I don't say it enough

Hi everyone. My mom and friends told me this morning that one of my friends from high school is no longer with us. I am absolutely devastated and  I don't want to believe it is true. I keep thinking I will wake up and not have to deal with this and be sad... I want you all reading this to know how much you all mean to me. I love all my friends so much and am so lucky to have you all as friends... To my parent's friends: I am so glad to have you all in my life and I love all the dinners I go to with my parents with you all there... 

We don't tell the people we love enough how important they are to us so I just wanted to make sure you all know. 

Miss you all and can't wait to see you all when i get home!

beans and cheese

In a bar in LKF, the LKF sign welcoming us :), my mexican food, and one main street in LKF if you turn your head sideways

so last night (thursday) 4 of us went to dinner before going out in LKF... and we had the most amazing food ever... guess what it was??? MEXICAN!!!! It is the food i miss the most while I'm here (chipolte will be my first meal back in the US) hah... This is basically one of the only mexican places within an hour of school so unfortunately we cannot go a lot.. but it was absolutely amazing!!! Cheese is super expensive here so it was nice to have some cheese in my mexican salad... also, it was great having normal beans!!! The only beans in HK are red beans and they are used in desserts and milk drinks.. odd I know... They aren't half bad but definitely not as good as mexican beans!!!! A guy came with us from Ireland and it was his first time having mexican food!! how nuts! I think he really liked it too! After dinner we went to some bars and had some margaritas! Jackie and I went to our new favorite bar! There is an asian band of like 6 guys that play really good american music and sing really well too! Unfortunately we got stuck talking to 37+ year olds from Italy who have a company in India... They did not speak english but apparently italian is like spanish so jackie and I used our spanish skills to tell them we didn't want to dance :)  We met up with everyone at "Club 7-11" which is just a normal 7-11 in the middle of LKF that everyone meets at because beer is cheap there and all the boys drink there before going into clubs where drinks are expensive... It was a really great night besides being ripped off by the taxi driver on the way home, but we couldn't do much about that... Karma will hit him anyway.... haha 

i've been mocked

ok so now its humid and hot as hell here and guess what... locals are STILL wearing tights and sweatshirts and boots and scarves... all that the same time... it is mind boggling... I wore a sun dress to class and my teacher saw me and was like "oh is it summer time for you?"  humphhh... i will continue to wear my "summer" clothes while all of these people overheat. haha

no one went overboard... luckily

pajama party??? Can you find me?
 flip cup champions... 
jackie and I
Jackie, me, Magdalena, Filipa
The boat party was super fun! When we got to the dock, the water was really choppy and the boat was rocking so much... in fear that i would not make it onto the boat but rather into the water below, i had to remove my heels to get on the boat... but it was a good thing cause they were already hurting me :) We had the boat all to ourselves! there was about 40 of us just cruising Victoria Harbor for the evening! The driver took us out to more calm water where the drinking began... thank goodness for that or i think we would have had someone fall overboard! It was so nice to have a fun night with everyone just talking and hanging out! Big change from the club scene, but don't worry we did that after... I met some new people, talked to people i haven't gotten a chance to really know, and just had the best time... I think we all look a little wrecked by the end of it with salty wind blown hair and drunk eyes:)  There was a dinner on the boat that was absolutely amazing... she ordered so much but it was finished by the end of the night, no surprise there!... There was a little bit of dancing on the boat by the end which is always a great way to end the evening! When the boat docked and we all stumbled, yes stumbled, off the boat, we made our way to LKF (the clubbing area)! I am sure we are a sight to see all dressed up and loud/obnoxious as we walked there... On our way, we ran into a group of asian students our age running around in pajamas... very odd... we didnt know what they were doing but that was their way of causing havoc on a saturday night... they were nice enough to stop and take pictures with us and i think i fit right in with them and my peace signs :) The group split up when we got there and a few of us went to a new club we havent been to before... we were the minority there... no surprise... but the music was good and the dancing was fun! It was a really great night !!!

boating - woo hoo

Hey everyone!

Tonight is Vanessa's Birthday party! She is my flatmate from canada... She rented a boat to cruise 40 of us around Victoria Harbor! I cant wait!!! I will take lots of pictures and post them... sorry my blog has been all writing... boring I know... Anyway its BYOB so I'm sure everyone will be sloppy by the end of the boat ride haha! Can't wait to tell you all about it! 

