Traveling to Staci/Martin's China Home - Sun - Dec 6

Another gorgeous day in Hong Kong -- but it was time to begin our trek to one of the "outer districts" of Shenzhen. The city of Shenzhen is directly north/northwest of the Special Administrative Region of Hong Kong (specifically the part known as the "New Territories") but, as Staci/Martin had advised, it is very different than Hong Kong. One of the first signs of the many differences was the formidable border crossing to get from the Hong Kong region into Shenzhen.

We were sure glad we had Staci and Martin to guide us to get to their school accommodations because it would have been a huge challenge to try it by ourselves. Getting to the border crossing would have been the easiest part because in the Hong Kong region, all signage is
duplicated in English -- and this involved only taking the subway to its termination and transferring to an above ground train to Shenzhen. Even the border crossing was pretty typical immigration/customs processes with an additional/preliminary stop and form processing with Chinese government health officials. After leaving the border station -- we proceeded onto the new and nice Shenzhen subway to its northern most termination/stop. Here is where the trip got complicated as we were in a very different environment where we were the only non-Chinese persons to be seen and signage was only written in Chinese. Getting to the school from here entailed finding a rather obscure bus stop for express transit to the Shenzhen airport (a very new, modern and busy airport complete with a Starbucks), then finding the right local bus to a non-descript stop along side of an expressway and walking about 1/2 mile to the school.

I was overwhelmed with happiness to be walking onto the beautiful campus which had been home to Staci/Martin for the past 4 months -- and which I had only seen from the satellite view of Google maps, a few photos and through the computer web cams with which we frequently video-chat. It was fun to get a first-hand view of our accommodations for the next couple weeks (the two dorm rooms the kids have on the 6th floor of one of the three large housing complexes), their private office (on the 4th floor of the main classroom/administrative office building), the cafeteria and the massive gym/sports court/field. The school is a highly regarded senior high school where the 4000 students reside on campus during the weekdays.

Staci/Martin gave us a "home-cooked" meal -- and we filled the evening with lots of conversation about their life and experiences here.