• The students at Bishop Ford School (where I live) had their Christmas party for their last day of school before the holidays began the next day. The temperature was in the mid-40°s but all the kids stood in lines outside on the playground and sang songs and laughed and seemed to enjoy themselves for several hours. I can't imagine US kids celebrating that way! It may seem strange to have the children come back to school on a Monday and then make Tuesday the first day of the Christmas vacation, but that allows the teachers to get credit for an extra day or two of work. I'm not sure how it works but since they have school here on Saturdays, the teachers don't have so many free days charged against them if they come back on Monday.

• When I passed by the high-rise housing unit at the bottom of our hill this evening, several mothers and about ten or twelve young children were having a barbecue out in back. Again the temperature was in the 40°s, but since the temperature is the same inside the houses as outside (none of the buildings have heat in them), it was a perfectly good day for a cookout! School's out, the sun was bright and shiny! What more could you want?!
• Tonight seven members of the Catholic deaf group joined some St. Ignatius parishioners at Kwong Wah Hospital where we sang Christmas carols and gave out small gift packets from the Catholic Hospital Pastoral Services group. We divided up into groups of about ten and each group covered six or seven wards. (There are almost no private rooms in HK hospitals, and those few are only for those who can afford them.) In each ward we would sing a couple carols and then go into each eight-bed room to hand out the packets which contained soap, a hairbrush, a washcloth, and similar items. Most people probably had no idea what the occasion was since they are not Christian and maybe don't even know what Christmas is all about, but we lit up a few faces and the others were probably appreciative of the break in hospital routine and monotony. And fortuitously we ran into the deaf wife of a hospitalized deaf husband and were able to visit specially with him and pray with him a bit. Afterwards all the visitors gathered downstairs for a bottles of drinking water and various crackers before heading out into the night.
• While we were at the hospital, other members of our group joined with a Christmas choir from the Catholic disabled commission and sang and signed carols at Ocean Terminal, in the heart of the Kowloon tourist district.

• Probably the best example this year of how Hong Kong looks at Christmas occurred this morning when ten primary school children came back to school during their Christmas break to practice--not for a Christmas skit but rather for a lunar new year dance in February! Now THAT is important in the local mind.
• I had a meeting this evening for a family problem, and then walked over to our centre for our 8:00 PM mass. We had a practice with our ministers and some children who were going to process, and then we started off on time with a full house. We finished up our theme that we have been working on the past year, that we and Jesus walk together toward the holy year. We had all the congregation hold candles during the gospel, and after the gospel, trying not to be kitschy, we had five of our pre-and primary-school children process in with candles and the last girl carrying the statue of the infant Jesus which she put in the manger. After communion we turned to our large poster which had shown our progress walking with Jesus during the last year and reached our destination, the holy doors at the end of our road. We opened them and said a final prayer, and then went on to our Christmas party.
• Our Christmas party went quite well, prepared by two new members of our committee with a lot of creativity and energy. Each person had brought a $4 gift to exchange and Santa Claus (or Father Christmas, as he is known here) handed them out according to numbers that each person had drawn. I got to dress up as Santa Claus again, probably because I'm the only one with a beard and any experiential knowledge of how a real Santa Claus is supposed to act. We finally left at 11:30 PM.
• When I was walking home in the dark after our Christmas Eve mass and party at our deaf centre, I looked around at the windows of the high-rise apartment blocks all around me in Lok Fu. Out of the hundreds of apartment windows I could see only ONE that had a Christmas decoration, some blinking lights.
• When I got home, the Filipinas at Martha's House, a temporary shelter for domestic workers on our property, were having a midnight mass with Fr. McKeirnan in our small chapel. I couldn't believe the amount of incense in the air there! I'm sure there were new respiratory problems the next morning. After mass all the Filipinas came up to our living room and sang Christmas songs and had tea and cookies. I finally got to bed at 2:00 AM after finishing up e-mail. The Filipinas were back at their place and still singing away.

