Swimming Fun!!

Today was the 2nd Anual Hilltop Swimming Gala! Hilltop is the name of the apartment/house where my grandma lives. There's a huge swimming pool downstairs, so every year, during the summer, there's a swimming party open for anyone who lives in Hilltop. People who don't live in Hilltop could also go I guess, but nobody else knows about it. :P

My brothers, parents, and I were supposed to go eat lunch with my grandparents today, but we didn't have enough time because we had to make it to the swimming thing. We went to a Japanese restaurant where I ate the "Eel over Rice." It's so good! If any of you every go to a Japanese restaurant, try Ell over Rice. That's what it's usually called. It's also called "Unagi," I think.
<---My 2 year old cousin Will

We went home to wait for my cousin so we could go down together. For the Swimming Gala, there was a huge inflatable water obstacle course with a slide at the end. I only went on it once because I'm scared to go on the slide. For some reason, whenever I jump in the water, water always gets into my nose and it feels weird. Water still gets in my nose even if I blow out as I'm jumping into the water! Anyway, there's also a bunch of free food and snacks there! I didn't eat much though because we're still going to have dinner later. There was soda, like Coke, Mountain Dew, Sprite, Cream Soda, and some other drinks. For the food, there were chicken wings, fried curry spring roll, 2 types of pasta, curry fish balls, curry beef balls, Char Siu, mini sausage, regular sized sausage, and some other stuff. There was so much food! Well, I guess they should have a lot of food because there were so many people there. It's so sad that my other cousins couldn't come because one of them has a cold. They will only be coming for the dinner, but they have not arrived yet. The picture from left to right: Byron, brother (Mark), me, brother (Matthew)


Ok! Now I'm watching T.V., but it's showing commercials right now. Everyone left about 35 minutes ago, and my brother (Mark) went with my cousin (Byron) to his house for a sleepover. Byron is older than Faith and Will (my other cousins), but still younger

than my brothers and I.

When everyone was still here, we ate dinner and played around for a while. Will (2 years old) really likes cars and stuff, so he was looking out the big window and he kept on saying, "double decker!" In Hong Kong, there are 2 storied buses. So that's what it is. He can't really say it though. :P Also, when I gave those fruit gummies to Faith and Will (individually packaged), Will started being really hyper and threw the packages of gummies everywhere. He was laughing and screaming and he was so happy! It's really funny! And he started stomping on them! I have a video (Mark helped me take it), but he already calmed down so he wasn't as active. I can't put the video here because it doesn't work. :( I put a picture though!
Picture: Bottom-Will (with the bottle), me, Faith
Middle-brother (Mark), cousin (Byron)
Top-brother (Matthew)

Pictures of June 30, 2009

Sorry everyone! When I published the post, the order of the food pictures totally changed! Well, it didn't change, but the third picture of a row is now in the next line. So the pictures that are all by themselves are supposed to be the third picture of the previous row.

Visit to my Grandparents

Today is the last day of June in 2009! And again, my mom and I went early in the morning to get my China traveling card. I didn't have to stay there for too long. (The picture on the left is me in my swim suit by the pool. The swim suit looks normal from far away, but if you look closely, the design is really weird.)

Since my brothers went to my cousin's house to sleep yesterday, I waited for them to come back so we can swim together. My brothers, cousin, and I went down to swim. It was much more fun than swimming alone!

After taking a shower, we went to eat lunch. My dad came today so I finally have some pictures! Tomorrow, I'll have some pictures of my cousins too!!!

Then we went to visit my grandparents on my dad's side. The picture to the right is of my brothers, grandparents, and I.

From left-right: grandpa, me (on the bottom), my oldest brother (on the top), my other brother, grandma

That community has a lot of open space, but the houses themselves are really small. There's also this water part where turtles swim around and live there. It's fun to watch them! They use to put goldfish with the turtles, but my grandpa said that the turtles would always bite and eat the fish, so there would be a bunch of blood in the water. That's why there are only turtles now. It's also really convenient if you live there, because there's a huge mall and a supermarket downstairs.













These are some of the pictures my dad took for me. I have many more, but it takes too long to download so I just added a few. Now I'm typing everything after this on July 1, because I couldn't finish writing this entry yesterday.

Here are what the food are:

1st Row:
1. Taro Sesame Balls
2. Char Siu Buns (Char Siu: roasted pork)
3. Yellow: Steamed Custard Cake Roll
White: Sticky Rice Steamed Roll
2nd Row:
1. Pineapple Char Siu Buns (the bread is not pineapple flavored. The sugar on the top just looks like a pineapple after it's baked)
2. Pan-Fried Mochi with Taro inside
3. Chinese Style Baked Char Siu Pastry
3rd Row:
1. Char Siu with Vegetables (Most people probably know what Char Siu is, but in case you didn't know, this is how regular Char Siu looks like.)
2. Hong Kong Subway Station (You add money into a card and it subtracts money from your card every time you go on the train.)

