hong kong and beyond

our last day in hong kong and we'll spend the next two nights on trains en route to xian to see the terra cotta warriors...yes, we suck, james! : ) i'm excited to see them and know i'll be enthralled with the whole place. and now, we have a contact there who'll meet us...a friend of our new friends in mongolia! hooray! but, hong kong has been a great reprieve from censored life in china. it's funny cause all the book stores have tons of books on china that are banned in mainland china. we bought a few and hope to read them before going through immigration in beijing... we'll have to ditch our buddhist/dalai lama stuff before heading into tibet, too. but alas, it has been nice discovering hong kong...it's really a fabulous city with tons to do and see and ...buy! ee gads...we were looking for a small pocket computer where we could word process blog entries and connect to wireless cafes, but it was all too confusing so we opted out. i did get a nifty double lens attachment to my current lens though. just screwing one on makes it more of a wide angle lens and by putting both on turns it into more of a macro...pretty cool, so i'll have fun playing with that! christy's out buying snacks and food for the upcoming train rides as our 24 hour trip here we were sadly under prepared and resorted to eating train food. now we're gonna rock it out... : ) yesterday we took a ferry over to macau to see the island. we only had about half a day there, but walked around, went to a museum and saw some local sights. there was this interesting phenomenon of "sheet meat" as christy calls it...i guess it's just a huge, piece of paper size, sheet of beef/chicken/pork jerky. they were offering samples and of course we got sucked in. but they also made lovely cookies and ginger candies, etc. really fun to sample things and we wound up buying some as a host gift for our friend in xian, and, of course, for ourselves to enjoy on the long train ride. we're leaving soon and heading back into china though for another 3 weeks....including tibet, so i'm not sure how much contact i'll have via internet. i hope you're all well and everyone's looking forward to the school year starting! for me, it's weird not to be at an in-service sooomewhere...but i'm adjusting... : ) lots of love, j