Mahjong and more!

The hostel committee gave us with morning snacks again!


Something something good good something.

A friend who dislikes vegetable-flavored crackers gave me hers!
They wrote different messages on each package?! Amazing.

Before opening the package, we thought the crackers were broken and crumbled.
Nope! Just adorable triangles.

Anyway, yesterday felt like the real real beginning of autumn, ignoring the bright green leaves. After Mandarin class we sat by the canteen (I'm not sure how much longer we'll comfortably be able to do that) and learned to play Mahjong. The game actually reminds me a bit of rummy, but I won't try explaining it without a visual representation of the tiles, plus I'm still hazy on some of the rules, plus she never taught us the scoring system. So I guess I won't be gambling any time soon.

At 6:30 (after a day of errand-running and paper-writing) I went to the fencing club's tournament--two people called to tell me about it! I felt so remembered--I'd missed two weeks of fencing due to intense studying... Yay tournaments! Yay to acquiring numerous bruises (but sill no more than a typical practice back home)! The tournament ran the same as in the U.S.--divide into pools, top eight move on to direct eliminations--except for the tally marks used by the score keeper. Woah! Then after the tournament we fenced some more. And talked about the election system. I learned that in Hong Kong all of the political parties are either pro-government or pro-democracy. The distinction: pro-government supports everything the government does, pro-democracy dislikes everything the government does.

Walking back to the hostel my fencing friend/floormate and I talked about Thanksgiving (no, it doesn't involve Jesus) and snow.