nĭ hăo

Today was interesting to say the least. Not only did I decide to trust a total stranger to lead me to my class, which backfired... But I learned to speak some extremely basic mandarin ie: "ni hao" (hello), and some other harder than they should be basic terms. I actually got accepted into the class even though I was 3rd on the waitlist, I guess after an hour and a half of being tossed into the middle of chinese-speaking madness some people decided to drop out (ie: me in the crazy economics class yesterday).

I sent off a million postcards today too (okay, maybe more like ten... I felt like I was running out of things to say-not usually a problem for me), and then re-visited the extremely crowded campus gym where I decided to be a little adventurous and try out the rowing machine... I have a strange feeling I'll be paying the price for that tomorrow. The workout was followed by the blandest food I have yet to have on campus; grilled chicken and cheddar panini (had to be forced down with ketchup and mustard, weird).

Following the worst meal in HK, came the best part of the day; a bunch of us booked our flight to Phillipines for the Chinese New Year break! We got a round trip flight to Manila for 200$US, soooo excited! We fly out on the evening of Thursday Feb 11th, and come back the morning of Wednesday Feb 17th. I miss zero classes, and we get 5 days and 6 nights in the phillipines, so sick. We're trying to figure out where we can get to a nice beach to spend a few days and nights, so if anyone has any good info, do tell.

Of course everyone headed to unibar tonight, where I was pretty bad-ass and drank diet cokes all night. I also had my first ever game of darts, where I won for our team and was actually the dart master lol. Needless to say, I will now be spending most of my time and money on that stupid automated dart machine... Ah well, better than drugs and booze I guess. My partner Charles (from Paris) was very impressed with my performance. He signed me for a 5 year contract as his partner. nbd.

My room is humid as hell again, and my roomate is really not a fan of the fan (literally), and one of my friends here offered to let me use his spare sheet so that I don't have to sleep under the camel wool anymore. sooo good. Time to test this baby out, bonsoir =)