stolen moments under my umbrella.

i completely forgot to mention that on my way home from shenzhen last friday, the sky opened and the ocean fell out of it... as i was walking home from the station, a lady grabbed my elbow and asked me if she could share my umbrella as far as the parking lot. turns out, her husband works at the university and she was picking up the car. as one good turn deserves another, i guess, she drove me home! so nice not to have to struggle up the hill in the pouring rain.
ugh, the heat is back. spen the weekend doing some mad sightseeing around town with yo-chan. he got here saturday afternoon, so i went to meet him after class. i was hoping he'd be up for the night markets and maybe even some street food, but he seemed pretty tired and a bit shell-shocked so we hit the turkish restaurant up on knutsford terrace, then walked around the avenue of stars on the sea wall. he even brought me the ceramic beer cups that i made when i was in japan in june! they are.... very much like my other work.... interesting....unique.
sunday, we went for dimsum, which was somewhat more successful than usual, seeing as how he could pretty much make out what all of the foodstuffs were on the menu. nice to go places with someone literate. checked out the art museum - HK$5 for students!!! then took the travelator up almost the entire way (i've never gone the whole distance!) and walked down through soho and the peel street market. took the tram up to the peak - had to stand the whole way and thought i was gonna go flying backwards a few times. only stayed at the top for a few minutes, cause as usual, every tourist in town was up there. then just went down to lan kwai fong for thai/malaysian food at the exact restaurant that erin and i ate at the first time i was ever in hong kong!
yesterday, we took the jetfoil over to macau..... hot..... so hot.... what a weird place. not like i expected at all. the portuguese influence was really apparent in the signage and architecture, but i only heard three people speak it all day. we walked past all the giant casinos on the way to the central area, full of old cobbled streets.
saw the facade of st. john's cathedral, an old fortress and got good and dehydrated before hitting the sands casino in the mandarin oriental. ooh. good times! i decided that my limit was HK$100 - and actually stuck to it! yoshihito didn't grow up poker or casino games, although i suspect he might be able to teach me a thing or two about pachinko. i figured that roulette was easy to understand, as were the slots. in the end, i came out HK$800 ahead, cause my number came up at roulette, and he lost HK$500. i bought him mcdonalds. he's a big boy, he'll survive. back in kowloon, we went over to the temple street night markets to marvel at the extensive array of crap for sale.
as my mom would say, haivng guests is fun, but sending them home is just as good! yesterday, went to my classes, napped and didn't do anything new or cultural. it was so goooood! today was much the same.