Most Wonderful Place on Earth

HK is so great. Seriously. I love it! I wish we were here longer than a week. Despite having only lived here 3 years too many years ago, it still feels like home. It's been so nice to be spoiled by family! Especially after being alone in Korea for a week. So I am obviously enjoying my time here so far! My family has been so great and are taking such good care of us!

Yesterday we got to hang out with my cousin Gabriel for the first part of the day. He took me to get lenses for the frame for my glasses, then took us to a mall which I don't remember the name of. There are way too many malls here in hk to keep track of all of them! But we were in the mong kok area. Had lunch at the food court at the mall- peppered steak rice-INCREDIBLE! It was the favorite food last time we came back here. The food courts here are still 100x better than the any food in utah. Quite depressing, huh? But after the lunch, we ate more food and got us some dessert. Mango pancakes (like a cream filled crepe with mangos), taro creme brûlée kinda thing(SO good), and tapioca with mangos and pomelos in evaporated milk. And we let Andrea try durian for the first time. Haha! No, sorry durian fans, she didn't like it.

After lunch, Gabriel left us to let us shop around a bit. We met up with my aunt and she took us to Stanley Bay and the market there. Andrea had fun shopping for souvenirs. The view was quite nice despite it being cloudy, afterall, anywhere next to the ocean can't be too ugly. We went to the Elements Mall and net up with my uncle and cousin Tiffany for some dinner- shanghai food! I love xiao long boa (shanghai dumplings)! We had a bunch of other shanghai dim sums as well that we're so good! We headed up to ICC after dinner to look at the view from the 118th floor, but unfortunately it was raining and foggy so we couldn't see a thing. We went a back down and shopped a bit at Zara and h&m. Then went to see a movie, the Big Wedding. By the time we got home, Andrea and I were completely pooped.

Today we got up earlyish to go to the big Buddha. We took the crystal cabin cable car there, which had a clear glass bottom so you could see down while you were riding the cable car. Quite neat. The ride was fun, but after we got off, it was so hot and humid! The weatherman predicted scattered thunderstorms all day long, so we went prepared with umbrellas. However, we didn't use them for rain, but for the bright and hot sun instead! The view is so pretty from the top of the buddha. I love it there! You could see misty mountains and islands in the distance. After that, we headed back on the bus and met up with aunt Mary. She took us shopping at wholesale stores. First stop-scarves! They had hundreds of selections and Andrea and I each bought way too many. They were all like $5 each! How could we not?! Unfortunately utah doesn't have such cheap and awesome stuff. Or maybe it's fortunate or I'd be a lot more broke from going shopping all the time.

After all the scarves, we went to some clothing stores and got a few things as well as a jewelry store. I seriously bought way too many things, aunt Mary was too good at shopping and picked out lots of cute things for me! Plus she kinda paid for it all, so how could I not have bought too much? Ha ha. That was super fun though. We went for dinner at a shanghai noodle place which was of course delicious, then went back up to ICC. This time the view was much better! HK really is quite a beautiful city, especially at night with all the twinkling lights of all the tall buildings and skyscrapers. After taking lots of pictures, we met up with aunt Vivian and uncle Stephen to head home. Boy, it's been a busy trip so far! I'm loving it!