hk and valloween in china... minus the halloween and the valentines day

so last friday i went to hk for the day with mike. THAT CITY IS SO GODDAMN EXPENSIVE. (side note: mike has decided that people from the south use goddamn a lot more than people from other regions. do y'all use goddamn a lot? i can't remember, but i think that might just be me? whatever.) anyways i spent around 70 usd in less than 12 hours in hong kong. i spent 25 dollars on books, and the rest was on two meals and the metro. ABSURD. however, after walking around the city a bit more, i realized it's not as bad as i originally thought. i mean, it's a big city which i've always liked, but it seemed to lack a certain character that i've come to expect from south east asia, and especially china. upon further investigation, however, i've discovered that the character is still there, they just tuck it into back alleys on steep hills. although, as someone who lives in china, i still feel like all hong kong is good for is the food. and the bookstores (i have to go back soon to pick up eclipse. how am i getting so sucked into a novel that i have to go find in the teen section of the bookstore? especially when the whole time i'm reading it i'm thinking 'wow, this is really bad. why am i reading this?'??? i don't get it.). also, in hong kong i saw my first asian protest. granted, it was a hong kong protest, and as linda says, if an over protective mother were a city, that city would be hong kong. basically it was a bunch of people just standing around with signs accusing citibank of losing their life savings. no chanting. standing a good distance in front of the doors to citibank. people were doing their banking as usual. people walking through the protesters to get to where they needed to go instead of around. regardless of how boring it was, i still was sad i forgot my camera.

then saturday we tried to have a valloween party. major fail. i will say, that by the time the party rolled around i was too tired to really want to put together a costume, but i did it. and so did kate. and that's it. well, jess bought a mask that she wore on top of her head and some other people wore some of the pants they bought in south east asia. does that count? i didn't think so ;). and kate and i were even more just dressed like assholes than in real costumes (i wore my outfit from eurotrash this summer, kate dressed as a "trendy" chinese person). that combined with the fact that no one else was in anything close to resembling a costume means people probably just thought we shouldn't be allowed to dress ourselves. or they thought we were hot shit, as they can't really dress themselves... whatever. we got a lot of stares. there wasn't anything remotely valentines about the party either though (thank god). in fact, i pretty much forgot altogether that it was valentines day. so valloween basically ended up being a large group of us drinking on the beach and then hanging out at the bars on the island. it was fun and i really enjoyed seeing everyone again, but as far as valloween goes...fail. i mean, i didn't even get to tell any secrets!!!!

anyways, linda's out of the hospital now, so that's good! and i still don't know what my schedule is for school. i start teaching either today or thursday. i told them i have chinese class on wed and friday afternoons....even though i don't, so hopefully i'll still have those days off. although i'm quite ready to have something else to do. i really hope this tutoring thing works out, cause aside from the money, i'd like the interaction with people and time filler for my days. i'm sure jennie can relate to wishing you had a little more work to do at your job ;)

i miss you guys SO SO MUCH. i know su is... stressful at the moment, so if you ever need to chat don't hesitate to call or e-mail. i love youuuuuu!!!