• Our deaf community is small so we only have one liturgy per weekend or special occasion. Last night's "midnight" mass was that for us so today we had no liturgical celebration. We have a deaf visitor from Chicago with us now, and he was interested in hiking out on the outlying islands so I announced last night that anyone could join us at 10:00 AM at the ferry pier this morning. One of our interpreters and one HK deaf man showed up today, and the deaf man decided not to tackle the rough trail we were anticipating so just three of us went out to Lantau Island. The interpreter was a bit leery of taking the most difficult trail along the mountain ridges so we took a lower trail nearer the sea, and it turned out to be a really nice four-hour hike with really beautiful weather. Lots of people were hiking on the islands because this is a three-day weekend for them. We got back to Kowloon about 5:30 PM and ate a pizza and then headed home.
• After the pizza, heading toward the subway, the streets were really jammed with people out celebrating. They really enjoy the Christian holidays because it is pure free time for them with none of the social responsibilities and obligations that the Chinese new year imposes. About 7:00 PM, the police blocked off the streets to vehicular traffic and turned the whole tip of the Kowloon peninsula into a pedestrian area so people could get to the waterfront to see the 30-storey colored light displays adorning the high-rise office buildings on both sides of the harbor.

• Last night at 10:15 PM I went out to our dining room to get a cookie and heard some singing--not surprising since the Filipinas always sing, especially on holidays. But this sounded close so I looked out the window and saw twenty of them out on the playground in front of our house. The priest I live with was already in bed so I went outside (in my socks and without a jacket) and they sang Christmas carols for about fifteen minutes. They are a lovely group!
• This morning we had mass at our center for the Feast of the Holy Family as we continued our Christmas season liturgies. It was another festive occasion. Afterwards a group of us went out to lunch together and then several deaf people took Steve Turcsany, our deaf visitor from Chicago, to do some Christmas sight-seeing in Hong Kong.

• Today was also an official holiday because the normal official holiday--26 December--fell on a Sunday. Under British rule, 26 December was observed as Boxing Day, but now this holiday is just designated as "the day after Christmas."
• The temperature and the humidity have both risen this week so that it was about 60°F when I woke up this morning, and the humidity climbed to 74%. Conditions are still extremely dry, however, and the fire risk is very high. On Christmas Eve I could see a mountain side burning on the ridge behind me. Helicopters were still water bombing it when I woke up in the morning.
• This afternoon we had a meeting of all the hearing volunteers who assist our Catholic deaf group. The volunteers, six young women and one young man, are an exceptional group, so generous with their time and talents. We had a sharing session for three hours in which they talked about their joys and frustrations in working with the deaf people, and then we went out to eat together. It was a wonderful gathering of super people. I am really fortunate to have them working with me.

• Last night coming back into the harbor from Lantau Island and tonight going toward the harbor tunnel I got a chance to see the full displays of holiday lights now adorning Hong Kong buildings on both sides of the harbor. Every year companies try to outdo each other with colorful displays, but this year, because of the millennium, they have really gone all out. There are displays on many more buildings this year, and they are generally bigger and more colorful. Dragons seem to be especially popular, some of them snaking 30 storeys up the sides of the skyscrapers. Religious themes usually take back seat to Disney characters and Snoopy, and this year the angels are almost invisible. So much for the birth of Christ and two thousand years of Christianity! There's not much money in that!

Yesterday evening was the annual Maryknoll Christmas dinner for the priests at their center house in Stanley. Almost everyone made it there, even a few of the men teaching in China. Sean Burke outdid himself this year in decorating the house, even adding a fireplace to the rec room! He also played Santa, arranging for each of us to receive a Christmas stocking with gifts plus a baseball cap emblazoned with "Hong Kong 2000." Another delightful occasion!

Today the Caritas Magdalene School for the deaf had its annual Christmas pilgrimage, a tour of several churches to view their nativity scenes. We went first to St. Thomas the Apostle parish in Tsing Yi. It is the diocese's newest church, a very modern, non-traditional church. Our second stop was Annunciation parish in Tsuen Wan, another new and modern church that is often chosen for weddings because of its beauty.

Then the 27 students and teachers went back to CMS for lunch (the other students were off today for the Christmas break) and special program. Arranged by a school social worker, the skits, activities, and mini-talks focused on the values of trust, concern, support, love, and forgiveness. It was good but the students were ready at 4:00 PM to head out and continue their Christmas vacation.

