GREETINGS FROM CHINA

so i'm in china and alive.. for now at least. :)

so tuesday we left and thursday we arrived in hong kong. we just plain lost wednesday
in flying, which kind of threw us off.


so hong kong was pretty much AMAZING. i'm totally wholly in love with hong kong. the first day we just went around kowloon (which is where we were). idk why but i always thought hong kong was just a big city but its like 4 different parts all split up. so we were in yau ma tei (yow mah teh).

we easily fell into the city routine everyone just walking with only where they needed to get in mind. there were a dozen cool little shops. some with disgusting food just laid out that def had a smell i will not miss.

there are some things here that just make me laugh out loud. one is 7 11's in hong kong are pretty much like starbucks. on one block there's always about 3 of them. it cracks me up. and mcdonalds are everywhere. that's pretty much all i ate there because matthew (our chinese tour guide) told us to enjoy western food while we still could. and it was nice because it was a little bit of america for us to enjoy.
so cool things in hong kong. so the first day we just had to ourselves but the next day was our 5 hour tour with matthew, who was way funny.

but before our tour we went and visited big buddha. which they dont lie when they say BIG. and we took the subways. they are way legit. and cheap. something about china EVERYTHING is WAY WAY cheap. its ridic. we're going to come back and feel way ripped off. to get to big buddha we had to take cable cars that went over some water and way way up into the mountains. the scenery was gorgeous. it was neat because the cable cars litrally went up into the clouds. big buddha was WAY sweet. it was a little bit of some stairs to get up there but i def feel as though i had a greater knowledge bestowed upon me by visiting. because as the posters did say we were on our "road to enlightenment" lol. oh and funny story we told matthew we took the cable cars and he kind of laughed and told us that they werent running because the swedish built them really crappily so the hong kong fixed them and just got back up running 2 weeks ago. so he was happy we were alive hahaha.

then on our tour:

we first went to stanley market which was like a market with little shop after little shop. mostly clothes and souvinir things.
second we went to aberdeen harbor and a fishing village. there we went on water taxis along this little channel of water and got to see the floating restuarant.
then we headed to aberdeen jewelry. we got to see some of jewelers making jewelry and then we got to go to the showcase and look at all of the gorgous jewelry. all the salespeople were so funny. they all would tell you to try stuff on and then tell you that they take visa and you can just charge it. it made us laugh.
third on our tour we went up to victoria peak that looks out on all of hong kong. it was a little cloudy but we still got a pretty good view.
after that we were left to our own to do what we would like. a group of us went to the waterfront and watched a light show which consisted of a bunch of laser lights on top of huge buildings choreographed to music. it was neat. the water front was also the "avenue of the stars" which is equal to our graumans chinese theatre? so i found out me and jet li's hands are the same size...awesome?.. then....
WE WENT TO THE HONG KONG TEMPLE!!!
this was on the top of my list (mostly because of chelsea and erin). and luckily enough it was in kowloon so we SOOOOO lucked out. taking a taxi there was a little sketch but it was way way neat. we met a lady and a couple outside while taking pictures that were americans. the lady lived in singapore with her husband and the couple was there because the husband worked for the consolate. that was by far such a high light of the day.
we also found a sweet little bakery around the corner from our hotel which chantelle and me are definatly in love with chinese bakeries. they are soo good. they are def different then anything we've had but there is some gooooood stuff.

yup. those were pretty much the highlights of hong kong.

i'm in guzhen (goo-gen) zhongshan now, alive and thriving. but i'll tell you more about mainland china later. i dont want to bombard my blog with new information all at one time.