Blossoming into an Elegant Beauty

Good aul China decided to block blogger, and no amount of dodgy proxies were gonna get me past that this weekend, so soz faoi lateness and that shtuff.


So eeeehhh, last Saturday, I got up for lion dance, went to training, saw a haggard Laura, heard a haggard Laura's tales, couldn't find Maddie, went to find Maddie, found Maddie who was fast asleep, jumped on her yelling LION DANCE LION DANCE LION DANCE to no avail then went to Olivia's room to spoon with her and a haggard Laura. We played with the Daily Mail headline generator then popped some popcorn in anticipation of Rara's birthday on the block 2 roof. We had an uber roof party with shedloads of food and then I went to the pool, played some pool rugby - I had a major disadvantage in the form of a volatile bikini top - then went with Dawn & Áine to Ma On Shan where I got photos taken for my visa. Áine heartlessly left me stranded outside Wellcome so I made me own way home then decided to have a quick skype with Mavis. ...4 and a half hours later we called it a day. The amount I had to catch up on was unrale. Went to bed pretty soon after that.


The part of Sunday which I can remember begins at about 7pm. Where the rest of it went I've no idea. I think I may've coloured in a few maps for geo? And I seem to recall getting some weird bread from Hetty & Carol? Hmm. Anyway, the 7pm part starts in room 103c, skyping the ginge, followed by a café meeting in preparation for next week's café. The theme's Anything But Clothes. What a wide range of opportunities that presents. Tar éis é sin I skyped les parents and then had one of those skype calls with Clobby where I get her to show me all the clothes she's bought lately so's I can wear them when I get back for summer and she takes photos of me looking fab on the webcam.

Monday I had a free morning block, then math when we got our dreaded IA (internal assessment for those lucky bejaysuses of you reading this who are unaware of the intricacies of the IB), chemistry, free block geo and physics. On Monday afternoon I missed the college meeting and service planning to go to the visa office with Dorte for our chinese visas. Dorte had The Hunger Games but I had to make do with running to Mickey D's to buy me some chips to entertain myself, as well as painting my nails and Dorte's nails whilst we crouched on the floor, much to the disdain of many around us. We left about an hour later, and I had a short but intense period of OHMYGODI'VELOSTMYPASSPORT before realising it was in the visa office. We both got some ice cream and continued our journey home. Once I got back I had some din dins then went to photography where we talked about our Tai O trip and presented our photos, had ice cream floats and BECAME LEADER WITH PALOMO. Well happy so we were. Big ideas and dreams and what have ya.


On Tuesday I had english in the block 4 dayroom again, then chinese, ToK lecture on presentations - in the ever-witty words of Adam it was like presentationception - then more mind mushing maffs, and chem again. After school I legged it up to the office to collect my parcel from Daddy, and, upon discovering The Hunger Games amongst its contents, spent all afternoon reading it on the roof, then once it was dark grabbed some tea lights from my room and finished it. Should prolly find time to go see the movie in the cinema but the likelihood of that is nil unforchy.

Wednesday was a public holiday so I took my leisurely time getting up, did an absolutely miniscule bitta work, went to Wellcome and bought some stuff to make a cake for Rabeya's birthday, then cooked in the student kitchen with all the Asia Pacific people - inevitable K-Pop dance offs were had. We ate the cake in our room with our extended roomies and tales of Ocean Park. That night Olivia, Heather and I hung out for Livvie's birthday, and fell asleep in strange places.


On Thursday I had a physics lab, english and then two free blocks. I grabbed my lunch early, then headed off to Wanchai to pick up the visas. I negotiated the million line changes back, had a nap in the common room then headed across the road to tutor Paco, this insanely ADD kid. He's pretty sweet really, and seemed to really connect with Pippi Longstocking. After that I went to the GIF on catholicism which were one of the better ones this year as far as debate was concerned. On Thursday night I downloaded Nick & Norah's infinite playlist. It was pretty shite, but the setting was good and Michael Cera's always great. Norah was just the most annoying thing. I also made microwave cake in a bowl. 

On Friday I got up at like 7:30 ish, for no real reason seeing as we had holidays, then finished the rest of N & N's infinite playlist because of course the internet ban came with 10 minutes left of the film. I got breakfast and then locked myself in the library for 13 hours to do my math IA, coming out twice only to stock up on cream soda, mars bars, fizzy Puccho yokes, and those bbq crisps. At midnight I banted around with JKwok & Verity by the poolside, stalking photos of our younger selves.

