Hong Kong New Year

I know, I know, it's been a while again.  But I hate to break it to you, it will be a while between posts until I'm off holiday in mid-February.  There is just too much going on!
Since Christmas I've been in Hong Kong, all around the city, getting things tailored, practicing for a play we're preforming, hiking mountains, getting massages (more on this later!), and soon I'm going to Guangzhou for a few days, Hong Kong again, and then off to Vietnam for three weeks!  Sounds terrible, doesn't it?

For New Year's, I thought I would have to work but at the last minute the teacher's decided they wanted to take their own classes and review with them, so I was off the hook and free to play.  I went to HK with some friends and it was madness, as predicted.  Luckily the border crossing was really fast -- they have prediced over half a million people trying to cross but we went during nap time so no one was there -- but come sun down the crowds came out.  We got some delicious pizza and then went to Kowloon.  Our game plan was to watch the fireworks from across the water.  However, we were three hours early, the police were closing down the roads and paths for crowd control, and crowds there were.  After about an hour we decided we had had enough of all the people and lack of space, so we went back to Marie's (our friend who lives in HK and is wonderful) apartment and popped the second bottle of champagne.
Through some miscommunications, we thought we'd be able to see the fireworks from her window on the 26th floor but at the last minute, literally, realized we couldn't.  A brilliant idea crossed our minds -- the roof!  So at two minutes til midnight we raced out the door in our socks and without cameras or jackets (but with champagne!) and to the elevator, only to find out the elevator doesn't go up except from the ground floor.  And thus in an heroic feat we found ourselves racing up 8 stories of stairs to burst onto the balcony as the clock struck 12.
Unfortunately the fireworks were not very exciting.
But it was a great time, lots of bubbles, met some new people on the roof, and had a nice view of the city.  One of the better New Years I've had in the last few years, quite enjoyed it.

This doesn't bode well...

Carrie, Marie, Cliff, Rachel, me and Thomas

And this is two hours to midnight...

As a credit to all of us responsible adults, there was even some alcohol left the next day!  Poor Thomas was a little hung over and sleepy, but the rest of us were ok.  We got our usual and amazing breakfast at the Flying Pan and then wandered around the city and smack into a dragon parade.  That was entertaining and apparently made a world record with 2012 dragons.  We got through about 30 and then called it good :P
More wandering around and then grabbed a bus home to crash and sleep very well.

Happy 2012 everyone!  Hope you were able to spend good times with good friends too.