Dragon Boat Festival (6-16-10)

So i guess the last incident I wrote about was Macau... i have had some feedback from smothers that she is afraid about all the partying that is happening on the trip! Just imagine what I am not telling you... haha just kidding but I just wanna say for the record that Macau was crazy and a once in a lifetime experience, therefore no need to fret.

Moving on... after the crazy weekend we came back for class on Monday and Tuesday. There was really nothing too exciting that happened those days except for catching up on hw and rest. There may have been a trip or two to the Sha Tin mall in there somewhere BUT Wednesday is where all the excitingness begins! It was a public holiday so we were off from school and very excited about the Dragon Boat Festival. It is a festival that takes place every year all over China. Basically I think it is a celebration of the Chinese culture and people are off of school and work and families and friends get together and eat dumplings, drink some sort of wine and race dragon boats. We headed out in the morning and despite having a test the next day (Thursday) a group of us decided that we will only be in China once for the Dragon Boat Festival and we decided to go to Stanley (an area of HK on the water that is about an hour and a half away) and experience the festival bc it is supposed to be one of the most traditional ones in HK. We rode the MTR to Central and then caught the 6x bust to Stanley. We had a beautiful and also freighting ride there. The drivers here are absolutely crazy and our bus driver was going about 60 mph around the side of these cliffs looking over the water... IN A BUS PEOPLE! Finally, we arrived in Stanley and were immediately sucked into the markets and all the shopping there. It was great. It was our fist real market experience and it was so much fun. I bought a few small gifts and practiced my haggling ( which has greatly improved since). We then headed to the waterfront and looked for boats, but all we saw were teams of people that had participated in the boat races. So we walked around and saw two people with Texas gear on. We then shared a few pitchers of beer while we walked and explored the area near the water. I bought a great dress from Korea and then we settled down for lunch at a funny little place on the water. We had a great lunch and ate, drank, and were very merry. We then decided it was time to find the boats. We headed to the other side of Stanley and were pleasantly surprised to hear chanting and drumming... that was when we knew we were in the right place. Some of us bought cool T-shirts (including me... mine is def the best!) and then we headed down to the water where we were immersed in a sea of people on the beach. There were boats lined all over the water and a man speaking over a loud speaker. We quickly made our way as close to the water/boats as possible and took a million pictures of the people dressed up in costumes (Fred and Wilma Flinstones all over one boat... etc). There were also people from all over the world. It was so cool and needless to say, the race really was not that big of deal BUT it is the celebration that counts. There were dragon heads on the ends of each boat that were blessed before the races and then the drummers on the end of each boats drummed in order to set the pace. One of my crazy friends, Eva, got on the front of one of the boats and they let her bang the drums. It was incredible. We had a great fun filled adventure. I have millions of pictures to prove it too! We then made the long journey back to the I-House where we studied and slept. I got a 100 on my test the next day so I decided that I had def made the right decision in taking the extra time, energy, and money to go to Stanley!