Week

Hi! I just got home from babysitting a bunch of seriously adorable kids. One nine-year-old girl, loud and highly-strung, one seven-year-old girl, totally mature, willing, and not clingy, and a four-year-old boy who was smiley and cuddly and gorgeous.

And I got $40 off them! Or off their parents at least. Nice mum, really chatty. It’s also seriously great that I live across the road from them half the time. I think they liked me, and seeing as I’m conveniently located hopefully their mum’ll have me back. I liked them, the sweet things.

This week was the first week back at school, unfortunately. Boring boring boring with a little bit of interesting thrown in. Thanks for saving my life, geography. Speaking of school, I also got some bad news about my subject choices for next year this week, which I may or may not remember to tell you about in a later post. I don’t have a lot of time to write about that at the moment, because it is a long story, but I can tell you it’s all sorted out fine. Not great, but fine.

The reason I don’t have a lot of time is because I’m off to a girls’ night in with some friends of my mum’s. And mine? I never know if it’s appropriate to call adults my friends. I think it is. Is it?

We’ll be doing some craft and eating some food and drinking some champagne. Or they will be, at least. I’m taking my badge-maker, which I haven’t used in a while, so that will be great. Lots of fun.

I’m re-reading The Book Thief by Markus Zusak, one of my favourite authors. It’s about a little girl in the middle of the second world war. If you haven’t read it, you should. It’s artfully and emotionally brilliant. It’s also narrated by Death, which caters to the inner psychotic within us all.

And just before I go, the most interesting part of my week was getting hit on by a hippy with a uke about ten years older than me. I haven’t been chatted up before. He came up and said hi, complemented my red beret and my taste in sorbet (lemon), and asked what I was doing that night. I was kind of stunned. I thought I was eating my sorbet and wearing my beret pretty inconspicuously. When my parents noticed me talking to him and came over I think he realised how young I was and that I just look old for my age, and he walked away pretty quickly. I thought he was cute. Who wouldn’t want a ukelele-playing bright-colours-wearing boyfriend?

OK, I’m off. Mum gets home soon and then we’re leaving. Sayonara. May hippy boyfriends be with you.

xx
Za.

Blast

This post is more updates from me, which you probably won’t be interested in unless you know me personally. I got lots of positive feedback from strangers on my last post about poverty, which was very nice, and if you’re one of those people thank you so much! It’s nice when stuff like that happens. But on with this post.

It’s the school holidays at the moment in Sydney and the family and I went away for the first week. Guess where we went? HONG FREAKING KONG!!!

It was a complete blast.

We went to loads of markets and malls, along with temples, train stations, Disneyland, and a LOT more. I actually can’t believe how much my parents managed to fit into one week.

As soon as we arrived in the airport everything felt very normal. When I went to America I was like “woah, American accents,” when we went to Egypt I was like “woah, Arabic,” but going to Hong Kong was like “meh, Cantonese.”

I don’t know why – I guess having a parent coming from Hong Kong and loads of Chinese friends means I come fully Asia-prepared. And I did love Hong Kong.

I like going to other countries. It’s nice to experience a whole different culture. And HK is seriously different to Australia, that’s for sure. It actually freaked my older brother out a bit, I think. He definitely didn’t like the lack of English being spoken.

The area around our hotel was broken and dirty, but totally full of life. The community felt a whole lot closer than any community I’ve experienced in Australia. The markets were the same – everybody yelled and laughed and helped each other out, when they weren’t beckoning you towards their stall.

The markets were definitely my favourite part about Hong Kong. Every second street had some sort of market. And I like buying things. A lot. I bought many clothes, an iPod cover, a couple of watches, a purse, a necklace…

My favourite thing I did the whole trip was having my palm read. I’ve always wanted to do that, and it was very cool. I have my doubts about the reliability of palmistry but seeing as the guy (Master Joseph) was pretty accurate I’m willing to believe it has some basis in (unproven) fact.

The only thing I didn’t like about HK was the heat. The humidity in particular. I am NOT a heat person under any circumstances, unless I really want to go swimming, and the humidity in HK is pretty much unbearable. So I was unhappy about that.

I won’t bore you with more HK details because then I would lose your attention, if I haven’t already. I’ll finish up with some other stuff I’ve been doing and then I’ll go.

I have a reunion with my friends from Primary School (capital P capital S) on Saturday!!!! Woooooh!!!!

And that’s it. I gotta go.

xx
Za.