENTIRE week. It is extremely humid in Hong Kong, so my hair did not survive when it was down. The last few mornings in Hong Kong, I went out in the lobby and the painted concrete floors were covered in a thick layer of dew. Our floor had an open deck so we could feel the humidity as soon as we left the room.



We went shopping in this outdoor market place and parts of it was a little bit creepy. This is an ally way outside one of the shops.



For some weird reason, a bunch of clothing makers in China felt that cats and music go together. I found so many shirts and purses and little toys that had cats and music notes on them!

You don't want to know what was in this store...

All of the scaffolding in Hong Kong is made out of bamboo. I think it's a lot prettier than the scaffolding they have in the states. Our tour guide said that it is extremely strong too.

We were walking down the street and we passed by this lady walking with her little son. He was so cute and the lady saw us looking at him. She was really nice and she spoke English. She stopped and talked to us for a while. She told us his name was Fong Fong. I know it must have seemed a little creepy but I HAD to take a picture!



On Sunday, we went to a church building to try to go to sacrament meeting, but we found out it was General Conference that day. Since Hong Kong is half a day ahead of the America, they show general conference in the church buildings the week after. We went to a session and then we went to the Hong Kong temple. It is such a cool temple! The property is not very big so they built the temple straight up. Our tour guide had to go across the street to get a picture of the whole temple.

This says The church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints Hong Kong Temple.

I have to say, I was pretty proud of these temple pictures. Alec usually makes fun of my pictures because they're either not centered or out of focus.

My guess is that this means Holiness to the Lord the House of the Lord...

This is one of our amazing tour guides. She is the one that took us around on Sunday. She was so sweet and we had so much fun with her!

We had such and amazing time and were able to perform for so many people. I was excited to get home to my hubby and get my sleeping schedule in check, but I definitely missed all of the great people!