Spiritual Rain

I am a self-professed weather wimp. I never liked rain unless I was inside, warm and dry preferable with a good book to read or a new dvd to watch. But sometimes that isn't possible and one has to dig a little deeper.

So it has been raining here. At first this was a welcome change to the heat and humidity but what to do in it? I was hoping to go to some of the outlying islands, but, oh, well. I recall my sister's graduation gift to me way back when, we went to Martha's Vineyard for a long weekend. It rained, and I mean pouring rain, from the moment we arrived until just hours before we left. We made the best of it and that is what I am doing here. In fact, we had a really nice time.

Back to Hong Kong, my options? Explore unexplored shopping malls (really pointless for the non-shopper), go to museums--finally got to the Hong Kong Heritage Museum on Sunday. But dodging the rain is already feeling old, so today I decided to go to Chi Lin Nunnery and Sik Sik Yuen Wong Tai Sin Temple. I would have preferred to walk between the two but this wasn't the day.

I was surprised at not only how many people were at the temple but that it was just as many worshippers as tourists. Kneeling on plastic bags, praying under umbrellas, some with their barely lit incense sticks their devotion was impressive to me--one who was brought up to kneel on a padded bench in a usually comfortably dry and temperature controlled church.

As you can see from the pix, the surroundings at both locations where not diminished by the rain, in fact it felt like a more spiritual experience somehow. Despite this spiritual connection with the rain today, I am looking forward to it clearing up enough for me to at least go to Lamma Island before I leave on friday morning.