Oh what a day!

Well today was a day that tested my patience, and many other virtues amongst that. We ended up relaxing in the room in the morning, and then in the early afternoon, Michael and I went to use the amazing fitness center at the hotel. It reminded me of being back at Mount Holyoke's fitness center, except better because we had it all to ourselves. Valerie later brought the girls up and we went to the pool while she went to get her well deserved massage. Well, I made the mistake thinking that we would wait until she got back to have lunch, and that as a result turned into many meltdowns because the kids were all over hungry. We finally got some food in them and got headed out of the city at about 4 p.m. We went to the big buddha statue which took about 40 minutes to get to. In order to get up to the big buddha we took a gondola, which was amazing! The views were absolutely incredible. We finally ended up reaching the big buddha at about 5:20, which gave us about 35 minutes to explore the area. Michael, Elizabeth, and I ended up climbing all of the flights of steps to get up close to the big buddha. Again that was well worth it; the statue was absolutely spectacular.

It was kind of a quick trip up and then we had to turn right back around, but I was really glad to just see this amazing site.

After we got back down, it was already 6:30 and the kids were all pretty hungry. We ended up finding a place to eat that was like a food court. Well, that was the part where we could say a tornado happened, and everything started to fall apart. Anyways, I will not go into detail, because it is not worth explaining or repeating. All I can say is that it was certainly not the easiest day, and was pretty exhausting. I thought that we were going to return to the hotel much sooner, but we didn't end up getting back until about 8:40... and of course I got a phone call from my dear friend Cindy saying that she had arrived at the hotel at about 8:10. I was so upset because I had absolutely no way of reaching her, and I was so looking forward to seeing her. I couldn't stand to stay in the hotel room, so I went up and down the entire floors of the hotel lobby, walked around the food court, and still no sight of her. I was at this point crying, because I was so upset about the prospect of not getting to see her.

Well a miracles happened, I was walking through the food court once more and I spotted Cindy and ran to her. I was so happy, sad, excited, and overall emotional to see her. I again started crying out of relief of finding her. I have learned my lesson that next time, I need to set an exact time and place. I kind of had a bad feeling that she might arrive before we did, because it takes us much longer to get anywhere around here. I was so happy to see Cindy in Hong Kong nonetheless. It made my day 100 times better. Not only did I get to see Cindy, but I got to meet her mother. Both of them are the kindest people in the world. It truly made me so happy that they were about to travel all the way from Shenzhen to Hong Kong. I really wish that I could spend more time here in Hong Kong and go visit Cindy and her family in Shenzhen, but hopefully when my family comes and visits in October we can make a trip to Shenzhen. It's only too bad that Cindy will be in the US at school at that time. We ended up going to this great mango dessert place together, and after having all of the special desserts made out of mango, Cindy and her mom had to leave due to the fact that they had to catch the train back home. I was sad that the time flew by so quickly, but it also meant the world to me that I even got to see them!

Well I'm pretty exhausted after a long day, so I think I'm going to call it a night!