May 5; Happy Half Birthday Tanjin and Heys!

Day 90

The most talked about event this week had finally arrived: Tanjin and Heys half birthday!

People were soo ready to eat Indian food, drink, and sing. (Mmmm, those are a few of my favourite things!)

But before the celebrations began, Kristie, the birthday girl, and had a little pre-celebration with Chris Hemsworth and a hair straightener... i.e. we watched Thor and played with Tanjin's hair. *Thor was so good, I can't believe I hadn't watched it before.

Let the night commence!

We got that pre-prom feeling

Asians can fly.

ruining Papa John's moment

wasps...that weren't invited.

It was quite the show up at the Ganges restaurant.

Sigrid joins us after a week! =) 

Zhang, Jeff, and Cam talking about stuff.

John and Berney

Jack joins us for the first time!

Kristie and Catherine after their meal.

Heys brought some of his new hiking friends.

roomies

Heys testing out his new back scratcher from Mona.

Jeff comes over to help us calculate the bill. 

big fat bill for the 16 people who showed up.

After paying that bill, the restaurant gave us a plate of watermelon --on the house!
It's like they knew watermelon was the birthday princess' favourite fruit.

Some of the gang had to leave before going to Wu bar, but we were still 10 people strong!

chilling on the rooftop

I spy tequila shots. 

1 shot.

2 shot.

Chocolate Kiss -
soo gooood!

Mona and Heys acting all cute

roomies

Cat and Angel and Zhang
yaaay

Birthday duo (with Jeff's eye creeping in the corner)

Jeff, Tanjin, and Kristie hanging/plotting

Wu bartendeeeer with Tanjin and her wingman (w/ Kristie and David creeping)

SCORE.

Birthday girl and I

Bernard and I

We headed to KTV to do a bit of singing, trolling, and of course wandering. Room hopping is pretty fun since foreigners are usually willing/wanting to talk to other foreigners. 

Zhang, Jeff, and Catherine getting hyped up for some karaoke!

Uncle Heys and Agnel.

don't need? We totally need 1D.

really get into the song

Heys probably singing some Beatles

Still not ready to go to bed yet, we went to La Bamba's to tire ourselves out with a game of pool.

Still going strong.

Seeing the sunrise in bed,  that's when you know it had been a good night.

May 4; There were no lamas in this temple.

Day 89

The weather in Beijing had been getting nicer and there were a hell of a lot of things we had yet to do. Instead of going straight to the shopping centres like we usually do, we opted for something a little more touristy and visited the Lama Temple.

Entrance fee: 12 RMB for students (with the help of Kristie’s “student” card)

 helping Catherine spin that three times and making a wish.

a look inside one of the many temples

We couldn’t completely cut out shopping. Since TanG’s half birthday was tomorrow, we needed the finishing touches to the birthday outfits: black pumps. We went to Xidan with a mission: to get what we needed and leave. The best part of the trip was we actually got what we wanted and left right after.  Not only that, but the lady at the accessories stores recognized us and gave us each a free clip. If that’s not a good shopping trip, then I don’t know what is. 

From school, to a temple, then shopping after, we ended up back home to have dinner with the family at our favourite local restaurant.

patio season =)

story telling

Raf modelling my hair accessories

sprite tower

 Competition time!: ranking innocence. Although it was predicted by a few I was the most innocent, Kristie won hands down (just as I predicted). I actually was the least innocent.

Here's the innocent one doing her best Keira Knightley impression (really good impression too!):

having too much fun. 

Where am I.

So I'm writing this as I'm lying in "bed" in my hostel in Tokyo. My room is literally a walled in corner with a door. Its definitely an interesting way of living.
As I did not want to carry my sort of hefty laptop with me every where for 2 months, I left it on the mainland. The decision of leaving my laptop meant two things:
1) a lighter backpack.
2) no blogging.

I will eventually catch up, but for now I'll give a brief rundown of where I've been from the last time I wrote:
- Said farewells in Beijing.
- toured around Shanghai, Hangzhou, Suzhou, Nanjing, Wuxin.
- spent more time in Shanghai. I REALLY liked it there. We sort of lived like princesses.
- got off the mainland! Hong Kong is wonderful, especially the food.
- flew to Tokyo. Can't believe I'm actually in Japan. After how many years???  I went to the pokemon center yesterday, Ghibli Museum today, and off to view Mt.Fuji tomorrow. It has been really exciting.

again, I will post more of my mindless thoughts and activities properly once I reunite with the lappytop.

For now, thank you so much for reading and following along. You've got so many other options but you still choose to read this blog. arigatou gozaimasu.

May 2; getting my party planning on

Day 87

Since we were away for TanG’s half birthday, a decision was made to post pone her birthday celebration for the week after we get back. I eagerly put together invitations for my gurl and Uncle Heys’ half birthday.

We could sense there was excitement in the air as Tanjin and I went door to door to deliver the invites:

#excited