Saturday morning I got up at 7:30, had a shower, packed for China, got breakfast at half 8, met the latinas at a latina half 8, and went to China. Via the flamingo filled Kowloon park. And a ferry. We were met by Mia and her dad at the ferry terminal, after the mexican took about a gazbillion hours to get through. Then we went out for lunch which was GAWJUS, peking duck for the winnage. We went to the underground to change some money and buy some pirated DVDs (I got One Day, Skins series 6 & Misfits series 3), then went to get our nails done. Must be the first time since Clobby pinned me to the kitchen table over crimbo. Okay, and that stint in the visa office but that hardly counts. Got a motorbike back which was legend and then we worked for a ages after a dinner of pizza and beautiful caaaakes.

On Sunday we woke up like 10ish, got brekkie and helped set up for an expat easter brunch. When I say expat, I mean TODOS DEL LATINOS. My spanish comprehension improved dramatically. We hid a load of eggs all down the street, and ate our weight in choccy cake. We then left with all the foregin kids in Zhu Hai to go to this island where we rented a tandem bike and played volleyball. We started out with trying to get volleys of A...B...C...D... but it soon transcended into yelling out spanish words when you hit the ball, for example CALIENTE...GASOLINA....GUACAMOLE...CHIMYCHANGAS...ESPERA etc etc. I had a few fun experiences on the tandem bike, and rediscovered our love of squat toilets with Maddie. That evening we had the leftover pizza, worked a little more and then watched Like Crazy and One Day. I had to make condescending witty remarks during Like Crazy because it was so woeful, but I adore One Day though only Paula and I managed to stay awake.


Got up at 9 this morning, had nutella on toast, packed my bag, did a bit of work on my chinese, went out for dinner and had such good vegetables. Like chinese-style bacon & cabbage, it's not a patch on scout camp, but they do their best. After lunch we went back, packed up the rest of our stuff and got the 4pm boat home. Except for Maddie, who couldn't get a ticket and ran away to Tibet or something instead. I had the best moment of my life so far when the woman on passport control didn't believe that the ugly passport photo girl was me. She was all "This not you. This not you. Show me your ears!!" and I was all "I know roish, it totally don't look like me now, I must've really just blossomed into such an elegantly beautiful human being". Mia & I watched Juno on the boat. Legend film. We got taxis back to campus, ate dismal dinner and then I migrated to the chinese classroom where I found Olivia and was joined by JKwok soon after. Which is where I am now. On the verge of a hell week but I'd rather not elaborate.

Takeshi's Castle and Clubbing in China

Once upon a time, there was a little girl called Hannah, who wanted more than anything else in the world to have a 5 day weekend and go to visit Mia in Zhu Hai, China. Here's her tale...

So on rolls the weekend and Hannah's there working like a bawse to get her Chemistry homework done when BAM in comes Liz with plans to go to Mong Kok and stop by the camera shop on the way home. We rounded up some peeps in the form of welsh Paloma, french Quentin and american James (I really don't know why, but nationalities are always necessary nowadays) and set off on the MTR to have ourselves some fun inner city HK times. However, after about 50 minutes of travelling there and emerging into the busy city, Liz finally twigged that the camera shop she wanted was actually way back in Kowloon Tong. So after slagging her for a wee bit we all headed to the mega shopping centre (they're fairly popular in HK I'll tell ya something, Dundrum ain't got nuttin on Mong Kok!) for a bite to eat. This was directly translated into STARBUCKS TIIIIIIME! Now I personally had never experienced Starbucks before and meh, seriously you goys this globalization craic is fairly pricey. But still. I had the routine Starbucks newbie photo taken and I stole some sugar packets for the collection. After losing the boys in the metropolis that is the public toilets we headed on back to campus for....




INDIAN DINNER TIME! A quite substantial group of nearly 30 of us banted on down to Chungking Mansions which is now one of my favourite places in the world (srsly, read that wiki, sure 20% of all mobile phones in Africa have passed through that place). We went up some dodgay dodgay stairs to the Taj Mahal Club (which may or may not double as a human trafficking enterprise) for amazing amazing food of which I ate a lot. Also, mango lassis like no other. After that we met up with other Li Po Chun - ers and walked to see the fireworks as it was the Chinese national day. Now I'm a big fan of fireworks and these were like holyjaysus! I gave up taking crap pictures of them after a few minutes though and just gawped instead.






