Today we had a Healthcare leadership offsite. Nick, our amazing leader, borrowed a Sprinter van, took everyone up to Sundance for the day to have activities and lunch and then we had a White Elephant gift exchange back at headquarters and heard from Brian Stucki. Then we all went to the Qualtrics suite for the Jazz. It was an incredible time. Here are some pictures:
Some made silver jewelry 
some did pottery 
I made soap 
My soap (it’s supposed to look like a conifer tree) 
My colleague’s soap. I thought it was beautiful. 
While I was having my leadership offsite, my dad and Suzanne were taking care of Ammon and Clarissa. My dad found my old legos and a lot of the creations made decades ago were still intact. Ammon and Clarissa were so excited to show me my old creations and they had so much fun playing and building with the Legos.
Meanwhile, Lily, Lydia and Mary had their first day in Hong Kong. They were enthralled by the amazing views, and the contrast of jungle around and in a massive city with sky scrapers. They also had some difficult on their first couple of days. For example, Lily and the girls were incredibly jet lagged. The stopped at a park bench in a park, and Lydia and Mary played cards on the bench while Lily reclined a bit and fell asleep. A park guard then came over and kicked them out of the park! Lily asked why they were getting kicked out, and the man, who spoke with kindness, explained that no one is allowed to lie down on the benches. Lily was confused because she certainly was not lying down, and it felt very unfriendly, especially given how tired she was. She also had a hard experience at one of their Hong Kong Dinners (with language barrier and feeling no attempt to help her through the situation, I think the waiter even got in an argument with another staff member and then stopped waiting on Lily’s table), and an even harder experience at an Egg Waffle Place. The place sold egg waffles sandwiches which Lily did not want. She just wanted a plain [famous] egg waffle, so she said, “yes” when the worker asked if she wanted a waffle with nothing on it. When Lily got to the register and was given a plain American waffle (not an egg waffle), she tried to explain that she wanted an egg waffle. The worker got upset, gave her an egg waffle and then charged her two more times, again, with language being a barrier. Then the manager came out and got upset at Lily, but also refunded her some money since the other person over charged her. They made it very clear that they were upset, and Lily again felt like it was just difficult to be in Hong Kong. She was exhausted, struggling with the language barrier and just feeling generally like people weren’t out to help here. She also felt like transportation was super confusing, and she walked excessively with the girls because where they were staying was not close to the areas they wanted to be in (she thought it would be) and the transportation was confusion. I’m skipping ahead even into events that happened days later, but in summary, Lily really struggled with Hong Kong in the first few days. By the end though, Lily had Hong Kong figured out and she told me that she fell in love with it. I didn’t get as many details on why she ended it up loving it so much, but by the time she left, she reported how much she turned out to love it. All along the way the things they saw were amazing. Here are some pictures:
