My bags finally came 4 days after I arrived, which is a huge relief!  I finally have my SD card reader, so I can upload pictures. Although my bags have arrived, my roommate has not yet, but I really want to meet him!

Last night was awesome.  I finally took the MTR, which was super easy, and I went to Café Idea, which was a café on the fourth floor of a skyscraper that had cats walking around the building.  I went with a Hong Kong resident and 10 of his friends, who were celebrating the departure of their friend, who happened to be going to Eau Claire to be my replacement for the semester! What are the odds? We were there for 4 hours, and although they spoke mostly Cantonese the whole time, I had an absolute blast and we actually communicated pretty well.  They were super nice, and even picked up my bill at the end.  They were so willing to help us with translation of the menu and their conversations, and were eager to learn more about America.  It was great.

            When we left Café Idea, we saw the democracy protesters (which I'm sure you have all seen in the news), who were just walking peacefully in a line, all holding yellow umbrellas as their symbol.  There were about 6 police officers at every corner, just in case it got out of hand.

            Today was a crazy day.  I started by going as far northeast on the MTR as I could to Wu Kai Sha, and then I found a hidden trail that went to the top of a mountain.  I was able to see the trail for a little bit, but then I had to pull out the old Hansel and Gretel and I put paper on the trees to remember how to get back.  It was a very difficult climb, but it was worth the effort.  When I got to the top, I was way above all of the skyscrapers and I could see the surrounding islands in the South China Sea.  On the top, there was actually what appeared to be a Chinese person’s grave, which kind of creeped me out, but it didn’t take away from the spectacular view. 

              Once I got down, I almost took the MTR back to Hung Hom, but then I decided to walk around aimlessly, and I am so glad that I did.  I ended up in a small town on the northern most point of the east coast called Cheung Muk Tau, and I found a beach that I could see the sea and islands everywhere.  I found a little shack on the beach and ate lunch, and happened to find a local that spoke English, who told me about the area.  I sat on the balcony of the shack, and my view from my table beats almost any view there is in America.  After lunch, I was walking down the beach and I saw 15 or so old Chinese people flying kites, and it turned out that they were doing some ancient kite fighting.  It was so cool to watch, and two of the old guys asked if I wanted to try, and I spent about 2 hours learning kite fighting from locals from this small town.  It was so much fun, and it was hard at first, but I started to get the hang of it after a while.  I lost my kite fighting matches, but I’m not too upset because they told me that the guys that beat me are masters and that they have been doing this their entire lives.  It was fun to not only fun to kite fight (which I know sounds dumb, but it is really intense), but it was fun to mingle with some locals I found that spoke English. I could hardly tell that I was in Hong Kong, because although there were still skyscrapers, there were hardly any people, the people wore jeans instead of designer clothes, and I was surrounded by mountains.

           Tonight at 2am is the Packer game, so I found a bar that is playing the game and I'll have to take a taxi there to watch it, which stinks because school starts tomorrow and I will be up until 5am!  Go Pack go!!!