Dinner @ the Taj Mahal Club

As part of a huge logistical operation by the second years we were shepherded to Lang Kwai on the MTR (Hong Kong's answer to Kilkenny's John Street). Schandal occurred and fun times were had but twas back in bed for 1 because someone (yup, that'd be me) had a boat to catch sa maidin.

*Cue epic adventure music*

Bang on (LPC) time - aka 25 minutes late, 11 enthusiastic adventurers set off to the ferry port led by Norwegian Oda (see, the nationalities thing does kinda add to the story, no?) and laden with bananas. With little hassle other than the offputting fact that the ferry port was over a bridge through a park into a hotel down an escalator through a mall of restaurants and down another escalator, we made it through passport control and onto the ferry, buying an uber tube of malteasers for Mia's younger sisters.

Zhu Hai with Mia was great. It's amazing how different Hong Kong and Mainland are we all went to this place called the underground which was like a shopping centre with about 600 tiny tiny shops it was like some kind of a maze! For we had an argentinian barbeque which was unbelievable. Vegetarians, I just do not understand you sometimes. Nomnom steak and suchlike. As an aside I also think I had about 8 different kinds of cake while I was there. Heads up to Mia's mammy for that one.






Some of the fine goods available in the underground

On the Monday we went to a real life takeshi's castle. I kid you not. Like literally crazy asian assault course over water. Although I don't think I've ever had so many pictures taken of me in my entire life but it's clearly cause my body's too bootilicious. Besides Mia did be speaking the aul mandarin like a bawse at this guy taking photos of us and saying "we're not animals!" but the sight of an argentinian/american speaking chinese was too much so he decided to video instead. We ended up playing volleyball against a group of chinese people which was mega. My skills are unrivalled.






Bikini clad westerners taking on the world, one Chinese province at a time 

Then came the chinese massage. I swear I was being personally victimised by that woman. An hour of pure bone breaking agony. Brit Leila and I were so unbelievably sore. I swear that within a few more minutes my woman would have killed me with her bare hands.




Unaware of the torture that was to come

    We also went "clubbing". Lolololol. This mega club with all the lasers and strobe lights and fog machines and really really loud music and the like and packed full of completely silent unmoving chinese. We were dancing like mad yokes to make the most of our time there cause we reckoned we'd be thrown out for not buying anything. This plan worked exceptionally well cause we ended up being ushered onto the stage so all 14 of us were dancing and singing and going crazy to this unresponsive audience. Yes, there are videos.




Us (and the drunkest of the drunk)

The next morning we headed to the Underground again, bought some pirated totally legit DVDs and came back to chillax in front of said movies before heading home again home again on the ferry. More passport stamps and little physical/emotional strength later we were back in Hong Kong to proceed with our hour long journey home via 4 different MTR lines. Back just in time for dinner (which was, surprise surprise, horrendous).

Conked out that night to wake up 5.15 on the dot, trudge over to the A-block and set myself up for another nice aul skype convo to catch up on the goss from home. That Wednesday was full of hard core study I ain't gonna lie. Chem labs to write up and the likes but I honestly just felt a bit nauseous even typing "chem lab" so praps I should move on from that.

Thursday sure school sure. Had a maths test which went graaaaaaaaand, had a geo quiz which went graaaaaaaaand. Went to Art for Non Artists afterwards which was fun too, I had to draw something representing Jason Kwok. Aka completely insane Jason whose favourite colour is grey. Thursday night is block meeting night, so all the block 2ers hang around in the day room while our head of house (jaysus sounds a bit like hogwarts), Wendy, gives out about how we're unhygienic and the boys bitch about how the other boys can't aim at the toilet seat.

Friday I awoke to a short but sweet e-mail to say that there had been room checks the night before. This means that the teachers go all mission impossible and sneak into our rooms at 3.30am to make sure we're in our rooms. You have no idea how weird it is to think about someone watching you sleep. Let me tell y'all, it's pretty weird. Had school, twas all fine and dandy, I even went to the 7.30 class knowing that our teacher was in the US. My she'd be mighty proud of us all showing up to work like she'd asked. I think we kinda surprised ourselves actually. Gots me a letter in the post which is always insanely nice.Tar eis an scoil I skyped the rentals for a little bit, catching Dad before he went to work and Mum after being rudely awoken by dad as he left for work. Imagine having to get up 45 minutes earlier to skype your own daughter eh? Doesn't bear thinking about! Then by invitation from my bro (american James), I watched Get Him To The Greek with him, Trevor and a slow but steady stream of others before winding up here at 8.30 and wondering where my day has gone.

