Six Years!

Yesterday was Matt's and my 6 year anniversary. It is unbelievable, it has gone by so fast! The weather was not that great, so we decided it was a good day to take the ferry over to Lamma Island to play some Scrabble at the Bookworm Cafe. It was a lot of fun. Matt beat me....that makes twice in a row! I can't believe it! My mental agility has definitely decreased over the last couple of years. I used to trounce him without even trying. I blame it on the multiple sclerosis! (Or maybe my brain has turned to applesauce after leading a life of leisure in Hong Kong for the past two years...)

We decided to be completely lazy all day, so we ordered pizza at home instead of going out to dinner to celebrate. We watched the end of Six Feet Under. I was crying so hard when they showed Nate's funeral. Somehow it reminded me of my Dad dying...maybe cause he was a forty-ish year old man that died suddenly and unexpectedly and left a daughter behing? Not sure. Anyway, I was crying, and ended up saying, "Matt, you had better not die until after I do. I could't handle it." Very morbid for an anniversary night, don't you think?

Aside from that, it was a great day. I like relaxing...Hong Kong seems so stressful after being on my yoga retreat! I am lucky to have such a great boyfriend...it isn't every man that would agree to go to an organic, vegetarian cafe on a random island to play Scrabble.

A Few More Photos from Thailand

We spent a lot of time on the beach, but I was a good girl and wore tons of sunscreen and a hat!



Meagan at Yoga Thailand



Meagan Relaxing in the Bungalow

Our Teacher

Since Kelly and I were beginners, we were lucky enough to basically have our own teacher. Neil was awesome! I am so happy that he was our teacher, because sometimes Ashtanga teachers and practitioners are very achievement-oriented. That is my one big gripe with ashtanga yoga...I feel that yoga is one thing in my life which should most definitely NOT be achievement-oriented.

Neil helped us alot in our postures, but was also very open to answeting any questions we had about yoga. He has lead an interesting life. He has travelled all over India and had a yoga studio in Beijing before moving to Thailand. We were sad to leave him!

We had Thai massages every day. They are so cheap that it is affordable! Yoga Thailand has an open air, covered platform like thing that they use for the massages. It was great because you could hear and see the ocean during the massage. I definitely needed the massages and the steam room, because I was unbelievabley sore the first few days there. My hamstrings and my upperback were so stiff! I think the massage ladies got a kick out of us, cause we both were screaming when they massaged our hamstrings. I think they pressed harder to make us scream, cause they were cackling away the whole time!

Thai Cooking Class

The only time we left Yoga Thailand was to go to a cooking class in Chaweng. It was excellent, and very professional. We all made our meals from scratch by our selves, and got our own individual wok, mortar and pestel and cutting board. The food was great, but you need quite a lot of spices and I am not sure if I am patient enough to make food like that on a regular basis. One of the best parts was that the teacher explained all the ingredients to us, as well as what substitutes we could use in our own countries. We ended up making WAY too much food though!

The Food at Yoga Thailand

The food at yoga Thailand was SO DELICIOUS! I bought the cookbook, so hopefully some day when I have a kitchen I can make a few recipes. Everything was vegetarian and organic, and it was so delicious. Even Kelly loved it, and she is a junk food addict. It's always nice to have someone else thinking of balanced meals and then making them for you at regular intervals, with out you having to think about it. It really keeps you on an even keel emotionally. Healthy food makes a difference! Plus, it is nice to eat as a group. I hate eating alone. I will be happy when I have a family some day and we can all eat together.



The Buffet Line



Some Yogis Eating Lunch

Yoga Thailand

Kelly and I spent all of last weekend at yoga retreat in Thailand. It was amazing! I have never felt so relaxed in my adult life! I have to admit, I was slightly nervous before we left...the web site said you needed to bring everything yourself, even towels and shamboo and herbal tea. Plus, I didn't know was sort of crazy, hard core yoga people would be there...also, I hadn't done Ashtanga yoga for a long time and it is quite rigorous!

I shouldn't have worried, cause it ended up being the most amazing trip...Kelly and I never ran out of things to talk about (amazingly)and we met lots of cool people. We were new to Ashtanga, at least compared to the other people there, so we basically had a private teacher. I definitely learned alot while I was there.

I think one of the reasons I felt so healthy and relaxed is because of the schedule we followed there. We were up by 7:30 for meditation (which involved sitting silently in a room for 15 minutes) then did yoga till 9:30. After that it was breakfast, which we ate communally, then Kelly and I would head to the beach. After the beach we headed back to the shala for a communal lunch, then back to the beach. We had a Thai massage every afternoon and a quick trip to the sauna, then a shower and dinner with everyone. After dinner we would watch movies about various aspects of yoga, then we would have another meditation time. We exhausted and asleep by 9 pm every night! It was a nice schedule also because we never had to make any decisions all day....that can be stressful, even on vacation!