sushi - fish balls

Last night i went out to a sushi place for dinner with my friend Tiphaine... the place we went to called Sushi One is half price after 10 pm... so we went at 10:30 to hopefully not have to wait a long time.. apparently chinese people really like sushi cause we had to wait a half hour to be seated.. but that wasn't bad for as many people were there waiting.. being the only white people there, literally, we had to ask the hostess to call our number in english... when she finally did, all the chinese people looked at her funny til they saw the two of us get up and walk to her... embarrassing... anyway we sit down to order and the menu was strait up all fricken sushi... Now i dont eat fish, or sea creatures for that matter, but the sushi places at home have some vegetarian stuff and some "watered-down" sushi if you will... I decided to try the shrip tempura thing on the little ball of rice (mom you should be proud) and a california hand roll... The california hand roll came out looking like an ice cream cone (weird i could handle it) but it also had little orange balls on it... yes that right it had fish ball or eggs or whatever they are on it... gross.  I picked out as many as i could with my chopsticks (using chopsticks is now one of my talents too) and then had to suck it up and eat the nasty fish eggs. I actually really liked the shrimp thing though! The bummer was that after dinner, this sushi place didn't even have mochi! such a disappointment! So it was way after 12 when we finished, and we realized the last metro would be leaving in a few minutes... we took off and almost ran through the MTR station to catch it... I think we caught the last or one of the last ones that night! we got lucky too that it didnt close before it took us all the way to our stop! Then we had the climb ahead of us... Our campus is a huge hill (i'm sure you remember me complaining about it before) and our dorms are on the complete opposite and furthest side from the MTR station...  Our climb began at 1 am.... we walked/climbed/stair-stepped our meal away on our treck back to the dorms... I passed out right away, full of shrimp and fish balls. The End

flat pancakes from France

So my two french friends cooked 15 of us a french dinner the other night.. they made ratatouille or something like that.. yes the same name of the animated movie with rats... I was given the job of cutting the tomatoes... which i am very good if i may brag a little!  Being away is teaching me how truly talented i am... I am good at cutting tomatoes, sleeping in the metro, getting sunburnt, sweating in humidity, and floating on the water in thailand... I know you are all jealous you cant be as talented as me... my friend bryan is helping me keep track of all these new skills of mine anyway... the French dinner was really good... it is basically cooked vegetables over rice... we had to use japanese rice so the french dinner had a little asian twang to it... we also had baguettes and drumroll please.... crapes! Of course that would be my favorite part of dinner because it is sweet and fattening! we also shared a bottle of this apple wine which tastes like motts apple juice but spiked! yumm I will learn to make crapes so i can make them for you all when i get home!

Happy Valentine's Day

Happy Valentine's Day everyone! My valentines day was yesterday an it was a good one... it was 3 exchange student's birthdays so they had a bbq outside of our dorms... there were probably 50+ people there and it was a really nice way to celebrate with lots of people! There was good food, good music, and good company! I am sad i dont get school off tomorrow for President's day... I think i should be allowed to skip haha... I hope you all have a great night and a wonderful 3 day weekend! 

p.s.

There is a boy here that looks like Edward from the Twilight movie... super cool :)

school

Hello All!

Sorry i havent written in while... School is getting very busy! I am already done with over 1/3 of this semester... its so crazy... I have tons of group projects for all of my business classes but they are pretty interesting so its not a bad thing... for my Strategic Marketing class I am in a group with 4 locals and 1 girl from France and I really enjoy being with this group. We are writing a strategic marketing plan for a little independent dessert shop a few stations away from my school... The shop is basically coming out even, so we are trying to make his shop as profitable as we can with what means he has to change it. We went to his shop the other day to interview him and get his opinions, and he only spoke Cantonese so I sat there for like 30-45 minutes while my group mates intereviewed him, and then they translated for me haha... After that, 2 of the local girls and I went to get dinner at this little chinese food place which was pretty good... The menu was only in Cantonese so they ordered for me and we did the family style type of meal... We sat there and talked for over an hour about the differences in our cultures, their point of view on life here, and so many interesting topics relevant to being in Hong Kong. I learned a lot about how they were raised and how it is to be in Hong Kong which was really amazing. One of the girls was an exchange student at USC so we got to talk about how she liked it there and how different LA was from here... The other girl did a year exchange in Korea so she had a lot of cool stories to tell too! It was a really great night!

Today i met up with another group at the library and it was soooo humid walking there... Thank goodness the library was air conditioned! After our group was finished, we walked out of the library and it was raining! I of course had no umbrella so i walked home in the rain haha... It will definitely limit what i can do today considering a lot of the places i considered going today are outside... but hopefully it will stop soon and the rain will have taken away some of the humidity (I think it does that?!)

I hope the rain hasn't affected too many of you in OC! 

Hi to all my mom's friends reading this! I hope you are all doing well and I can't wait to see you all when I get home! 

