Dear Friends and Family,
I am home safe and I would like to fill you in here on my top 5 adventures in Asia.
I need to go take a rest now because I was awake for 48 before I finally got home.
(Going to the bar until 2 hours before my flight left wasnt the best idea once I was airborn but we can talk about that when I get up)
I will post real soon!
~Rita
Thursday, August 9, 2007
Friday, August 3, 2007
No high rise buildings in sight..thank God
Hello friends and Family,
I am in Krabi Thailand! It is a small area off the coast of the south western part of Thailand. I had to take a boat to get to my hotel! It is really beautiful and Desie and I are doing very little. I think I am going to go take a nap soon. WHAT A LIFE!!! THe beach is on the other side of the bay and that is fantastic as well.
I will be home Wednesday night in Boston.
I will try and post again before then but the electricty goes on an off and most of the time the internet doesnt work.
Miss you,
love,
Rita
I am in Krabi Thailand! It is a small area off the coast of the south western part of Thailand. I had to take a boat to get to my hotel! It is really beautiful and Desie and I are doing very little. I think I am going to go take a nap soon. WHAT A LIFE!!! THe beach is on the other side of the bay and that is fantastic as well.
I will be home Wednesday night in Boston.
I will try and post again before then but the electricty goes on an off and most of the time the internet doesnt work.
Miss you,
love,
Rita
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
Technical Difficulties!!!
Dear ALL!!
I miss you so much!
The last three times I tried to sign on to the blog it was only in Chinese and I couldnt figure out how to post. I just figured it out so here you go.
I was in ShangHai since Saturday morning and flew from there to Beijing this morning.
My professor is lending me his computer to use so that I can save a few Chinese dollars.
Today we went to the forbidden city and it was great!
Tomorrow we go to the Great Wall! I am very excited!
I am sleepy but happy.
I was sick last week with the flu (Hong Kong Flu according to the doctor but just the flu all the same)
Desie and I will be leaving for Thailand on Friday morning.
I need to get to sleep now I have been up since 5am and it is almost 10:30pm.
I have tons of photos but they take so long to upload!
I will try and add one of us from dinner tonight having a Pecking Duck Feast in Beijing.
Love,
Rita
I miss you so much!
The last three times I tried to sign on to the blog it was only in Chinese and I couldnt figure out how to post. I just figured it out so here you go.
I was in ShangHai since Saturday morning and flew from there to Beijing this morning.
My professor is lending me his computer to use so that I can save a few Chinese dollars.
Today we went to the forbidden city and it was great!
Tomorrow we go to the Great Wall! I am very excited!
I am sleepy but happy.
I was sick last week with the flu (Hong Kong Flu according to the doctor but just the flu all the same)
Desie and I will be leaving for Thailand on Friday morning.
I need to get to sleep now I have been up since 5am and it is almost 10:30pm.
I have tons of photos but they take so long to upload!
I will try and add one of us from dinner tonight having a Pecking Duck Feast in Beijing.
Love,
Rita
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
I HAVE A PLACE TO LIVE IN SEPTEMBER!!!
FYI -
I just heard from my friend Erin that everything will work out for us to live together in September.
Thats all for now!
Love,
Rita
I just heard from my friend Erin that everything will work out for us to live together in September.
Thats all for now!
Love,
Rita
From my computer I can see almost 2.5 dozen high rise buildings
Dear Friends and Family,
Today was a quiet one. The constant action has finally caught up with me and I needed to take a 'mental health day' so that I can make it through the rest of my trip. I tried to just take the morning off but since I have been sleeping poorly (On a mattress three inches think) and that the new food hasnt really been sitting well I have been tired. And if you have known me a while you know that without sleep I am pretty much useless.
Hi Sharon! Yes all of the buildings are air conditioned. My room is also air conditioned. Since I am here for just a week the price of the air is included in the room rate but if I was a student here I would have to pay about 1.3-1.4 HongKongDollars (Which is about 20 cents) per hour. I dont think I would have made it this far without sleep without the air conditioner to help.
Today is Wednesday (Night) and the conference goes until Friday at noon where we will have a closing ceremony and dinner. Saturday we pack up and leave the student dorms for the air port around 5:30 am to go to MainLand China for one week. (We will be in hotels starting Saturday night and I am thrilled!!!!) I will inlcude the itinerary when I have it near me.
So I missed the activities through the conference tonight which should have been really cool. It was the President's Dinner. (The president of the organization International Consortum for Social Development) Desie just called me and told me that they keep feeding her and bringing her drinks. I dont think it would have worked very well for me so I guess its ok that I couldnt make it.
