Short Post Before I Go

Slowly, the city goes into vacation mode. I surreptitiously snapped this picture in the supermarket, just to give you a sense of how much red is in operation here. As usual I had a quiet weekend. I made a trip to the store on Saturday for groceries, then spent most of the rest of the day cleaning my apartment. Dirt accumulates impressively when I am on a productivity jag. I didn't get much done until evening, when I had another little two hour groove of dissertation planning which carried me up until 1 AM. Late to bed, early to rise...

I spent a lot of Sunday working on my next project, this one a smallish but interesting and important one. Much easier than researching and writing an essay in Chinese! Everything seems easy after that. So I started right in and spent several hours on that. The rest of the day I spent stressing out about my upcoming trip to Hong Kong. I don't know why I've grown so anxious about traveling by myself to places I've never gone before. Actually, I'm fine with most places in the U.S., but for some reason foreign countries are very intimidating. I didn't used to be this way.

But now it's Monday. I have completed all the items on my formidable to-do list even including (with some difficulty) acquiring Hong Kong money. No doubt this would be easily done in Hong Kong, but just in case I'm in a hurry, or don't manage to do it, I prefer to have a little cash on hand... Hong Kong money looks a lot like Chinese money and is worth almost exactly the same--I spent 497 RMB to get HK$500. Frankly, I think it's pretty silly that they have separate currency at all, but whatever. I'm sure there are all kinds of issues I don't understand.

In any case, I am off. I am not sure how my internet access will work once I'm there, but I'll do my best to post if I can. I'm not sure I'll see much of the city... I did sign up for the optional "study tour" of Macau, though, so that at least should include a sight or two. I'm terribly nervous about it all, but no doubt once I get there things will be fine.