I went to the shopping centre today! Apparently, Westfield is everywhere. They had taken over Arcadia, and they have taken over Henderson as well. I went to the Westfield: WestCity mall and explored. There were cute clothes, but I was unable to do any shopping because (1) I need to lose weight, (2) it's all summer clothes but I feel like I'm going to freeze, and (3) I wasn't in the shopping mood. But I noticed quite a few American stores there, but with tweaks. For example, they had a Bed Bath & Beyond, but the logo was different from ours and the store was pretty small. But they also had a lot of their own stores/restaurants (of course), and they had a Nando's! Most of you probably don't remember, but there was a Nando's down the street from us at Downing College (in Cambridge), and so seeing it reminded me of that summer. Anyway, the shopping centre also had a big supermarket called Countdown, which was pretty nice. I made a very happy discovery there!
I did not buy it, unfortunately, because--as we can all remember--I am fat and not allowed to eat such things. But I will return to it, someday, after I start walking regularly and losing weight.
I also spent a lot of time at Whitcoulls, which is their large bookstore chain. Whitcoulls and Borders are the largest bookstore chains in NZ I think. I read the prologue to Tolkien's Children of Hรบrin and flipped through the Lord of the Rings Location Guidebook. There are so many places to go, although many of them are set-less and so may not immediately make one think of LOTR. At the end, there's a suggested 23-day journey to take to visit all of the sites. I'm thinking of doing that before I leave. The locations are all so far that I don't know if it's practical to try to do them one at a time on the weekends (which would also require the purchase of a car). But I'll figure all that out.. later.
I had McDonald's for lunch, because I heart the place, and was shocked by the differences. First off, my all time favourite, the #2 meal, is $6.50. AND it was smaller. I was sad.
You can't tell so much in the picture, but the drink and fries were both quite small. Literally. In America, we would categorise them as "small," and not medium. What does this say for Americans? o.O
And on the table:
That was pretty much my day. Got dropped off around 10am, picked up at 1:30pm (yes, that involved walking around to kill time.. a lot.) A couple more pictures are in my Picasa album. I wanted to take more pictures, but being there by myself and not wanting to totally stand out as a tourist, I didn't.
Anyway, yesterday was a pretty big day too. It was spent indoors, but still. The big drama was that my right earring fell out in the shower. Normally, not a big deal. But I couldn't get it back in! The pastor tried, but all he got was blood. And his wife was too squeamish to even look at my ear. So I had to wait for Jacob (the English name for the more talkative student that lives here) to come back. Apparently he's even pierced his own ears so he was the expert. So I waited for about five hours for him to come home from school, and then freaked him out by giving him a big welcome when he came home. You wouldn't think the hole would close up so fast, but apparently it was pretty closed. But he managed to get it reopen, and with pain, blood, and a lot of patience, he managed to get it in.. after half an hour. That was not fun. And ever since then, my right ear has been in a lot of pain. Bright red and swollen. I just hope it's not infected. I seriously don't want to go through this.. again. I have been instructed (by Jacob) to not even think about touching this year for the next two weeks. Sigh.
I then spent the rest of the day/night watching movies because I was sick of watching so much TV (mainly all the episodes of Bones that I was behind on) for the past week. I finally finished watching The Boondock Saints (love the movie!) and The Pacifier. I also watched Transformers. Quite productive, yes?
Well, that's all that's been going on here. That and a couple more job rejections. Sigh. Why won't anyone say yes?! TT_TT
I also spent a lot of time at Whitcoulls, which is their large bookstore chain. Whitcoulls and Borders are the largest bookstore chains in NZ I think. I read the prologue to Tolkien's Children of Hรบrin and flipped through the Lord of the Rings Location Guidebook. There are so many places to go, although many of them are set-less and so may not immediately make one think of LOTR. At the end, there's a suggested 23-day journey to take to visit all of the sites. I'm thinking of doing that before I leave. The locations are all so far that I don't know if it's practical to try to do them one at a time on the weekends (which would also require the purchase of a car). But I'll figure all that out.. later.
I had McDonald's for lunch, because I heart the place, and was shocked by the differences. First off, my all time favourite, the #2 meal, is $6.50. AND it was smaller. I was sad.
And on the table:
Anyway, yesterday was a pretty big day too. It was spent indoors, but still. The big drama was that my right earring fell out in the shower. Normally, not a big deal. But I couldn't get it back in! The pastor tried, but all he got was blood. And his wife was too squeamish to even look at my ear. So I had to wait for Jacob (the English name for the more talkative student that lives here) to come back. Apparently he's even pierced his own ears so he was the expert. So I waited for about five hours for him to come home from school, and then freaked him out by giving him a big welcome when he came home. You wouldn't think the hole would close up so fast, but apparently it was pretty closed. But he managed to get it reopen, and with pain, blood, and a lot of patience, he managed to get it in.. after half an hour. That was not fun. And ever since then, my right ear has been in a lot of pain. Bright red and swollen. I just hope it's not infected. I seriously don't want to go through this.. again. I have been instructed (by Jacob) to not even think about touching this year for the next two weeks. Sigh.
I then spent the rest of the day/night watching movies because I was sick of watching so much TV (mainly all the episodes of Bones that I was behind on) for the past week. I finally finished watching The Boondock Saints (love the movie!) and The Pacifier. I also watched Transformers. Quite productive, yes?
Well, that's all that's been going on here. That and a couple more job rejections. Sigh. Why won't anyone say yes?! TT_TT
3 comments:
whoo u blogged. u know that westfield is actually an australian company right.? hahaha. oohh i dont think i ever saw a bed bath and beyond. hahaha. but i saw a wal-mart that was a different name, but the same colors and everything. weird. and i LOVE nando's!! im just sad i only got to eat it once.
AND yes, didnt i tell u portions are small.?? not even small. like kid-sized!! haha. thats why i told everybody that things arent really more expensive, it just FEELS that way cause our portions are SO huge. like EVERYTHING we have is huge. so in that aspect, yes its more expensive. hahaha. everything is small. even pizza sizes. i think their large is like our medium, and their family is our large. hahahaha.
dont touch ur ear! yay for pictures. u should TAKE MORE. i really really wanna go to nz and australia now. REALLY.
Man you better get me one of those banoffee pie cadbury bars when you come back from NZ! dang that looks good... and sadly no chance of THAT flavour in HK!
As for McDonalds, welcome to the rest of the world in terms of food portions. ;) heh heh this is why I was so shocked when I first visited the US and saw a cinnabon in the airport... talk about a packaged heart attack! But yeah US portions are insane (remember I always say how guilty I feel about wasting food?-- our Chakra lunch was an exception... :{) But yeah... and prices do suck in most McDonalds out of the US-- if you want really good prices HK and India are the best and they have cool local tailored/specific additions to the menus too.
OH crap, I knew I left out something-- hope your ear feels better!!! And yes DON'T touch it! as much as it hurts and you want to... if you must touch, use ICE as a buffer!
*Healing Hugs*
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