We rode on the train to my grandparent's house. Anyway, after visiting my grandparents, we went to eat dinner with some friends that my parents have known for a long time. I didn't take any pictures there, so I don't have a picture of them. But they're family has one daughter and one son, and the son is about my brother's age. The daughter is way older than my oldest brother, so we didn't really talk together....

Well, I got to go! I'm going to visit my grandparents again today to eat lunch. I'll type more stuff later! And I WILL have pictures of my cousins today! (Haha. My youngest cousin who is 2 years old's name is Will.)

Shopping Day

I woke up this morning at 8:45, which is kind of early for me during the summer. It's weird though, because this year, I'm not jet lag anymore but I still always wake up at 8 something in the morning! When I don't have school, I usually sleep in until 10 something! And it's not like I'm tired during the day or anything.

Anyway, I woke up and I had to go to the Hong Kong Immigration Tower with my brother (Mark) and my mom at around 9:30. There, I read my book, Pride and Prejudice while I waited for my brother to finish renewing his Hong Kong identification card.

In Pride and Prejudice, all it talks about so far is how Mr. and Mrs. Bennet try to get their daughters to marry wealthy men so they will have a good life. There's a man called Mr.Bingley who apparently likes "Jane" Bennet :0 who is supposedly very beautiful, or as they say in the book, "handsome." The English in the book is old British English, so it uses weird grammar. Meanwhile, there's another man called Mr.Darcy who likes Elizabeth Bennet (I think), but Elizabeth doesn't know. And, nobody likes Mr.Darcy because he's really arrogant and proud.

So I was really bored, then it was my turn to renew my identification card. I had to take a picture, then I placed my thumb on a machine thing so they could get my thumbprint. Then, we finally left.

My brother, mom, and I walked about half an hour to a mall where we met together with my grandma and my other brother (Matthew). We went to the Travel Agency so my brothers can go to China.

We ate lunch at a Chinese restaurant (again) but it was still really good! I forgot to bring the camera out again, so I couldn't take pictures. I PROMISE that next time, I'll bring my camera!!

Then, my brothers went home because it's my cousin (Byron)'s birthday, so he's picking my brothers up to go to the movies, then to dinner. Meanwhile, my mom and I went to Garden Street in Mong Kok where there's a whole huge long street of shops. People have their own little spaces where they can sell whatever they want. And since it's in the street, most of the shops are not real stores. They're stalls, but not the bathroom kind of stalls. Just search on www.m-w.com and search up the meaning. The stores on the sides of the street actually are real stores, but are usually a bit more expensive. Everything is super cheap though! I bought some souveniers, but not too many because I'm going to get some in Tibet too. My mom and I bought so much stuff! I bought a pair of short jeans, slippers just for everyday use (because my Crocs broke today), black flats for Band and my piano recitals, 3 animal pencil cases (souveniers), 2 squishy bun key chains (souveniers. My school friends will know what it is when they see it), 3 bags (souvenier), and a fake American Eagle t-shirt. There are fake American Eagle, Abercrombie and Fitch, Abercrombie, Hollister, Converse, and Vans. So that's what I bought, and my mom also bought stuff. She bought 3 or 4 t-shirts and some other stuff but I forgot what they were. And all of that costs less than $100 U.S.! $100 U.S. sounds like a lot of money anyway, but in the U.S., you can barely buy anything with it. At around 5:30 P.M., my mom and I headed home. When I came home, I changed into my (wierd) swim suit and went swimming.

Swimming was fun, but my brothers weren't there so it wasn't as fun. After about half an hour of swimming, I went back up to the house. It turns out that our apartment/house is doing this thing where there are a few hours when there is no water, so it can kind of help the environment. That thing is supposed to be from 10:00 A.M.-3:00 P.M., I think, but it's 7:00 P.M. right now and there's still no water. I didn't even take a shower yet, but it's good that I'm dry now (after an hour!). I ate dinner already, and I'm now typing this email while watching Hong Kong dramas on T.V. Right now, I'm watching this drama which takes place in old/ancient China, and it's just the first few episodes so I don't really know what it talks about. Later, there's going to be another drama (in modern time) about these people who work in the Hong Kong Immigration place.

Sigh...........Still waiting for water so I can take a shower.

Dinner with Cousins

Today is Sunday, so we went to church. My brothers, cousin, and I went together to my cousin's church while my grandma and uncle went to their church. My cousin's mom brought us to the church. Since my cousin is a year younger than me (3 years younger than my oldest brother and 2 years younger than my other brother) and we wanted to go to the same service, my brothers and I had to go to the younger kids' service. I guess it was ok for me, but my brothers were a bit too old. I think they were really bored, but thankfully, I wasn't!

When we came in, everyone was standing and singing songs. After we finished the song, we sat down and played a game. To choose the people to represent the 2 teams, they would pick someone (with their hand raised) to recite 1 commandment out of the ten commandments. If you got it wrong, you still got to play. So there were 5 people in each group, and they had to stick a paper with the commandment they recited on this teacher, or the pretend Jesus. The boys ended up winning. :( Then they talked about how Jesus saved us from our sins, and how nobody can ever follow all of the ten commandments perfectly. We watched a video about this woman who broke one of the ten commandments and we discussed it. Then the people who go to that church regularly were talking about something I'm not sure about. I think it was about how some people are going to Malaysia and helping the people there.

