I'm in Hong Kong

well. It's 6 in the morning in Hong Kong. Which means it's about 4PM in Provo, Ut. And since there's not much else to do at 6AM in provo i thought I'd write a little blog talking about our adventures so far. (PS this is my new favorite candy Bueno's SOOOO GOOOD!)

We left for hong kong on tuesday morning. I didn't sleep the night before because we had to be at amy's at 4 in the morning, and i had an 8 page paper to finish and i also had to pack. I figured i'd be able to sleep in the 15 hour flight (turns out i didn't really) haha. anyway so we got to amy's and then headed for the airport. Here's a picture of all of us at amy's house before we left.

We first flew to san fransisco. This flight was nothing compared to our hong kong flight. only about and hour and a half. i slept the whole way which was nice. I was by the window so i had a nice little headrest. Our layover in san fran was about 4 hours long. i attempted to sleep on the airport floor but i was unsuccessful, sadly. So after some airport food and a little bit of rest we got onto our plane for Hong Kong....and let me tell you this plane was HUGE! it was a double decker...with two seats on each side and then four seats in the middle of each of them. we were all in the middle. in rows 50 and 51...i sat by kelsey and cassie and there wasn't anyone behind us so we got to put our seats back pretty far. that was nice. They also gave us a blanket and pillow...so we attempted to sleep again a little...i got about an hour or two of sleep. then they fed us some rice and chicken or something...it wasn't too bad. i'm not a huge fan of plane food though. we watched about 4 movies on the plane. i really enjoyed the young victoria...it was a happy movie. Anyway here a few pictures from the plane ride. One of the flight attendants was super nice and he asked if we wanted a picture of all of us.

















after 15 hours of flying we finally got to hong kong! this city is crazy! it's like a jigsaw puzzle of buildings and they ran out of room on the ground so now they have to start building up! EVERYONE lives in apartments and they spend their whole life savings on them. but although it's super city-like, it's also very wet and green...it's like a city in the middle of a rain forest. i LOVE IT!

We had a few people showing us around from the acappella festival. 3 guys (kenneth, julian, and simon) and then 1 girl (Snowy) they were all really nice and julian kept telling us everything there is to know about hong kong. We were about 30 minutes from our hotel so we took a bus to get there...it's not really a hotel...it's more of like a super nice hostile for youth. it's called Y-square. and it's also where we're going to be performing tonight. It's super nice. it's only about 6 months old. It's like government owned and is some place that was built just for youth to be able to have a performing center and stuff. There are 6 beds in here so we pretty much all fit in one room they gave us another room with 2 beds but we didn't feel like being separated so we all are just staying in the one room. ANYWAY....so the first night we went to bed at about 10pm...which is 8am provo time. we all kind of had a restless night. and we woke up at 6in the morning and couldn't fall back asleep. so we went to mcdonalds for breakfast (this would be my home away from home haha) here's a picture of my meal. It's not quite the same as mcdonalds in the US. there are definitely significantly less options here, but the hash browns are still just as good! and that's really all that matters anyway :)

That day we went and sang on a radio show and sang a little bit it was pretty fun. Here are some pictures from that

























After the radio we went and had Food at a Chinese restaurant. which is just a normal restaurant here i guess hah. It was surprisingly REALLY GOOD! which is saying something cuz i'm pretty picky when it comes to foods from different countries. But i told them before we went that i didn't like fish so they knew. We had a lot of BBQ pork! SO GOOD. BBQ pork dumplings, BBQ pork and rice, BBQ pork and rice rolls....and then we tried one other thing...which you may not believe i actually tried...but Cassie got a picture of it so I'll post that at some point haha. but it was JELLY FISH!! oh my...it was gross. it was cold and chewy and just...gross. i didn't swallow it...but it was just gross. here are some pictures from the restaurant.
laina is eating chicken feet and amy tried some squid...ew.
















So anyway this post is already a little TOO long i'm sure for anyone's liking if you actually read the whole thing you get like 40 points! haha i'll just add a few random pictures to the end. The last picture is of us and two other girls that were showing us around hong kong their names are daisy and candy. We loved them :)

5 Hours Until i Leave for Hong Kong

Wow. It's finally here. I'm about to leave for Hong Kong.
Just wanted to take a second to thank everyone who donated through paypal!
You guys are great! I'm so excited to head to Hong Kong and sing with noteworthy for a week.
We'll take TONS of pictures/videos don't you worry!