End of Semester Celebration Dinner

My Chinese class is over! I am actually really sad....I know, I know, I complained endlessly about how long the commute was and how boring it was to sit in class for hours every day. I am really happy that I don't have to commute every day anymore, but I am sad because my class was filled with really good people! They are all so nice, I think we really bonded. We definitely bonded much more than my class in Beijing did.

To celebrate, we went to a dumpling restaurant in Hung Hom. It was in an area called Whampoa Gardens, which is a really huge housing/shopping/entertainment area. I had never been there before. It is amazing, I feel like there is still more to explore in Hong Kong...too bad I am leaving now! The dinner was good, at a place called Din Tai Fung. They had dumplings of every type, but they were sort of a Cantonese-style take on dumplings. Most dumplings I have had have been Beijing style. The outer wrapping of the dumpling was thinner and more dry, and all the food was less oily than it would be if it were Northern style. I definitely want to bring Matt to the restaurant, it was good and cheap!

One nice thing about my class is that it was very international. (This was also a bad thing, because Korean and Japanese students learn characters at a much quicker rate than Westerners.) I learned so much about Korea and Japan and the lifestyles there...very interesting!


I am going to miss Kelly so much when I move...we spend every day together, and text message eachother all day if we are not together...It is sort of like in elementary school when you have a friend that you are "attached at the hip" with. I think that is pretty rare for an adult friendship, but I guess in Hong Kong we have a lot of time on our hands!

The Last Book Club!

Last week we had our last book club! It was officially disbanded because the main organizer, Fiona, is about to have a baby and no one else volunteered to pick up the slack. It is probably for the best...half the people in the book club didn't even like to read, and they never read any of the books. They just showed up for the food! I have to admit though, I didn't read the book for this month...I was too busy with finals and preparing to move from Hong Kong.

Only a few people showed up for the last book club meeting, but it was a lot of fun. It was at Kelly's house and she made fajitas and brownies, it was delicious! I am starting to get really sad about leaving Hong Kong. I have met a lot of nice people here!

I lost it all!

Well...my upbeat, positive attitude of yesterday morning didn't last very long. When I was writing my blog, I realized that all of Dad's pictures weren't on my computer. (The one I had posted was in a separate folder from the other pictures.) Not only are his pictures not there, but also none of the pictures that Matt and I had taken the whole previous year. When my computer crashed this December, Matt had taken it down to a data recovery place, and then put the recovered data back onto my computer. He told me to check to see if everything was there, and I thought I did...but I guess I just saw that some of the pictures were there, but not all of them. I had alot of pictures on the desktop for some reason. Maybe I just saw those and assumed all of the pictures were there? I don't know. It is my fault, I should have done thorough check. I am devastated, more so about Dad's pictures than mine. I still have like 75 years to travel and take more pictures, but he is dead! So, that set me off on a crying episode and I was very sad all day, as realized anopther part of Dad had slipped away. Matt was great though, I am so glad to have him in my life. We went and played scrabble all day and he let me pick a restuarant that I always want to go to and he doesn't: The Bookworm on Lamma Island, which serves only whole grain, organic vegetarian food. They are so creative though, that is why I love to go there! The serve such interesting food.

Anyway, on a more positive note...I found I was accepted back into Tufts, so looks like Matt and I will be heading to Boston this Fall. Expect to see us back in the US permanently!

Another year gone by....

As of today, it has been exactly 2 years since Dad died. It is crazy to think how different my life was just two years ago! I was a happy, blissful child then...But I definitely feel better about it than I did last year at this time. Matt is still asleep, but I don't think he has to worry about me throwing a knife at him this year!

So what do I have planned for today? Well, it is the Ching Ming Festival today, which is a public holiday in Hong Kong. Chinese people usually honor their dead realitves on this holiday by sweeping their gravestones and burning paper money. Dad doesn't have a gravestone, but I think I will walk over to the same place I did last year to burn some colored papers. I know it isn't a tradition in my culture, but it just seems like a nice way to mark the day.

Even though it has been two years, I actually still think about Dad all the time. He had such a huge influence on my life, so even here in Hong Kong where there isn't as much to remind me of him, I think about him all the time. I also have been thinkng about him because I have been gathering and preparing the paperwork to do the final taxes of his estate. I will be SO GLAD when that is over! It won't be till this summer though, cause I have to meet with my tax advisor when I go home in June. This process is neverending!

