April 14, 2008
I recently had a birthday. It was one of those significant ages that could have left me feeling old and depressed. But thanks to my great friends here, I had a wonderful time celebrating this sad, sad event. My birthday was kind of a 3-day extravaganza! The day before my birthday some of my friends took me out to dinner. Although I had never met most of them before, they brought me a card and gift. It was so sweet and the food was great! We had a lot of fun and I was happy to make some new English-speaking friends here in my city.

On my actual birthday, my good friend, Lucy, worked very hard making me a cake. My friends N&C helped her. It was her first cake, but she did a great job, and was very excited about the entire process. How fun!
  

My friend Renee, from America, sent me a birthday package which included tons of birthday decorations. I used them ALL and my apartment couldn't have been any more festive! I invited my teacher friends from school and we have a very lively group. Some of them brought me gifts and others brought party snacks. They really wanted me to eat the snacks they brought, but some were just too difficult to get down without making faces.
   

      

As people arrived we had them start making their own pizzas. We had all the toppings laid out and it was a very special event for my friends to make pizza. They put a lot of effort and thought into their topping choices. When each pizza was finished cooking, they would put it on display before everyone dug in. Lucy spelled my name out in pizza sauce on her pizza.
          

       

        

I was impressed and confused as I watched my teacher eat his pizza with chopsticks.
    

We ate cake and cookies until we could eat no more. Then we played "mafia" for about three hours. My friends just couldn't get enough of it! They all got so excited and into the game. It was the perfect night for me. Lots of energy and group interaction. It made me feel like home.
     

The day after my birthday I went out for hamburgers with some American friends. Afterwards we came back to my house for dessert and card games. My mom had sent me a care package with special cake mix that I had been saving. It is her famous Valentine's Day cake, and I did my best to make it just like her. Thanks mom! It was GREAT!
    

All in all, my birthday was not nearly as depressing as it might have been, if not for all my fun and generous friends. We had a great night that I will not forget.       THANKS!

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April 23, 2008
So I bought a used motorcycle about a month ago. It is about 8 years old, and motorcycles expire after 10 years in this country. After that you have to throw them away. No, I'm not kidding. Even if they look great and drive great, you must get rid of any bike once it's 10 years old. I got a good deal on this motorcycle because it only has about 14 months of use left. I have had several little problems with it, and basically think it's kind of a piece of junk. I'm glad to have a bike to learn on that I'm not afraid to damage. I have to feel free to make mistakes, and I am definitely not worried about hurting this old bike. In fact, the first day I owned it I accidentally tipped it over twice. No good reason - I just couldn't balance it while holding on to it from the side and it fell over. Oops!

So I now own a motorcycle and have taught myself how to drive it, with the help of some great websites and advice from my brother and father. I practiced the basics for the first two weeks, just learning how to shift gears and turn. The past two weeks I've been learning how to drive on the streets of my city. It's been exciting and scary, but I am finally getting the hang of it. I now feel comfortable driving in the crazy traffic of this country. I haven't had any wrecks and consider myself to be a solid beginner motorcycle driver.

I really enjoy driving. Especially on the hot evenings when I drive down by the river and can look at the pretty lights along the water, and see all the people walking along the paths. It's a beautiful way to enjoy the city and the day. I am glad to have something like this to play around with when I just need a brake from the daily responsibilities of my life here.

Here in this country you can drive motorcycles and scooters on all the sidewalks. Many times if you don't feel like waiting for the traffic light to turn green, just drive up onto the sidewalk, or join the pedestrians in the crosswalk, and you can get ahead of the lame cars that have to stay on the street. When you come to a red light at an intersection, all the motorcycles weave in and out of the cars to get to the front of the line. Often you can see a crowd of motorcycles all lined up in front of all the cars, waiting for the light to turn green like they're ready to start a big race. And one of those drivers is ME!

Last week I started driving my bike to school instead of taking a taxi. I brought my camera and got my friends to take pictures of me around campus. Here are the results from my photo shoot.

     

   

   

   

    

         

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April 30, 2008
I had the opportunity to explore a new city (country?) this past weekend. I have been having some vision problems and so I traveled to Hong Kong to meet with an eye doctor. While I was there I had a few days to explore the city. My favorite thing about Hong Kong was the smells. It wasn't a perfect-smelling city, but compared to the place that I have been living, it had some wonderful moments. I loved walking down the streets and hardly ever smell cigarette smoke. Instead I passed by many people wearing perfume or cologne, and many stores that were filled with the scent of freshly baked croissants, honey, and toasted almonds. Yum! I also liked how clean the city streets were. There were some pristine malls and many lovely boutiques. These were my favorite parts of Hong Kong.
  

My least favorite part of Hong Kong was exploring it alone. I was really wishing I had someone to share the experience with, rather than walking the busy streets all day by myself. This led to me taking many pictures of city landscapes and self portraits.
   

   

It was a huge and crowded city. I loved the lights on the skyscrapers at night. Sometimes the buildings were so tall, towering around me from every side, that I had a hard time finding the sky. It was one of the cleanest big cities I have ever been in.
   

   

     

   

My favorite picture from this trip can speak for itself:

This is the world's biggest fire hydrant. Seriously.

I enjoyed drinking Starbucks about twice a day. I was in heaven! I also ate at Krispy Kreme!
      

        

With nothing to do but wander around the city all day, I got lots of exercise and didn't feel too guilty about eating some great "western food". My meals were some of the highlights of my trip. It was great to eat food that I can't get in the city where I live.
            

I explored the city using their very convenience subway system, called the MTR. It was often crowded, a few times was PACKED, but during the day it was quite nice.

Traffic was not too bad. There were many options for public transportation in addition to the MTR. The public busses were very nice and clean (like everything else). Some were so tall and skinny I couldn't believe they didn't tip over when they went around corners.
     

The city of Hong Kong is kind of on a hill. There was one part of the city on the island where you could ride an escalator through the city all the way up the hill. The escalator would open up every 50 feet, or so, for people to get on and off. It was a really cool part of town. Unfortunately the escalator only went up, so when I got to the top I had to walk all the way down. But it was worth it. If you ever visit Hong Kong, find the escalator hill.

I took a fast, international train to and from Hong Kong. I really enjoyed traveling this way. It isn't quite as fast as flying, but it was much more roomie and took much less time to get on and off the train then the 2 hours you have to spend waiting around at airports. When we were leaving Hong Kong, the train was getting ready to leave and we had one of those movie scene moments of running along side of the train to get on before it left. It wasn't actually moving - but they were all yelling at us to hurry up! I took pictures as I ran!
     

When I arrived back in my country's train station, they had some dogs smelling the suitcases of the passengers going through customs. It was called The Beagle Brigade. So cute!