Computer Breakdown

I have some sad news, well sad for me. My barely 7-month old new laptop has decided to break down on me. I think that I might need to get a brand new hard drive! For those of you who have seen me when my computer has broken in the past, its not as bad as it was. I have a nice computer in the office that I can use, so it should be ok until I get the thing fixed. But that means no pictures uploaded for now. Sorry folks! I did learn some interesting things this weekend though:

• I need to work on balancing myself on one arm
• The movie theater in IFC tower serves hot buttered popcorn AND hot caramel corn!
• It can go below 50 degrees in Hong Kong and not having central heat sucks
• HK people have no idea what a "potluck" dinner means

And thats just happened within the past few days! Its been a fun weekend of eating really good food and trying to stay warm. The 50s might not sound cold to most of you, but here, where are the buildings are made of concrete and there is no insulation, its hard to make heat stick anywhere. I'm just grateful that I have a space heater and a lot of quilts. I hope that when my guests show up within the next 2 weeks that things warm up a little bit!

Happy Year of the Rat! (Kung Hay Fat Choi!)

Adventures in Knitting and Hot Yoga (Not at the Same Time)

The excitement has begun to build this week to the start of teaching again on Monday. Preparing for the semester to begin, while finding more things to do has kept me fairly busy this past week. Sunday was spent in Central at the bookstore and taking a yoga class. Now I have to thank Vira for introducing me to the "hot yoga" concept; its basically yoga done in a large sauna, and it feels great! You get really sweaty and stinky, but it makes you more flexible than usual, and its relaxing for the muscles. The class was really good, and so was the instructor, so I might go back and sign up for 3 month-unlimited class deal. I have to think about it for a while longer. Rose and I then went to the best bookstore in HK, after a nice long shower. Borders has nothing when compared to PageOne! I found a great new journal and a new historical biography to read. Just some more things to keep me busy.

The next day I helped my friend Greg move from his apartment in Wong Tai Sin to Tin Shui Wai, the next town over from Tuen Mun, my town. I think that I threw my shoulders out of whack because the next day, my back ached in muscles that I didn't know I had! That's what I get for doing intense yoga and moving boxes within 2 days! We also met up that evening with friends I haven't seen in about a year, Jessica and Kenny. They are a very happy couple that could be possibly moving to Shanghai soon, because Kenny is a commercial pilot. Maybe I can finally get some cheaper airfare now that I know some one in the industry. We spent a pleasant evening walking around Yuen Long and having desert. I got the most delicious mango cheesecake! All in all, a very pleasant weekend. This week, classes have started back up again, so I should have something more interesting to report by the end.

Holy Crap Fire! AGAIN!

So remember that time I told you that there was a forest fire on the hills in Tuen Mun? Guess what? It happened again!!! This time it was a much larger fire, but also further away from the school. It was also in the middle of the afternoon, so my pictures turned out much better than before. In one of them, you can kind of see the helicopter that is dropping water on it. That's what winter is like here, dry, with a lot of chances of forest fires! A lot of the parkland is being burnt up, which will increase the chances of mudslides come monsoon season. So I thought that I should post some pictures of it, so everyone can see how not close I came to a firey death...again.