Thursday, January 16, 2014

Day 142 – Ahhhhh… Foot Massage…

 My eyes were a little better today, but they still hurt some.  I guess it is working.  I started working on some Power Points for my new Primary calling (that is how we teach music and songs in this virtual Branch), when Gilbert came over.  He wanted to show us some pictures he had of places we should go see when we are in Hong Kong.  I still had my PPT up that I was working on and he was interested in the pictures I was putting in.  He asked if I could send him the link.  David told him we can’t because of the restrictions we have places on us about religion, so Gilbert leaned over and said, “lds.org.”  He still doesn’t quite understand why the government puts up the restrictions, but he understands what we have to do to keep our position here, so he was okay after he said that.  We also had to discuss my eye problem, that I’m not getting the right vitamins: more carrots…

After lunch, we caught the bus and met Kathy Gao and her son, Hansen.  She took us to a place where we could get foot massages.  She had purchased a package to 48 massages and she is sharing them with the BYU teachers.  We first soaked our feet in some Chinese herbal medicine, I assume it was like a foot soak to draw out the poisons in the body.  While our feet were soaking, they gave us neck and upper back massages.  That felt so good, but he had to work hard to get some of the knots out of my neck and upper back. 

After soaking for about 15 minutes, they had us move to a couch that was opposite the stool we had been sitting on and the work on the feet began!  For the next 45 minutes, our feet and lower legs were rubbed and twisted and made to feel so good.  I almost could have fallen asleep except for the fact that some of the areas on my feet are so painful from the neuropathy in them that it was hard to take it.  My feet need this though!

We made a quick trip to the grocery store after that and then hurried home but we had to leave again in a half an hour.  Two of David’s students, Ashley and Adam, wanted to take us out to dinner at a more traditional “hot pot” restaurant.  I don’t think this type of restaurant would be allowed anywhere in the US, but they love them here.  The other hot pot restaurants we have been to have used a hotplate, either individual ones, or just one big community pot on the table, but this one has a cone shaped center with charcoal burning in the middle of it.  I kept thinking that in the US, the possibility of a lawsuit if you touched that thing were just too great to allow it, but maybe in my own small world, I have just never encountered it there. 
 
Our hosts for tonight; Ashley and Adam.  The big copper thing in the middle is the hot pot.  The cone if filled with charcoal and the water surrounds it.  When the waiters see that a certain amount of heat has been reached, they change one cone for a different one.  You can hardly take a picture of a Chinese without the "peace" sign popping up.


We had a nice meal.  Some of the foods that we placed in the hot water to cook were: tofu, mutton, beef, mushrooms, rice noodles, wheat noodles, cabbage, lettuce, parsley, kelp and tripe.  The tripe was chewy, of course.  Ashley didn’t want to tell me what it was thinking that I wouldn’t even want to try it, but I’ve had tripe when I was a child, thanks to my mother, so I didn’t have a problem with it.  We had a nice visit and then we had to get home by seven, so that David could tutor Alan.  

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