Hello, and guess what?
I am back in the US of A, happy to be visiting my dear folks Kathy and Daryl at their new home in Montana. I decided to visit here first, before and instead of heading directly to Portland, because here I can sit back, relax, and visit with my little nephews and my 8 month old niece, and gradually "plug in" to the world as I knew it before I left :)
So, that's right; I still don't have a phone on me. I am, however, working on some emails and all my law school decisions, visits back home, weddings, etc. will be hopefully planned out from here in the next few weeks.
Once I decide on a new city, I'll go back to Portland, couchsurf for a while and then pick up my stuff from storage and head to the new LUCKY city! Congrats to me for getting into at least one school so far, a minor school in Florida offering a small but respectable scholarship!
As always, email is best for communicating with me, and I look forward to talking with you all, if not in person, in the coming summer months! Get ready for my slide show!
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From China, where I think I left off on the river cruise on the Yangzi (Yellow) River, we headed to Shanghai. On the train from Wuhan to Shanghai, I got a little sick, and just like most locals, I did get sick on the train. It was messy, but I felt a lot better. I think it was the hotpot soup we had the night before. Shanghai, as the original British settlement (to HOng kong), was expectedly very westernized. The city was pretty cool, and our hostel was right in the thick of things, right on the Bund area where if you need a watch DVD or bag, you are in luck because you will be asked if you need any of these things at least 5 times on every city block. (These people work on commission for a % of whatever is spent by people they "bring in" to the store.) It was, however, in Hong Kong that the real electronics and name-brand shopping can be done. A 24 hour train ride from Shanghai, and we were there! To the Special Autonomous Region (SARs) of China that is autonomous in almost all aspects, run by the British authorities, Hong Kong. Both here and in Shanghai Shawn and I relaxed a little, for him to get ready for his venture into the jungle of southeast asia, and I because I was anticipating the return to the land of commercialism in my own language. (It's easier to ignore commercialism and obnoxious people on the trains alike, when they are in a different language.) In a foreign language, you can imagine that the people around you are talking about erudite subjects all the time, or important global matters. (In fact, one of the first snippets of converstation I heard that I understood came from the Hong Kong airport. A silver haired gentleman and his wife were in front of me in line, and we had just undergone a second security check at the gate to the plane, where liquids you had purchased in the airport - after the first security check, mind you - were taken away, and the man was muttering to his wife, "...really pisses me off..." and I had to laugh. That is exactly the type of comment I had been happy to miss for four months)
So, we enjoyed Pizza Hut pizza (a relatively high-end restaurant in Asia, as it turns out. I think it is because of the expensive imported melted cheese) and also enjoyed some movies - we saw both the Star Trek movie (highly recommend) and the Terminator prequel. Both were good and fun to escape into for a bit.
Shawn left first, flying out of Hong Kong Saturday morning. My own flight home was not until Tuesday morning, and I decided there was not a lot to do in Hong Kong by myself for those 3 days, so I took a high-speed ferry, called a hydrofoil, about 45 minutes away to the OTHER Special Autonomous Region of china, called Macau. Macau is owned and run by Portugal, having been an original Portugese settlement back in the day. I thought it was very fitting to begin and end this trip in areas of the world speaking the same language - and indeed, it was really cool to see chinese and portugese languages everywhere - on traffic signs, on churches, etc. Macau is also "Asian Vegas," home to numerous casinos such as the MGM Grand, the Venetian, Wynn, and of course, Casino Lisboa, which commands the skyline with its golden color and lotus-like flower shape. I went to the Casino Lisboa twice, and though I didn't win big, I enjoyed good free coffee and was entertained for hours. The local favorite, by the way, is a game called Baccarat, a game in which only the Player or the Dealer wins, and sitting at the table one can bet on either for the win. Two or three cards are dealt to each the Player and the Dealer, which are then summed up. (Face cards are zero, everything else face value) and only the first power of the total (the "ones" power; to the immediate left of the decimal point) of the total is taken. The higher number wins. So, a 2+9=11, and the first power is 1, which is very low. The highest possible would be 9, for example: 10+9=19, the first power of which is 9.
Anyway, that is what I played except for a little three card poker, but those tables had minimums that were too rich for my blood. What did make it more fun is that we were using Hong Kong dollars, which are about 7 times the US dollar, so for example a high-rolling bet of $300 felt like a lot more than the ~14.35 it is in USD.
I then spent 30 hours in airports and airplanes to get home on Tuesday, June 9 - a day I lived twice, actually, due to crossing the international dateline Easternly. (One might say I travelled back in time, crossing the dateline as I did.) My lovely mother picked me up at Great Falls International late that night, and now I am resting and relaxing before organizing my summer plans.
Thanks for enjoying my blog! Sorry I did let it get away from me at times... I look forward to sharing some stories in person next time we meet!
Enjoy your day, and take care.
Love,
Justina
