oh...so much to say about things that have happened in the past few days. Well, for starters, we went to China and Macau..I'll talk about that.

On Friday, we went on an organized trip to Macau. The ferry boat ride there was absolutely gut-wrenching....1.5 hours of hearing people throw up. When we got there, we were disappointed to see that the weather wasn't that far different than in HK, where the "red signal had been raised" (translation: "a ton of rain"---it's typhoon season here). The entire day we were there, it was a torrential downpour. Our first stop was the Macau Museum where we could look at the history of this peninsula...which is rather interesting. Before the turnover to China in 1997, this was a Portuguese colony...so all the street signs, official pamphlets, directions, store signs, etc... are in 3 languages: Chinese, Portuguese and English. There's also a clear Portuguese influence in the style and architecture of the city with cobblestone streets and hacienda-like buildings. The rest of the day we went to touristy points, such as the A-Ma Buddhist Temple, the Ruins of St. Paul (a church that was burned down in the 19th century--only the facade remains) and the Casino. See, gambling is illegal in HK so everyone comes to Macau to gamble, one of the primary sources of income for the Macanese people. I wasn't too keen on it since I've seen too many casinos in my time...especially since it was overly crowded, stuffy and full of smoke. Also, there were all sorts of young teenage prostitutes approaching my brother...he was slightly traumatized. On this trip, I met a nice doctor my age from London named Robin...he was able to tell me more about my eye and my upcoming surgery. Amazing to know that someone my age has already performed numerous surgeries...of course, medical school in England seems to be different than in the US because you can be finished by age 23.

When I came back from Macau, I suddenly felt very ill with an internal chill and extreme headache...I had to go to bed right away...I woke up early the next morning to go on the Shenzhen, China trip and I still felt awful. My sickness had turned into a throbbing pain in my stomach, which is related to my damn gall bladder problems (thus my surgery in 2 weeks). So the entire time I was in China, I was in pain. Our first stop was at a museum where they were having a special exhibition of the Terracotta warrior statues from Xian--they had 3 of them...really cool. After that, I slept...I just could not get up to do anything more so I stayed on the bus. In the afternoon, my family skipped one of the places we were supposed to go to--"Splendid China" which is a place with miniatures of all the major monuments, fortresses, etc in all of China (so in essence, not something horrible to miss)...and we all went to a beauty salon! Can you believe that? We all got foot massages, body massages and my brother got his haircut---all for under $50. It was actually much more interesting because we got to talk to the people there about everyday life in Shenzhen, which is sad. They consider going to McDonald's a luxury dinner. It definitely made me feel bad about the amount I pay my hairdresser currently for one haircut. So of course, all this relaxing treatment made me feel a little better...The only other interesting thing I learned was how business men from HK will come up to China to meet their mistresses (or "second wives/concubine") for the weekend...and these women will get paid thousands of dollars a month to be these mistresses. With that, they don't have to worry about having more than one child.

We got back to HK that evening but my pain didn't go away and I still felt awful...to the point that I went to the emergency room last night. The doctor prescribed me all sorts of pills that I'm currently taking. I'm feeling a bit better this morning..but I'm hoping it'll all go away before my long journey back to Seattle tomorrow. Today, being my last day in Hong Kong, I'm taking it fairly easy. Damn gall bladder.