BBQ - beeebeeeque Hong Kong Style

Dear Family,

Tuesday, I went to my first "bbq" ever in HK (you have to say it in a high voice, beebeequeue), where the entire ward takes a chartered BUS to the BEACH in 30 C (what is that 86 in Fahrenheit??) weather to sit next to FIRE PITS and cook QUESTIONABLE MEAT for EIGHT HOURS and the main topic of conversation is HOW HOT IT IS.

Like the last ward food fest, I do not understand it, but I love it.

(internet picture - until the real ones come.)

I slathered and slathered borrowed sunscreen (why didn't I wear a HAT?!) that I had wheedled from members. Every hour or so, I went begging from one group to the next, asking if they had any sunscreen and slathering it on top of the LAST layer).

I'm guessing these people don't burn easily. I escaped with only a super red circle on my wrist around my watch, a burn where the hair is parted on my head and one side of my neck burned. PHEW!

Speaking of PHEW, as in PEW, today we (our entire zone of about 14 missionaries including two native Mandarins) went to the border between mainland and HK and hiked a mountain!

It took a LONG time to get there, mainly because we took the wrong bus. Oops. Oh yeah, and we couldn't find a trail so we started gallavanting around in the bushes, breaking every rule known to Girls Campers about how to avoid ticks and snake bites. ie.,

• Don't walk through grass. Oops.
• Wear long pants. Great.
• Wear a hat. Ha.
• Wear socks, deet, sunscreen, etc etc etc. Oopsie daisy.

Brian would've loved it. Once we got back on a trail though, it was so fabulous. The top was amazing--mainland on one side and HK on the other!

And the breeze, waaah (means so good. People say that all the time here because there's really no way to say, "cool!" or "amazing!" or "that's so neat!". You just say, "Gam hou" = so good.

So we say it in English, too, and all the missionaries sound like 4-year olds):
Breezes are the miracle of evaporation!

Dad, I wanted to ask if you'd look in the HK tour book I sent home and put in your care (not thinking I would still need it) and find something neat for us to go see or do--we can get permission to leave our area, but cannot pass onto the mainland. (sad day). :)

Something cheap would be best. We're already planning on the 10,000 Buddhas.

Thank you, foo chan (dad), leng jai (handsome).

Picture me in a half-dead stupor, half-lying on my top bunk in the halfway-to-heck heat at half-past ten two nights ago:

Sister Baahk dai Yat is going through her ipod and smacks my arm, which is hanging off the bed:

"Sister Darcey, close your eyes."

(*SO already closed, haaa*).

"Listen to the samba music. Where are you right now?"

Sister Baahk dai Yih (me):

"I'm in Spain... at an airport... TRYING TO GET BACK TO HONG KONG!"