Today I had a chance to reflect a bit about how I feel abou this whole trip. I am not as overwhelmed as I was yesterday but I am still up in the air about what I really want to take away from this trip. Mommy said that it wasnt until she landed in JFK after her two years in Columbia that what she was to take away from her adventures dawned on her.
I have learned so far that:
China is not under all of the sand at the beach,
Hong Kong is like NYC, Mexico city and Epcot (Disney) all rolled into one times 20,
poverty doesnt care what country you are in,
Chinese is difficult to speak,
Not that many younger people are at this conference which makes me a little sad ( I still havent decided why but it might have to do with money..or something else...),
people still pass the begger on the street without even skipping a beat (even when they see the same person everyday on their way to work),
and finally as of 9:40 PM on July 18, 2007 I have learned that 12 hours ahead is still a lot and I need to get back to sleep.
My friends should be back from the party soon and they will probubly pass out too so I wont be missing much.
With love and sleepyness,
Rita
Today was a quiet one. The constant action has finally caught up with me and I needed to take a 'mental health day' so that I can make it through the rest of my trip. I tried to just take the morning off but since I have been sleeping poorly (On a mattress three inches think) and that the new food hasnt really been sitting well I have been tired. And if you have known me a while you know that without sleep I am pretty much useless.
Hi Sharon! Yes all of the buildings are air conditioned. My room is also air conditioned. Since I am here for just a week the price of the air is included in the room rate but if I was a student here I would have to pay about 1.3-1.4 HongKongDollars (Which is about 20 cents) per hour. I dont think I would have made it this far without sleep without the air conditioner to help.
Today is Wednesday (Night) and the conference goes until Friday at noon where we will have a closing ceremony and dinner. Saturday we pack up and leave the student dorms for the air port around 5:30 am to go to MainLand China for one week. (We will be in hotels starting Saturday night and I am thrilled!!!!) I will inlcude the itinerary when I have it near me.
So I missed the activities through the conference tonight which should have been really cool. It was the President's Dinner. (The president of the organization International Consortum for Social Development) Desie just called me and told me that they keep feeding her and bringing her drinks. I dont think it would have worked very well for me so I guess its ok that I couldnt make it.
Today I had a chance to reflect a bit about how I feel abou this whole trip. I am not as overwhelmed as I was yesterday but I am still up in the air about what I really want to take away from this trip. Mommy said that it wasnt until she landed in JFK after her two years in Columbia that what she was to take away from her adventures dawned on her.
I have learned so far that:
China is not under all of the sand at the beach,
Hong Kong is like NYC, Mexico city and Epcot (Disney) all rolled into one times 20,
poverty doesnt care what country you are in,
Chinese is difficult to speak,
Not that many younger people are at this conference which makes me a little sad ( I still havent decided why but it might have to do with money..or something else...),
people still pass the begger on the street without even skipping a beat (even when they see the same person everyday on their way to work),
and finally as of 9:40 PM on July 18, 2007 I have learned that 12 hours ahead is still a lot and I need to get back to sleep.
My friends should be back from the party soon and they will probubly pass out too so I wont be missing much.
With love and sleepyness,
Rita
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
Beer....its whats for dinner
beer isnt really for dinner but Desie did tell me that Guiness is nutritious when I told her I hadnt eaten yet. ..
Anyway here I go.
Dear Trish, (Cause I think you are the only one who reads this),
I am so tired. I just got off the phone with you, I wish I had more time. Well I guess this is a good time to tell you what I have been up to here in Hong Kong.
I am staying in Kowloon which is across the bay from the actual Hong KOng Island. The Unitversity is huge and the residence halls are clean and nice. I am sharing a room with Desie and now we are sharing the room with two other girls next door ( We are connected by the bathroom).
There are a lot of mechanizims in place to save energy. A seperate light for each part of the bath room (one for the toilet and one for the shower). You can sellect if you want to have hot water or not by clicking a switch as well. I didnt think I needed it the first day but since then I havent been sleeping 100% so the hot water helps with my stiff neck.
Everyone is really tired still from the jet lag. Also the conference started on MOnday (Yesterday to me) and today was jam packed with talks about different papers that were written all over the world with so many differnt topics.
There is a peak on HOng Kong Island that we went up on Sunday with a tour so taht we could see all of Hong Kong from real high up. It was nice. I will show you pictures.
