three weeks down, five to go.

i actually said something in our meeting on friday!! woohoooooo!! :) i also got bumped back to second on the ping pong ladder... but i'm getting a little better. maybe.

friday night we (the girls) decided to have a movie night. we invited everyone, but as usual, it was only us. they had this idea to use a conference room at microsoft to project the movie onto a screen. great idea! but those of you that know me well know how much of a rule follower i am. i was slightly freaking out that we were going to get in trouble!! but we didn't. we watched mulan :) and it had a whole new meaning to me. such a strange and wonderful opportunity. how many people can say they hang out in conference rooms after hours in microsoft and project disney movies onto the screen for movie night? awesome.

this morning i skyped with my family :D:D:D so happy to see them and hear their voices! and bonus: both aunt ruth and cousin ruth were there! then i skyped kathryn too. let me know if anyone else wants a skype date :)

today (saturday) we (the girls+ryan) again went out on the town all day long. first was silk street. it is run by the same people as pearl market, but there are more clothes and shoes and less pearls. they are still aggressive sellers and you can still bargin. for lunch i had authentic chinese dumplings and they were so hard to pick up with chopsticks! it reminded me of the scene in kung fu panda where he is learning kung fu by chasing slippery dumplings around.

i think i managed to spend less than $100 today. i spend all my money on the weekends and none during the week. $100 isn't bad for what i bought: a marc jacobs purse, a set of white and blue ceramic chopsticks for my mom, a chanel watch, a gucci watch, five dvds (the bounty hunter, remember me, nine, the book of eli, and young victoria), two wooden fans, dinner at kfc, two taxi rides, and some groceries at walmart. i think that is it. let me know if any of you want anything specific.

after silk street we went to a park behind the forbidden city called jingshan park. it has a hill in the middle made out of the dirt they dug to put the moat around the forbidden city. it seems like we always pick places with lots of stairs to climb. anyway, the park wasn't free, but it was still really pretty. and it had a surprise inside... dinosaurs!! lol it had animatronic dinos everywhere. so we had fun taking pictures with those. it also had the tree where one of the emperors hung himself. there was a fantastic view of the city at the top of the hill. i took pictures, but they don't do it justice because of the smog. 

after we hiked back down the mountain, we went to houhai which is like a really nice bar district. the first thing i saw was a starbucks :) and i took more pictures! the street wrapped around a beautiful lake and we walked around for a while.