Got some scuba diving training tomorrow and rehearsals for my uber top secret play on sunday. Bring it.
Until next week, ta ra for now, Hannah x

How To Die Whilst Scuba Diving

    I guess tis that time of the week again, and my what an interesting week we've had here at LPC. So radies and rentelmens listen up etc!

    So the weekend was purdy good, Saturday consisted of a coral monitoring medical exam in downtown Jordan which was pretty tucked away so with the help and company of Chloe Lau we made it to the eighth floor to be measured, weighed, told that our ears were dirty and that there was no way we'd be able to equalise so to go and buy ear cleaning stuff, and we may or may not have been instructed to pee on a stick. Congratulations are in order for Halfdan who navigated his way there sans local help and also to Dilene who was the only one of us with clean ears.

    After that I went in search of ear cleaning stuff with Dilene and Khet, and after coming across some real dodge semi tradtitional chinese medicine shops full of jars of shark fins and shredded shrimp bone marrow etc we decided to wait until we got back to the pharmacy back in Wu Kai Sha.

    When we got back home (I've started calling campus that now, and sub consciously too), Dilene and I went to explore the beach and attempt to study. I drew some mandarin ab characters in the sand but mostly the study part was reduced to gossipping until we realised that the masses of shells around where we were sitting were actually hermit crabs. Muchos gross.

    Then dinner. My daily life in this place now revolves around mealtimes. 6 o clock is easily the most anticipated thing for me around here. I've not even yet been deterred by the fact that it's generally just rice and some bony meat. That said, I got tempura veg today which was nom. Actually, I got tuna pasta bake too! Hmm, today was an exception food wise. Oooh and we got jelly too! It may have had the consistency of soggy soap but it was still pretty good.

    Sunday was triathlon day! Kinda wish I'd done the individual one now but I did enter the team event as the swimmer, with Liz doing the cycle (we thought we'd fullfill the dutch stereotype), and Maxim running. As with all other LPC events there was lots of dancing on the pool side and twas a fairly good atmosphere for an early Sunday morning! PLUS they had bananas in the canteen. Heellloooo banana honey toasted sandwich(es...). The experience was only topped by finding out on Wednesday that we'd won. Yadda yadda it wasn't competitive yadda yadda...but y'all know it so was.

Mise, Maxim and Liz. Rawr.

    After all that strenuous work there were 5 hours of scuba diving theory. 

To summarize:  

• If you hold your breath your lungs will explode and YOU WILL DIE
• If you don't equalise the pressure between your ears and your inner ear and sinuses YOU WILL DIE
• If you attempt to sit through 5 hours of scuba diving theory without allowing yourself to have small naps/ become hysterical YOU WILL DIE

    The week was pretty intense too. Starting Monday night we had an hour of uber man style lion dance training. This time Savitri upped the ante to 5 minutes of squatting and a good aul lot of planking too. Twas eh good fun too?? Classes went grand (not gonna lie I aced me mandarin ab test booyakkasha), and although chemistry was a killer I answered all the questions on the test we had this morning. That don't mean by any means that I got any of them right, mind you.

    Thursday was typhoon day. Now before I start praising the heavens for this gust of wondrous wind, I'd like to express my deepest sorrow for those who were killed by the same typhoon Nesat in the Philipines and to all those whose homes were destroyed. Fortunatley for us, it didn't get too bad up in the New Territories aside from some bikes wrapped around trees and said trees no longer residing in the ground. Tragedies aside, however, one can imagine the excitement that a Typhoon 8 signal can bring to a campus full of extremely tired IB students. I watched half of Moulin Rouge with Olivia, hung in the block four day room, experienced typhoon weather at its best up on the roof, attempted to study for chemistry and spread the goodwill message of HAPPY TYPHOON DAY! Made a change from the days of Loreto Convent KK when snow days were only implemented after attendance levels dropped to below 10 per year, and even then were granted grudgingly.

    Friday was a full day of classes for yours truly, but now I'm free we have HOLIDAYS! Until next Thursday. And so I'm casually popping over to Mainland China to visit Mia's house in Zhu Hai for a few days. As ya do like. Now when I say casually, I hope none of you ever have to experience the hassle of trying to organise 12 visas for China in 4 days. I'd rather not elaborate.

Much grá, Hannah x



That'd be mise and my boat tickets to Zhu Hai