Everytime I get down to the computer lab I am so sleepy that I forget to upload pictures. Also it takes so long because the computer are in such high demand they crash often (if you couldnt guess they are PC not wonderful Macs)
I miss you and wish you were closer. It is wierd to be under all of this sand but the biggest difference is not being able to communicate very well. Dr. Shen (My prof.) taught us Manderin and they speak Cantonise here in HOng KOng.
I need to go to bed now.
LOve you tons,
Love,
Rita
Anyway here I go.
Dear Trish, (Cause I think you are the only one who reads this),
I am so tired. I just got off the phone with you, I wish I had more time. Well I guess this is a good time to tell you what I have been up to here in Hong Kong.
I am staying in Kowloon which is across the bay from the actual Hong KOng Island. The Unitversity is huge and the residence halls are clean and nice. I am sharing a room with Desie and now we are sharing the room with two other girls next door ( We are connected by the bathroom).
There are a lot of mechanizims in place to save energy. A seperate light for each part of the bath room (one for the toilet and one for the shower). You can sellect if you want to have hot water or not by clicking a switch as well. I didnt think I needed it the first day but since then I havent been sleeping 100% so the hot water helps with my stiff neck.
Everyone is really tired still from the jet lag. Also the conference started on MOnday (Yesterday to me) and today was jam packed with talks about different papers that were written all over the world with so many differnt topics.
There is a peak on HOng Kong Island that we went up on Sunday with a tour so taht we could see all of Hong Kong from real high up. It was nice. I will show you pictures.
Everytime I get down to the computer lab I am so sleepy that I forget to upload pictures. Also it takes so long because the computer are in such high demand they crash often (if you couldnt guess they are PC not wonderful Macs)
I miss you and wish you were closer. It is wierd to be under all of this sand but the biggest difference is not being able to communicate very well. Dr. Shen (My prof.) taught us Manderin and they speak Cantonise here in HOng KOng.
I need to go to bed now.
LOve you tons,
Love,
Rita
Friday, July 13, 2007
What Day Is iT! Oh its the future
Hey All!
Yes I am writing to you from Saturday when it is only Friday where you are in the States.
It really blows my mind, the size of the world gets smaller everyday but when you are on the other side of the world you get a different perspective. I thought things would be so drastically different but the truth is that everyone is pretty much doing the same stuff over here...I am the different one.
Our first official night in Hong Kong was slow because we were so tired. We tried the dining hall food in the dorm (not much different in quality as the States..if you are in college you understand what I mean by 'quality')
Then Juli, Desie and I went out to find an Irish pub that we heard about that had a great happy hour that started at noon. I am sitting next to Juli now and asked her what time we left to find the pub I thought it must have been around 6 because we didnt get to anything remotely close to a pub until 8:40 but she just reminded me that we did not leave at 6 but rather we left at 8 and we were only out looking for 40 minutes. Honestly it felt like we walked miles and that we were outside for hours. Apparently not.
We did not get to the irish pub but we did find the HOng Kong sky line. We found our professors hotel right on the water Harbor Plaza hotel. The sky line here is breath taking. After this post I will attempt to upload photos. THis computer keeps asking me to shut down and not matter how hard i try it shuts down anyway.
So we had a beer on the harbor with awesome lounge singers in the background who were wearing prom dresses and tuxs singing Linoneal Richie (Spelling?) doesnt get much better than that.
Ok. Now the computer lab is filling up and we need to go eat some food.
Sincerely,
Rita
Yes I am writing to you from Saturday when it is only Friday where you are in the States.
It really blows my mind, the size of the world gets smaller everyday but when you are on the other side of the world you get a different perspective. I thought things would be so drastically different but the truth is that everyone is pretty much doing the same stuff over here...I am the different one.
Our first official night in Hong Kong was slow because we were so tired. We tried the dining hall food in the dorm (not much different in quality as the States..if you are in college you understand what I mean by 'quality')
Then Juli, Desie and I went out to find an Irish pub that we heard about that had a great happy hour that started at noon. I am sitting next to Juli now and asked her what time we left to find the pub I thought it must have been around 6 because we didnt get to anything remotely close to a pub until 8:40 but she just reminded me that we did not leave at 6 but rather we left at 8 and we were only out looking for 40 minutes. Honestly it felt like we walked miles and that we were outside for hours. Apparently not.
We did not get to the irish pub but we did find the HOng Kong sky line. We found our professors hotel right on the water Harbor Plaza hotel. The sky line here is breath taking. After this post I will attempt to upload photos. THis computer keeps asking me to shut down and not matter how hard i try it shuts down anyway.