Windows of the World

After the night of karaoke and Liar's Dice, Matt and I spent the night in the hotel and then went to Windows of the World in Shenzhen. It is an amusement park that lets people "tour the world in a single day"...this is good, cause it is hard for Chinese people to ever leave China...Haha! It was actually pretty fun. There were rollercoasters and other rides, but every time I got on a roller coaster I was like, "Oh my god! I am on a roller coaster in China! Oh no, hope it doesn't crash!" They also had an indoor ski slope with real snow. I am not kidding! Matt and I are going to do it next time.

After the amusement park we went and had dinner. I had such a great time speaking Mandarin! I feel like I can really communicate now...Matt said it was like being with his coworkers who speak Chinese, he didn't have to think about anything! We also went to get massages at the Carnival Club and then headed home. Now I am so excited for when Matt and I travel in China. We are going to the Xinjiang Province, and it should be amazing...

Hookers and Whiskey

This weekend Matt and I went to China to have dinner with the owner's and employees of a factory that Matt works with. It was a great opportunity for me to practice my Mandarin! If you ever want an ego boost, go to China...all they tell you there is how beautiful you are, how clever you are and how amazing it is that you can speak Mandarin so well. (I DON'T speak mandarin very well, but I think Chinese people are so shocked to see a white girl speaking Chinese that they think anything you say is brilliant.)

The dinner was delicious: standard Guangdong style food with lots of veggies and seafood. Delicious! After dinner we all went up to a room in the hotel to play Liar's Dice and do karaoke. When we got in there, the servers brought in a whole bunch of pitchers of whiskey (to be mixed with water...eewww!!)and plates of snack food. Then....the girls came in. A whole line of girls dressed like hookers came in and stood at the front of the room, with badges around their neck that had their number on them. All of Matt's coworkers were men, except for two women. All the men sat there and looked at the girls and picked ones from the line that they wanted. I thought the embarrassing, degrading situation was over, but then they brought out another string of girls. More of them were picked, and then another string of girls was brought in. It seemed to never end! Some of the girls were
blocking the TV that the Karaoke was on, and the men yelled for the girls to move...which seemed even worse, cause it was like the girls were SO inconsequential that they were less important than the karaoke which no one was even singing. I went to the bathroom, and when I came back, a girl was in the way of where I had been sitting with Matt...a factory worker literally pushed the girl out of my way! I felt very sad, the girls were treated like dirt.

Matt was completely used to a nd comfortable with the whole process...usually he gets a girl, which I think is yucky. He said he tried not to get the girl at first, but it was so awkward with the rest of the men that he decided he should just get one. Hmmm...then he said it was no big deal because they are just there to play Liar's Dice and sing karaoke if the men get bored. This may be true, BUT there is still the fact that the girls will have sex with you if you pay them money at the end. I was playing Liar's Dice, and the girls were really good. It was my first time so I was bad. Plus, I was wearing jeans and a t shirt, and they were dressed in tight, sparkly outfits. They were overly nice (of course) to the men, pouring their drinks, laughing at their jokes, leaning on them, cuddling with them. The whole thing was so intimate...like having a girlfriend that is your servant and who thinks that everything you say in brilliant. On girl kept picking up Matt's dice cause he was drunk and kept dropping the dice. I was like, "Don't do that. He is a drunk ass, he can pick up his own stupid dice." It is a dangerous situation: really drunk men, girls that are dressed in very revealing clothes that are really nice to you and yet desperate. The men would like, kiss the girls on the cheeks and keep their hands on their thighs. Yuck! Not that I think Matt would ever do anything...but damn, how easy can they make it?

I found myself in love with the two men that refused to get girls. This is not to say the whole night was awkward, it was fun actually, and Matt's female coworkers had no problems with it, they were high fiving the girls when they did good in the game. For some reason, this sort of "entertainment" seems a lot worse than men going to a strip club. That seems like more of a performance, less hands on. This was like girls being yor girlfriend for a night. That is a LOT WORSE! Matt said no one usually takes the girls home or to their hotel room, but frankly I don't believe that at all. We saw one of Matt's coworkers the day later and he said that after we left, the atmosphere changed alot and they brought in more girls, so he left. I was like, alright, what about the two female coworkers? They didn't seem to care, but I think they just don't know anything different.

I am all for cultural sensitivity, but there is a line, right? Just cause you know that it is a cultural norm for people to do a certain thing doesn't mean that you have to like it. BUT, that being said, we all saw Memoirs of a Geisha...it didn't bother me so much in that movie. Anyway, enough of me ranting...

Matt told me a long time ago, out of the blue, that he felt bad for expat women here because the expat men are so sleazy. Kelly's husband told her the same thing. Thank God I trust Matt so much.