I still need to pack and shower and finish up a paper so this is a short and boring post, but thanks again for all of your help!


Love Love

HONG KONG DONATIONS?

Hey Guys,

So i need a HUGE favor! I'm trying to raise money for Noteworthy's Hong Kong trip coming up.We were invited to go sing at the Hong Kong Federation of Youth Group's 2010 Internation A Capella Festival (that isn't a mouthful). We will be there April 6-13. What an AMAZING opportunity. But in this world you kinda need money. Fortunately they are paying for a lot of our funds.
I need to raise at least $300 to pay for a quarter of my flight...So i've come up with a super easy way for you to help me out! I made a paypal account where you can just donate as little (or as much) as you want to help me out! I'm sure just a dollar or two would be a HUGE help!!! Just click the "donate" button below! Thanks so much! Love you :)

and i PROMISE i will post tons of pictures and all that fun stuff after the trip in return for the donations

In the words of my marriage professor...

"Life is hard, but you can do hard things." - Dr. Hill

i just have to say

i know i complain sometimes about my lack of friends.
but that's not fair.
cuz i really do have amazing friends.
and my life is SO wonderful.
that is all.

I feel like a person now...

So i bought my first actual piece of furniture today.
Yes...an $8 end table from IKEA.
I have been dying to decorate my apartment the past few days...
I have even been losing sleep because i can't stop thinking of ideas, the sad thing is...all of those ideas involve money...and usually a sewing machine.
SO instead of going with my wonderfully amazing ideas, i had to settle with trying to use what i already had, and 10 dollars in hand at IKEA to try and come up with something.

And let me tell you...I never knew that buying a Table and trying to decorate would be the thing to make me feel like i'm actually a person. Ya know what i mean?...I feel like when i'm living in an apartment full of someone else's furniture i'm not an actual person. because nothing is MINE.... it's like I'm paying to live someone else's life with all of their stuff. haha.

but i am happy to say that i now own a cute little black end table that is sitting in the middle of our living room. with a little bouquet of flowers that savannah sent me the other day.
Then i stuck some pictures on the walls...moved a couch...made a collage...and well...there you have the best i could do with what I've got.

Now all i need is like $100 to actually make it look GOOD haha. I would love some throw pillows and curtains. but it looks a lot better than it did this morning so i won't complain TOO much. :)

Well...

I don't really have anything exciting to say...but i'm trying to keep up with the blogging these days so i'll just catch you up on the events of last week.

Noteworthy has been pretty crazy.
We're going to start recording this week for 0ur next cd.
We already recorded about half of the songs for the cd last year, and we are finishing up by doing some songs from this year.
I'm pretty excited! it's always funny when i'm trying to sell people cd's and they ask me which songs i sing and i have to tell them that i'm not actually ON the cd. But this time i'll be one the whole CD so i'm pretty excited :)

This week we went and sang for the BYU mens basketball game against San Diego. It was pretty fun. Although singing in a basketball arena is different than any other singing experience. You can't hear each other...you can't hear yourself...the sound takes a few seconds to come back to you so the timing is a little wonkey...haha. but it was fun anyway.

Then on thursday we went and sang at an even that was being held by Miss American Fork. It was an event to raise awareness/money for Domestic Violence. This was also a fun gig. Even though it wasn't a big audience. I think a lot of the time the smaller audiences are more fun than the big ones because you feel a more personal connection with each person.

Now we took a break from rehearsing today so that we can be ready for the full speed ahead weeks coming up. With recording and Semi-Finals coming up it's going to be pretty intense from here on out. Wish us luck! haha.

I think i'm going to head over to IKEA today with courtney and one of the Noteworthy girls. I have been having this problem where i can't study at all because i only focus on how disgustingly boring my apartment looks haha. I don't have any money, but i feel like just going to ikea will at least give me some idea of how to make it better. But if you would like to donate to my "katie can't focus with cinderblock walls" fun. then i would greatly appreciate it haha.

anyway i hope you all have a great day!

i'll put up some pictures from the basketball game/ Miss american fork thing. :)

Love Love

Noteworthy & COSMO!

Noteworthy and Miss American Fork

Noteworthy & another guy who performed...his name escapes me at the moment haha he was really good though! :)