So we had a beer on the harbor with awesome lounge singers in the background who were wearing prom dresses and tuxs singing Linoneal Richie (Spelling?) doesnt get much better than that.
Ok. Now the computer lab is filling up and we need to go eat some food.
Sincerely,
Rita
You will never understand until you have experienced it
Dear All,
I am here. Safe and sound. Our plane ride was uneventful. We found ways to entertain ourselves. Trying to identify the plane food...was that ham or turkey? Who can take the most laps around the plane without tripping on someones food in the aisle. Sleeping sitting up and trying not to drool all over your blow up pillow. Lets just say after 5 hours I was ready to be on tierra firma.
We are now at the Poly Tech University in Hong Kong using the computer lab conviniently located on the same floor as the pool, work out room, and Desie's favorite the Karioke room. Woo Hoo0o!
PRofessor Shen is wonderful and is constantly counting our heads to make sure no one is left behind. We are planning on going to an Irish Pub tonight ( It wasnt my idea) that Desie and Juli researched it before we got here.
Tomorrow is a free day and I am looking forward to sleeping as much as possible. We are going to try and stay up until sorta bed time but since it is almost 4 Am in my head I am not sure how well I will do.
I will bring my camara next time to the lab and upload some pre trip pictures and airplane photos.
It is really such a different place then I imagined. It is hard to explain but hopefully I will be able to give you a glimps here on my heart filled blog.
Take care all! and Please leave me a comment or two so I know you are out there in cyber land reading about my little trip around the globe.
Thoughtfully,
Rita
P.S. There we about a dozen or so kids on the plane...pretty exciting, I think we were more anxieous than they were at times to get off the plane.
I am here. Safe and sound. Our plane ride was uneventful. We found ways to entertain ourselves. Trying to identify the plane food...was that ham or turkey? Who can take the most laps around the plane without tripping on someones food in the aisle. Sleeping sitting up and trying not to drool all over your blow up pillow. Lets just say after 5 hours I was ready to be on tierra firma.
We are now at the Poly Tech University in Hong Kong using the computer lab conviniently located on the same floor as the pool, work out room, and Desie's favorite the Karioke room. Woo Hoo0o!
PRofessor Shen is wonderful and is constantly counting our heads to make sure no one is left behind. We are planning on going to an Irish Pub tonight ( It wasnt my idea) that Desie and Juli researched it before we got here.
Tomorrow is a free day and I am looking forward to sleeping as much as possible. We are going to try and stay up until sorta bed time but since it is almost 4 Am in my head I am not sure how well I will do.
I will bring my camara next time to the lab and upload some pre trip pictures and airplane photos.
It is really such a different place then I imagined. It is hard to explain but hopefully I will be able to give you a glimps here on my heart filled blog.
Take care all! and Please leave me a comment or two so I know you are out there in cyber land reading about my little trip around the globe.
Thoughtfully,
Rita
P.S. There we about a dozen or so kids on the plane...pretty exciting, I think we were more anxieous than they were at times to get off the plane.
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
T Minus 32 Hours till take off
Dear Friends and Family,
Welcome to my BLOG!!!
I am new to this so stick with me. I am sure I will have access to the internet in South East Asia but I do not know how often. I am glad that I got to see most of you the weeks before I left...things were so busy all around.
I finish my summer school class tomorrow and the all of my attention will be on last minute packing and shoving off to the other side of the world. If you want to see the website for the symposium that I am going to check out this link : http://www.polyu.edu.hk/~apss/ICSD/home.htm
That way you can see what will be going on next week in Hong Kong.
I am very excited and need to get some sleep tonight because tomorrow is going to be a long one!
I hope this BLOG works out.
I miss you all already. Leave me your address as a comment to this post just in case you think I dont have it in my address book Thanks!
Love,
Rita
Welcome to my BLOG!!!
I am new to this so stick with me. I am sure I will have access to the internet in South East Asia but I do not know how often. I am glad that I got to see most of you the weeks before I left...things were so busy all around.
I finish my summer school class tomorrow and the all of my attention will be on last minute packing and shoving off to the other side of the world. If you want to see the website for the symposium that I am going to check out this link : http://www.polyu.edu.hk/~apss/ICSD/home.htm
That way you can see what will be going on next week in Hong Kong.
I am very excited and need to get some sleep tonight because tomorrow is going to be a long one!
I hope this BLOG works out.
I miss you all already. Leave me your address as a comment to this post just in case you think I dont have it in my address book Thanks!
Love,
Rita
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)