Olivia's China Blog:Hong Kong:Day 2:June 26, 2012


A pointy stick Zack found and was carrying in the Botanical	Gardens.

Hong Kong Houses

This is a video of the loud noises the Siamang gibbons at the Botanical and Zoological Gardens make.

    Today, after a fancy breakfast for "Golden Circle Members" at our hotel, we braved the stifling heat and went on a walk that took us around to the Western Market, which was unfortunately closed because it was on the early side of the morning. We passed Ginseng and Bird Nest Street. The street was lined with shops full of medicinal animal parts. Next stop, we walked along the Dried Sea Food Street, and you can only imaging how that smells! I was sad when I saw all the shark fins for sale. The smell, as you can imagine, was not a lovely one. The street was filled with nasty dried seafood smells. For sale in the shops were random dried seafood creatures that have a purpose most likely for cooking.
    Next we walked to Hollywood Road, a road also known as Antique Street. We also went to Upper Lascar Row. After that we meandered to the Man Mo Temple. The Man Mo Temple is a beautiful temple that Zack, Dad and I accidentally visited last year when we were looking for a tea shop. It is very pretty and smells heavily of the incense people light and the incense coils that hang from the ceiling.
    After visiting the exquisite temple, we went over to the amazing Central-Mid-Levels Escalator that happens to be the world's longest covered outdoor escalator at 800 meters or 2624..67 feet. When we got there, the escalator was going down, it went down until 10:00 am or so (an old man told us it could be 5 or 10 minutes until it goes up). Then my nose started bleeding so we went to get some tissues and wipes. We took a little walk and soon returned after walking down a small street and Dad bought some Calvin Klein underwear. We went back to the elevators and took them up a ways. We saw day spas, shops, restaurants, cafes apartment buildings and other buildings. We kept going up until we saw a cafe. We got off the elevators and tried to get to the cafe by crossing the street, but we accidentally went the long way.

Scarlet Ibises

The cafe we found was called Cafe O. We went in and ordered a Mango smoothie for Zack and me, and a coffee for Mom. We drank our drinks and chatted for a while. We decided to go to the Hong Kong Zoological and Botanical Gardens. There we saw small alligators, a raccoon, birds, and lots of whooping loud monkeys. They were mad at the people working on their enclosures. We also saw lots of cool and tropical plants, flowers, and trees. The scarlet ibises were very elegant and pretty. Somehow, the bugs found me and as you can imagine, I got munched upon. What is it with me and them rascally mosquitoes?
After the loud park, we went to the Wing On Department store where Dad had to buy some purple undies! He also bought a hat. While we were waiting for them to buy stuff, Zack and I were looking at sunglasses that were $347 (Hong Kong dollars!) in US dollars they would be $49. When my mom bought the stuff they needed they got some intricate deal for knives that involved collecting stickers.

Sober Reflections on the Current State of Russia

UPDATE: Evan Gershkovich, with other American and Russian political prisoners, was freed on August 1. As someone posted somewhere, we can rejoice that our people are out and the Russians have received murderers and spies in return. The optics of Evan's (and Alsu's) rushed trials to make sure to convict before the trade deal went through are bad... but then, what is good out of Russia these days? Trying not to despair. This good news is something anyway. Just over five years ago, I found myself with ten days on my hands in Europe. I had taken a group of 20+ students to Hungary and Poland, and I was due to participate in a conference in Croatia. There was a window. Any normal person would head straight to the beaches of the Dalmatian Coast. Instead, I went to Rome, to John Cabot's Guarini Institute , where we held a panel on the topic of 30 years after 1989 ... and then I went to Russia. Musing on the former Soviet Union and my time there as a student--especially after wat...

RIP Randy Nolde

In everyone's life there is a teacher who motivated her to try harder, strive for more, reach beyond. Or in my case, a teacher who teased, goaded, poked, pried, laughed, lampooned, and somehow created an atmosphere where I was ready to work my tail off to make him proud. Randy Nolde, we will miss you. Mr. Nolde was my Russian teacher in high school. I first got to know him as a younger person -- the Russian Club Banquet was quite the event in my home town, and my grandmother used to take us regularly even before my sister enrolled in Russian language class. Every year, the high school cafeteria underwent a magical metamorphosis. Huge murals of scenes from Russia -- fantastic, colorful onion-domed churches, and young peasants reaping wheat, and Armenian maidens with long braids and colorful costumes -- hung all around the edges of the room. On the menu: chicken Kiev made by the cafeteria ladies, supplemented with cafeteria salad, but also khachapuri and piroshki made b...

Cringeworthy? Really??

It's so sad. I've gotten my first reaction to my new book. Well, second reaction. My sweet husband was brought to tears reading the introduction (possibly because he remembered just how many drafts of each section of the book, and of all the sections left on the cutting room floor, that he had read, and read, and read before). But now I've heard from a potential reader that his Russian friend-in-exile (and more importantly that friend's teenage son) think the title is кринжовый. Ouch. That hurts. Why do we need Russian literature? Do we? My Polish friend wrote to encourage me when she saw my linked in post about the publication and assured me that SHE and all her friends still love Russian literature ... even and despite the fact that Russians sometimes misbehave. (Some Russians more than others, and sometimes not just misbehaving--the world's reaction to the murder of Alexey Navalny in prison is noteworthy and important. We need to hold those responsible in contem...

Manic Bookstore Cafe

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