• Today was a legal and labor holiday in Hong Kong, a bit out of the ordinary. Normally the first business day after 1 January is the holiday, but because of Y2K fears, the HK government moved the holiday from 3 January to today. The holiday designation for today didn't change much because everyone was still working as usual and all the shops were open, etc., because New Year's Eve is not a big deal for Chinese people who are waiting for the REAL new year to begin on 5 February.
• This evening the Catholic deaf group had a liturgy beginning at 10:00 PM which focused on the need for reconciliation for the sins of the world, the church, and us as individuals during the past two thousand years. I was surprised we got so many people. We were expecting about 25 and about 45 showed up. After mass there was a small party with pizza and champagne at midnight. Everyone stayed around and talked till about 1:00 AM.
• Very few buses were still on the streets after 1:00 AM. The MTR (our subway) continued to run all night but I would have to walk about fifteen minutes from the deaf centre to the Yaumati station and then another ten minutes from the Lok Fu station to my home, so I just walked all the way home from the centre in what has become an annual ritual. It took about 35 minutes and I got home about 1:40 AM. It's perfectly safe to be out on the streets in Hong Kong at that time of night, especially on a big holiday night. And last night because of the millennium celebrations added to normal New Year's celebrations, 95% of HK's 14,000 police were on active duty.
• A lot of young people crowded into the waterfront area on both sides of the harbor to see the fireworks and other goings-on, but for the majority of HK residents, it was just another night, and they didn't celebrate the western New Year just like they didn't celebrate Christmas.
• I stayed up till 3:00 AM updating the website and answering today's e-mail. I sent probably the first Happy New Year e-mail greeting from the Maryknoll world, adding a P.S. I picked up from another e-mail I received: "If this is the end of the world as has been predicted, it's been nice knowing you!" The Filipinas next door were still singing away when I finally got into bed.

• It's strange to be sitting here in HK on Saturday morning, the first day of the new year, after having celebrated last night and then gone to bed and got up the next morning, and back in New York and the Eastern Time Zone, there's still two hours to go before they even start celebrating the new year.
• This morning I can hear hammering and heavy machinery from the construction site at the bottom of the hill where I live. Business as usual in HK.
• HK has much of the normal celebrations that are common around the world: music, fireworks, concerts, big crowds, etc. A specialty here, though, in keeping with HK culture, was the Millennium Cup horse race held a few minutes after midnight. They didn't run it just at midnight because they were afraid the fireworks light and noise would scare the horses who had also been provided with ear plugs--just in case they got nervous.
• Beijing has a hard time accepting anything from the West, and especially if it has strong religious and Christian overtones, so the mainland government has banned the use of the term "millennium" in official publications because it is "too Christian." Instead Chinese newspapers are to speak of "the new one thousand years." So there! Take THAT, Jesus!!
• This afternoon the diocese had a January 1st Jubilee celebration at a government stadium on Hong Kong Island. It lasted a little more than two hours and was quite well planned. Various ethnic groups resident in Hong Kong participated, and overall it was quite extravagant. The turnout was good, too, with about 80% of the stadium full, probably about 30,000 people. A good number of our Catholic deaf group were there.

• Today was the end of another "weekend from hell", as a local priest described this weekend and last weekend when we had a major liturgy each day for three days in a row. The church celebrated the feast of Epiphany here in Hong Kong and we had a good crowd in the chapel at Bishop Ford School where I live. We didn't use our center this morning because the other disability groups use it on the first Sunday of the month.
• After mass we had a meeting to give information about all the upcoming events (there are a lot of them!) for the next two months. I tried to give away a bunch of calendars from Via Vai Travel, my travel agent, and some other knicknacks and got rid of most of them. Then the committee of our Catholic deaf group had a 2 1/2-hour (ugh) meeting.
• Then I took my black shoes to the shoe repair place over at Lok Fu. I had taken them there on Friday night but the man said he was closing then and to bring them back today. I had to wear a pair of brown hiking shoes with my black priest clothes today. Everyone was too polite to comment until I brought it up and then they noted that it looked rather strange.
• There shouldn't be any more exciting Christmas or New Year events so this is THE END!