After church, everyone met together for lunch at a Chinese Dim Sum restaurant. We ate a bunch of different really good Dim Sum, but I tried all of them before because Dim Sum is very popular in Hong Kong. The Dim Sum are REALLY GOOD!!!! If any of you ever go to Hong Kong, you HAVE to go to some Dim Sum restaurant and try the Dim Sum. You can find those restaurants anywhere becuase almost every Chinese restaurant in Hong Kong has Dim Sum. The ones I like the best are the buns, the shrimp dumplings (pronounced in Cantonese: ha-gao. I'm not sure, because Cantonese Pin Yin is much harder than the Mandarin Pin Yin.), and a whole bunch of desserts. Some of my favorite buns are Char Siu buns (Char Siu is like roasted pork), Custard buns, and Pineapple Taro buns. I'll try to get some pictures some time. :)

Since my swim suit is too small now, my mom and I went to shop for my swim suit after lunch. I love swimming!! Actually, I just like playing in the water. I don't really like serious swimming, but I've never liked water sports anyway. I can't even jump into the water! I have to slowly walk into the pool, or slowly go down the edge. And I can kind of swim, but when it comes to the deep end, I get sooo scared! Anyway, everyone else went to buy groceries while my mom and I went to the mall to go look. We looked for such a long time! At last, I found a swim suit (one piece), but it looks kind of weird. It's dark blue and the pattern is a knitting pattern. It's supposed to look like it's knitted, but it looks like jeans material to me from far away. The straps are dark pink. It's weird. I'll take a picture sometime too!

At around 5:00 P.M. after I got my swim suit, my mom and I went home and sat around for about an hour. Then we went out to eat at another Chinese restaurant, but this time, we ordered dishes instead of Dim Sum. There was fried noodles, fried rice, steamed fish, this dish with mushrooms and vegetables, soup, a meat variety plate, and some more other stuff. There's also free soda! Well, it's not really free. It's just included in the dinner set. My youngest cousins were there too, and they're called Faith and Will. Faith is the older one who just turned 5 a few days ago, and Will is 2 years old. They're both sooo cute! I have to get a picture of them sometime! This picture will be more important than the others! We showed him my brother's P.S.P., and everytime we said, "no more," he would say, "more!"It might not sound very funny, but it's really cute! And funny! He runs really funny too. His knees go really high up, and his arms are out on the side while his hands are flapping around. He jumps and runs really high for his age though! :0 I think he will be really athletic when he grows up.

We rode on the van (also public transportation. It's like a mini bus) back home, and this is where I am now. Right now, I'm at home typing this entry and we're watching this really funny cooking show where people (who don't know how to cook), have to cook food and judges will evaluate their food. In this dish, they're making eel and in the beginning, the eel are still alive and they have to take it out with their bare hands out of the water. Well not completely bare, becuase they get to wear gloves. Right now, they're evaluating the first person's food. It's not as serious as you think because it's more for the fun than the actual food.

Anyway, this is the end of my very second blog entry!

Haircuts

This is my first post in this blog! I'm so excited! I really wanted to start it earlier in Shanghai, but many websites are blocked for some reason I don't know of. Isn't that sad? I didn't do much in Shanghai anyway. My mom and I usually stayed in my dad's dental clinic and waited for him until he was done doing stuff with his patients.

I arrived in Hong Kong yesterday night, so I'm pretty excited. Today was a fun day for me too! My brothers, mom, grandma, and I went together in the morning at about 8:30 to this place where you get your Hong Kong/Chinese Visa, and I'm not really sure what it's for. I think because we're going to Tibet to visit, my brothers need to get one in order to go. I already have one because I was born in Hong Kong, but I need to renew it. Anyway, back to the topic. So we went to that place but it turns out that we need our original birth certificate to get it, so we went to eat lunch. Then we all had too much time so we went to the hair salon to get a hair cut! My hair is really short now, and it looks like a puffball. Well, not really. It was really fun because they wash your hair in this sink kind of thing and you get to lie down while they do it. It feels really good!!! Then for me, he cut my hair so it's thinner (while it's still wet), then he blow dried my hair, cut it short, washed it again, blow dried it again, and put some gel on it so it puffs out more. After everyone's haircut's we went to the grocery store to get some food (of course!) and went home.

After about 2-3 hours at home in boredom, we went to eat dinner outside. We ate a bunch of stuff, but I wasn't really hungry because I drank too much water when we were waiting for the food to come. :P Oh well! And by the way, during my house of boredom, I did A BUNCH of handstands, and a bit of conditioning (conditioning is muscle training if any of you didn't already know).

So that is what I did today! How does it sound? It probably seems like I did a lot, but in reality, everything passed by really fast (except for the haircuts, but I'm happy about that because it was really fun!).