- miss you all

Midterms

HI everyone... so most of you just got to your place of destination and I am already in Midterm season... yuck.. i have my first one tomorrow and i was basically told to memorize half of my textbook... i dont see much learning from that but hopefully i am familiar with enough of it to do well on my test tomorrow... This class is already halfway over because it ends a month earlier than the rest of my classes which is great! I hope all of you are having fun at school wherever you are and you can be assured that i am stalking all of your facebooks and blogs :) Miss you all and hopefully i will have something more exciting to say next time hhaha

Thailand Continued

sunset at Ko Chang

where "The Beach" was filmed
such pretty places :)
Ok so I left off at the elephants but i will not tell you about Thai Massage.... WE were in bangkok and ther was this massage place by our hostel.. there are massage places everywhere and the women sit outside and try and get you in... it was really really funny to watch them. One time me and one of the boys walked by and the lady said in her thai whiney accent "lovely lady, lovely boy, want massage, massage, not now but later"  and we could not stop laughing... anyways we were on our way back to the hostel at like 1030 and 3 of us decided to get a massage for half an hour before bed... it was only 3 US dollars so the boys were in for sure! They took us upstairs into a room with lots of mats and pillows and had us lay down... then we say there were 2 women massagers and one man... i didnt want a man to massage me cause thats creepy but i figured the boys would not want that either.. but when they came to us the man massager when to bryan... they started the massage and the boys were laughing because they felt awkward and one had never had a massage... the massage was normal for a while then they started putting us in these weird positions and we were all a little freaked out... the lady had me sit up and pulled my arms back be hind me and put her feet on my back and then pushed and cracked my whole back... there was a lot more stuff like this which was really funny... one of the ladies wrapped her legs around on of my friends and cracked him that way... it was the most bazar thing ever but it felt great after... 

Next place ill talk about it Ko Phi Phi which was the most beautiful place i have ever seen... we took a day boat trip around all the little islands/beaches around there and i was in awe the whole day. We went to the beach where the movie "the beach" was filmed with leonardo dicaprio... It was absolutely breathtaking... there were endless cliff in the middle the water on the trip untouched by man and it was indescribable... we started the trip off snorkling which i didnt think i would be brace enough to do but the boys convinced me i was being a sissy and that i would regret not doing it so i decided to go in. in all my gear before i got in i asked the guide (who didnt speak great english) to promise me there were no sharks... his reply to me was that if there were they would be small and only bite off a finger or toe... seeing as i wanted both of those body parts i was really nervous but i finally went in... the coral and the fish were sooo coool too see... sadly, it is still a little broken from the tsunami a while back... i was doing well snorkling til i saw a little jelly fish and i freaked out and that was the end of my snorkling haha... at a few other beaches there was more snorking but as soon as i saw a jelly fish there i was out of the water super fast... we went to a monkey beach where we saw a monkey up in the trees but the guides said they weren't hungry or they would be down on the beach with the tourists... i was glad i got to at least see some of the monkeys though... the sad there was soo while and felt like putty under you feet... it was crazy... after all of these beaches and stuff we stopped the boat in the middle of the water and watched the sunset.... it was so cool cause we saw nothing but water and sky...it was a fabulous day

we spent a few days there hanging out on the beach and relaxing which was something i wont get to do again til school is done!  I will write more when i have some more good stories to tell... p.s. there are tonssss of trannies in Bangkok haha it was funny

Home from Thailand

me in my temple outfit in front of the Grand Palace
do i look like an elephant haha
me holding a real baby tiger!
WOW... my trip to Thailand was absolutely amazing! I can't believe how luck i am to have gone there at 20... Bangkok was a great, busy city with tons and tons of travelers from all over the world (some of who hadn't showered in weeks i think). haha I traveled with 3 boys from school here, one of whom goes to USC... They planned the whole thing so it was nice just being able to follow and not have to stress about plans... we spent like 4 days in Bangkok seeing tons of Wats (buddhist temples) and buddhas, wandering the streets, and a little shopping! The temples were the most amazing things ever... they were soo ornate and detailed it was amazing. They all had tons of gold and were absolutely as stunning from close up as they were from across town. The architecture was so unique it was great! The only downside to the Wats was that i had to wear what i like to call my "temple outfit" which my friends deemed the most un-sexy outfit ever haha... I had to buy a long sleeve white shirt and skirt that went down to my feet... The outfit was funny it just sucked that it was so hot and humid there... but the Wats were well worth the outfit! 

We also went to an island called Ko Chang which was gorgeous... One night we stayed in a bungalow which was pretty sweet... we slept under a mosquito net! haha the bathroom was part of the bungalow but was somewhat open to the outdoors so one when we opened the door we saw a hugee lizard and cockroach haha...pretty gross but also kinda cool! We spent 3 days there and the highlight was probably riding elephants! The elephant took us through a jungle/forest type place... it was soo cool... 

I have so much more to write but I am super tired so i will finish this tomorrow!

Miss you all!!!