This one's for you Matty...

Ok so Matty (my friend from Penn who has been graciously showing me all the hot spots in Hong Kong) yelled at me yesterday for the dearth of posts on my blog, so this one is dedicated to him :)

Yesterday my roommate Maxine (a lovely lass from Orlando, FL) and I moved into our new apt. This involved moving all of our stuff from the hotel on Kowloon side to Sheung Wan on Hong Kong Island. Seeing as we are girls and apparently have no form of self discipline when it comes to clothes, we had WAY too much crap and made quite a spectacle of ourselves to our neighbors. By the way, we are the only gwailos (white people) in our building, and it seems the whole neighborhood! We finally made it and had to clean up the whole place, but now it looks quite snazy if I do say so myself :) We went to get the locks changed today, which was an ordeal in itself, obtaining directions from the locals--I enjoy living amongst the locals, but maybe they do not share my sentiments?? hahahaha Anyways it turned out ok, and the lock guy even gave us tips on local restaurants. Our real estate agent told him we were teachers so that we would get a discount, which was very kind of him. I think Maxine and I are going to invite the agent to our housewarming party, as he has been so helpful in getting us settled. PLUS that means we just MUST have a party soon :)

Today I visited the school where I will be teaching, a private Christian elementary school called Kowloon Rhenish. Two of the local english teachers showed me around the school, which was very cute with hello kitty type stickers everywhere. They also gave me a Winnie the Pooh notebook, which was sweet (Pooh is HUGE over here). Then we went to a western lunch with the Principal of the school, who ended up treating all of us. She was quite interesting, having studied in New Orleans many years ago of all places. The only potential point of contention is the fact that it is not a secular school, and I am obviously not Christian. It kind of hit home when we said prayers before lunch today. When they asked me if I was religious, I hastily told them that my mother was Christian and my father was Jewish, so I was very tolerant of all....a fairly diplomatic answer I hope! This prompted the Principal to tell me about how Chinese values were similar to Jewish ones (family emphasis etc)...to which I just smiled and nodded hahahhaa

Well I am off to a night on the town with some new friends and some old--I found out a friend from high school in Portugal is now studying here, and a friend from Penn is visiting. It's such a small world and I love it!
Hope to put up pics soon w internet in my own place, and hope to talk to you all soon! Big kiss!