So today has been quite the day! So much to talk about! So I had my midterm for my Chinese thought class and it wasn’t too bad…Right after class I had to jet to Shatin to meet up with my cute little travel agent, Sunny, to pay for my Philippines trip! I felt really bad today because I spent A LOT of money! I paid for my Philippines tickets (which were actually pretty cheap), and then I discovered this food area in the mall that was like WHOLE FOODS! I kinda went crazy when I saw all the food and overall I spent 60 American dollars on just FOOD…Yes, I am such a fatty. I finally found silk soy milk and was elated..haha..I splurged on hummus, kashi crackers, granola bars, more granola bars, dried fruit, and YOGURT! All the healthy nutrients that I wasn’t getting before..and whatever, I felt bad for like an hour (but honestly, my body needs these healthy items!!!). I will reflect about my findings on food a bit later.
So I shopped around a bit more and got some other necessary items (contact solution, etc, etc). So one thing that surprised me is that Hong Kong does not have shaving gel in stores (or atleast stores NEAR my university don’t) I went to 3 different stores to find damn shaving cream and NONE of them had any…I mean, I understand that Asians are practically hairless and can afford to walk around without shaving/ walk around shamelessly with hairy legs…but UM I kinda can’t do that…well, technically I can, since its no-shave november and all…haha JK…hence, the quest for shaving cream continues…
So after splurging on food in Shatin, I come to my wonderful floor and there is a hot pot party going on! I am invited so I join! It was my first hot pot experience and I LOVED IT! I only paid 10 hong kong dollars (which is less than $1.50)!! So there was a LARGE pot and all the girls on my floor put in meat (beef slices, fish balls, sausages, meatballs, etc. etc), bok choi, sprouts, mushrooms (various kinds!), other veggies, and chicken broth…We let the food cook in the pot for a while and the sharing began. We all looked like starving hyeinas clawing for food..haha ok, so I exaggerate and it was not as violent as I make it sound. In fact, it was quite lovely and we had a great bonding experience. I met a few more exchange girls (one from Korea who lives on my floor and always smiles, but I didn’t know her name before), another girl from Sweden, who I already kind of knew before, and other local girls on my floor. Everyone was sooo friendly, it was really nice!
So, on with my food thoughts: I realize that I spend so little money on food here that spending 60 American dollars on food made me feel really guilty about how much I actually spend at home. 60 bucks at home would not be a lot, because I usually end up spending 100 bucks at a time at the store! I really realized that I need to watch how I spend my money back home and being on a budget in Hong Kong is making me into a wiser spender (even though my spending today was not “wise,” it has honestly been the most I have spent on food since I have been here). In America, we take grocery shopping for granted and I realized that I can do so much with the extra money I save from buying cheaper food or abstaining from buying unnecessary groceries that I would never finish!
This weekend I will be heading to Malaysia/Singapore so I probably won’t blog significantly until I come back…unless there’s some interesting topic I deem necessary to talk about.
Latez!
