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Published: March 10th 2008
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Well, on saturday I went to the art museum where I spent an extrodinary amount of time, again. There was a special exibit of this guy's that I can't remember the name of. All those flower-and-nature chinese paintings. Anyway, they were really pretty. The modern art section was a sort of hit and miss. I really liked this one where he made these giant oil-painting panels that looked like something out of movies. And these little panels that worked out into a comic strip. It was really neat. I saw these paintings from the 1600s that had pictures of a "hippo" and stuff, and those were quite cool.
After the museum I voted against going to another museum and instead headed over to SoHo. I wandered along the antiques street (Erin, if you read this, I'm not going to have any trouble finding you something with a cow on it. Really). There were some neat things, but nothing that I couldn't buy later in the trip in Beijing. I went to the Man Mo Temple which is dedicated to the gods of war and literature (and a bunch of others). That was really interesting, especially since there was this group
Kids at Man Mo Temple
They helped me understand what was actually going on of kids showing us around the place, and they explained all the stuff that confused me. It was all really cool. This place had these spiraling incense on the roof, and people who put them there have to reserve the space in advance. Their wishes are written on this bit of red paper and tied to the incense, and as it burns, the smoke is supposed to carry their wishes up to the gods. Very cool. Except there was so much smoke in this temple my eyes were all watery by the time I came out. I put some incense around, though (especially in front of the god of Literature. It's supposed to help your studies). Got pictures, which will
eventually go up, I swear.
So, after all of this, I went to the Biggest Escalator in the World, which carried me by a used book store, where I bought a book! It's to replace the ones I finished... which is all three of the other ones. Anyway, it's the third book in the George RR Martin series, which I haven't been able to find in
any used book store in Canada, so it's pretty awesome.
Continuing away from my booky babble... I met up with Michael (cousin), Margie, and Amber (their daughter) by this pizza place, and we walked to a chinese restuarant. Margie ordered everything in cantonese, so I had no idea what was going on. The food was all very good though. They were both very talkative and nice, and we went out for coffee after dinner to talk more. Amber was kind of tired at that point though, so I felt kind of bad. But they headed out around 10:30 and I went home too. It was fun.
Suuuuuunday, I tried to attend a cake-making class, and failed, as the building it is located in apparently doesn't exist. So I had some lunch at this thai food place which was good and went to Mr. Bate's apartment, which was very tiny, but nice. Sarah and Megan, his daughter, and a couple of their friends took me to Ocean Park for the afternoon, which is a pretty cool place.
I saw pandas. They were kind of blocked by the thousands of chinese people, but still awesome. I felt kind of bad for their small living areas though...
After the pandas we took a cable car across the mountain to the other side of the park. By the way, they don't have cotton candy or anything like that here. No, they have Mr. Squid. Little boxes of squid you eat as a treat at amusment parks, apparently. Strange... Anyway, went on lots of rides and they were all very fun, except the last one made me kind of dizzy. Then we went back to Mr. Bate's place and they had me over for a group dinner thing they were having. Which was very nice of them. Anyway, after dinner, I headed back (and took the Star Ferry across to Kowloon!) and passed out in my hostel. Very glad I have earplugs, as the music was playing loudly above again, as it has been every night.
Anyway, today I'm checking out of my hostel and meeting the tour group at the hotel. Sooo, going to do that now. Bye everyone!
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Amie
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Wait you found Mr. Martin's book in english? o.O