2nd day

If I could sum up today in one word, it would be "surreal". Still on Texas time, we woke up at midnight to begin the day. Of course, with the night winding down and the day not beginning for a few hours, I wasted time on the internet, talked to family & friends on Skype, and managed to get myself blocked from having a YouTube account ever again because I posted a video describing my hostel room. My bad. I'll get it to y'all somehow.

After 7 hours, we got dressed and went to eat breakfast. After wandering around in the morning rain for 30 minutes (during which a man looked at me with an expression that conveyed the following message: "What are you?"), we found a Cafe de Coral. It may be HK's fast food, but it was still pretty delicious. And just think! It's what we pay $7 dollars for back home. Anyway, we took the ferry to HK Island, where we went to Statue Park, Victoria Peak, and the Botanical & Zoological Gardens. While trying to find somewhere to eat lunch, which is actually shockingly difficult, I helped a man carry the garbage. I'll elaborate. Here, trash is piled on rolling carts that have to be pushed through the streets to designated areas. Of course, this place is set on flippin' mountains. Not exactly the setting you want to be hauling trash. Tourist or not, there's nothing like a second set of hands. I also know that there's nothing like manual labor to blow off some steam. So as I passed by, I grabbed the other side of the cart and pulled, while he continued to push. We got a lot of strange looks and a cab driver started laughing, while shouting out what was probably teasing for needing a giant female to help him with his dirty work...help he wasn't about to refuse. He loved it and I did too. That was my favorite part of today, until the encounter that occurred about 45 minutes ago.

Upon returning to the hostel, we had enough energy to take the shower I had been dreaming of all day before collapsing. We watched a peculiar show that involved a sorcerer with a horn and triangular acne on his forehead. An even stranger twist is that he had hundreds of individual heads being released from his silver robe, all of said heads then attached themselves to a hill and ate it. He also flew through the air by flailing all of his appendages. Eventually, we got ready to take a nap, only to lie there for 15 minutes before we heard commotion in the hallway. About 30 seconds later, there was a knock on the door and a man's voice identifying himself as the Chinese police. As I stood up to put on some shorts, the door burst open, ripping the chain lock off the wall. I shouted, "I have no clothes on!", and scrambled to get dressed. Covering my breasts so that they could not be seen through my white tank top, the group of about ten Chinese men averted their eyes. I'm not afraid of nudity, so I wasn't embarrassed, but they sure were! After checking our passports, I received a bouquet of "so so sowy"s. It made me so so happy. Sidenote: We had the photo for Tyler's passport taken when his beard was at its bushiest, so it got some serious reactions from the men who have difficulty growing facial hair such as Tyler's. Some of these reactions were, "woah" and "Jesus". Whether that last one was an exclamation or name-calling, we're unsure.

A staff member was able to fix the lock, but telling the front office that the police had busted through our door was more fun to tell than I realized it'd be. And that's day two!

Parting Thoughts: The police sirens here seriously sound like a child's playthings. They are not intimidating or alarming. They are comical. Monkeys are so flippin' cool. They can swing around and fling themselves around with a hectic grace. It makes me question evolution, because there is no way I am a descendent of a creature so agile. I came from the Orangutan or the sloth, which is also cool. I think if I were an animal, I'd be a ring-tailed lemur. Zabumafu, baby! I was totally a lemur in my past life. That's why I have an affinity for cuddling.

China is really tough on Tyler. He isn't feeling too great. He's so sensitive to change and sleep, that the plane ride did him in. Not only that, but he's completely ignored by the waitstaff at restaurants. If he ever writes a travel companion book, he'll make sure to suggest that every man bring a woman with him if he plans on eating. We both ordered pear juice. Only I got one. We both ordered entrees. Only I got one. We both ordered tea. Again, only I got what I asked for. So he's feeling under the weather and everyone ignores him except for the Indian men pestering him about watches and tailors. At least I caught some women staring at his hair earlier. That probably makes him feel good, right?