LearningToFly.me

As I approach the end of Holy Week and the celebration of Easter, I thought I would share my recent, shall we say, experience of going to church in Hong Kong.

You may or may not know that Dom has been traveling a bit as of late, which means I can usually be found walking around aimlessly exploring every inch of Hong Kong and loving it. Last week, I walked around our neighborhood and stumbled upon a lovely Catholic Church that not only offered a Mass in English, but it carried the same name as our Church in Boston – St. Anthony’s. Though you wouldn’t know that by the picture below.

Oh boy. English was a very generous description of the 11:30a.m. mass. I walked into the church to find it as packed as one might expect to see at Christmas or Easter, did a quick calendar check to make sure it in fact wasn’t Easter (winning), and sat in the back like a good, late parishioner. I looked around and counted roughly 150 people and a handful (like 4) westerners. You got this, Cam.

The beginning rituals were just that, rituals. Not hard to follow and the church even displayed the words of the hymns against the wall, which I figured was a good sign. Then came the sermon. At first, I thought, ‘oh this is just hard to hear because I am sitting in the back and I’m not fully concentrating’ so I began to focus as strong as my little brain could.

Nope. This is not English. I mean it was, but very poor English. I am not trying to sound like a snob because I actually think English is a very difficult language to learn if it’s not your native tongue, but man was I in the wrong place. Here is what I gathered from the parts of the sermon I could make out:

• Forrest Gump;
• Life is like a box of chocolates; and
• Sacrifice

That’s it – those three statements. The rest was just inaudible. So I have concluded that the message I was to take away that Sunday is as follows: Tom Hanks is a gift from God, you never know what you’re going to get from life and God sacrificed his Son for our sins, such as eating too much chocolate.

Once I made it through the sermon, I was back in action because the next series of rituals are the same with or without a language barrier. However, during the peace offering, things took another turn. I went to extend my hand and my cat-like reflexes caught on that no one else was offering theirs in return. Whoopsies. In Hong Kong, offering a sign of peace is done with a polite head nod and maybe a ‘Peace be with you, ‘ but I couldn’t tell because I decided to take things an awkward step further and offer a full-on Namaste-style bow.

You see, in Hong Kong, people are very afraid of germs. I would compare it to the caution you would take if you found out your officemate had the flu. Every. Single. Day. As such, everything a human hand touches in Honkers is sterilized and therefore people do not shake strangers’ hands.

All in all, we are pretty fortunate to have a plethora of churches to choose from in Hong Kong and I look forward to finding one that meets both our spiritual and linguistic needs. In conclusion, my experience was everything I needed it to be and more and I wish you and yours a very Happy Easter!