hei se de j-e-l-l-o

week one of school is done and we're starting to move on to numbers and colors. shit is getting very difficult. today we tried to use complete sentences in both the question and answer form and it was really hard. my classmates (your buddies) also struggled. i tried to practice with some cantonese speaking friends who also know mandarin and they were either messing with me really badly or i was way off. apparently dong is not pronounced dang but more like dawng. xi huan means to like, by the way. if you want to say i like yellow, you'd say wo xi huan huang se. huan huang is some hard shit! its pronounced like hwaan hu-ong. back to back is almost like a tongue twister. we asked our teacher if there were any chinese tongue twisters and she was looked at us like we were a bunch of jackasses. i am starting to understand the way things work though. today i learned that when you ask if the book is red, you actually say - is the book a red book? special prizes go to any mandarin speakers who can write how to ask if the book is red. you show offs!

yesterday i was walking around after class with our buds just wandering and we found this place near my apt serving tortoise jelly. what the fuck is tortoise jelly? Here's what it looks like....



grody. that shit is nasty and it tastes as gross as it looks. we added honey and it didn't do shit. it tasted like bad cough medicine. according to some sources it's good for the skin and to get toxins out of the body. i'll keep the toxins as long as i don't have to eat this shit. there was a girl in the restaurant who was drinking some tea (who knows what kind) but she was literally holding her nose while she was chugging it. sweet. she made a face similar to mine when i was tasting this crap so i'm assuming she was drinking something similar. it's like a face/face/same/same rule or something. same same but different, maybe?

a new hong kong brand store opened across the street with all kinds of gear for men and women and decided to have a pre-opening blastoff sale. if you buy 3 items, 40% off everything. that's right bitches. i may or may not have spent an hour in there after my black jello catastrophe. i did pretty well. also met some new employees in the neighborhood. overall it was pretty good. although according to maxx, xmas time is another big 70% off time for hk. in that regard i'm thinking about getting a part time job. what can i do or sell under the table that will bring some quick cash? tutoring is the best idea as of now but i dont know if i can do that without a visa.

ive been downloading like mad these past few days. shows i have on my computer to watch:

• house
• law and order, svu
• chuck
• two and a half men
• big bang theory
• how i met your mother
• worst week
• entourage
• californication
• without a trace
• csi: miami
• csi
• law and order

was i looking for an excuse to use bullet points? maybe. will i watch all of these shows by the time each have another episode? probably. should i be out doing sweet hk stuff and not watching stupid american shows? definitely. whatever, sometimes things are slow. sometimes they aren't. this weekend maxx wants to take me to aberdeen to eat some funky fish and go for a drive. and and his sister phoebe (ni hao lau g!) wants to take me somewhere cool too.

as a final note, i have a long weekend next week (thurs-sun). any recommendations on somewhere to go? tokyo is obvious, bangkok is easy, but i'm open to other suggestions. i'm looking for cheap and easy to see in 4 days or less. shibuya!