sweating like beasts in Macau

During our Hong Kong trip, we took a day trip to Macau. Here are some pictures. (Most of these were taken with my new SLR... until I ran out of batteries haha)... sidenote: none of these pictures have been photoshopped or corrected because I'm way too lazy but I think they turned out pretty well!

First, we went to this weird area where everything was deserted and empty. It was so hot I'm pretty sure I got heat stroke from walking around.

 I think they tried to copy the Coliseum and other non-Asian type buildings. 

It was a pretty good place for random pictures though... CHEESY RANDOM PICTURES.

(I like how in that last picture, my brother is in the reflection). 

Afterwards, we went to this huge mall that was all Venetian themed...

...complete with a fake river with gondola rides where the rowers serenade you!

Family shot! One of the few normal ones...

Finally, after hours of walking we took a food break... with PLENTY of POTATOES!!! =D I have to admit that I was starting to get extremely cranky from hunger (one of my food moods again).

When my hunger beast was appeased, we continued our trek to the Historic Centre of Macau. Along the way, my brother's best friend - Freddy the Frog - found a giant field of lilypads to swim in.

If you ever visit Macau, this monument is one of those huge tourist destinations that you have to visit. We walked all the way to the top (the most exercise I've done in awhile)... seriously, we were all like sweaty beasts the entire day. Walking in Macau = hot Yoga! 

Near the monument there's a small mountain on the right hand side that you can walk up and take beautiful views of the entire city. If you survived walking up all those stairs, it's worth it to walk up a bit more and see the view.

One of my random favourite pictures of the day is this one of me and Randy. My mom was clearly being a stalker when she took this shot. 

Anyway, there's my quick photo update. I hope these vacation pictures are mildly interesting to you all but you know it's been hard for me to do more art-related posts with so many places to visit and things to see!

QE Park

Queen Elizabeth Park is always such a beautiful place to visit. My family used to go quite often just to walk around, so after dinner one day, we decided to revisit our childhood memories...

The flowers are still as gorgeous as I remember them...

But soon... things started getting weird...

My brothers and I found giant things to climb...

... and huge structures to pose with!!

(we used to play tag around this thing! I remember getting hurt from running into it! =P)

We attempted to levitate...

...which only Clarence succeeded in doing...

and then we started climbing trees...

and... doing other weird things!?!?

Good times. =)

Since our whole family is going to Hong Kong for a month (we're leaving in... SIX DAYS?!?! Uh.... what!!) this park outing was good practice for spending lots and LOTS of time together... 

I just hope they won't get annoyed with me and end up leaving me at a park bench somewhere.

hi! meet my FACE.

Okay so, some people have been saying to me, "Why do you hide your face on your blog all the time? It's weird."  Well at first, I hid my face for privacy reasons because my future career/line of work advises you not to post embarrassing things on Facebook or do stuff you'll regret. Well I realized that I don't post anything incriminating on this blog anyway (at best, they'll just think I have a strange sense of humor), and I'm not doing anything here that I'll regret... so I finally decided... 

Since this is a blog where I share my life adventures, I wanted to make it a little more personal and show my FACE in unflattering pictures such as these, where my eyes are closed...

where I'm posing awkwardly in the middle of the road...

and where I'm trying to take a happy jumping picture but end up looking sad.

Okay in my defense, I just felt like jumping and skipping and prancing around because it was such a nice day! My brother decided to join in on my jumping extravaganza... but my dad failed to capture our success... so at the end of the day, we just looked like FOOLS. 

Oh and by the way, the whole time we were taking random pictures, my grandpa, grandma and aunt were laughing at us ... as was THAT GUY (below) who came out of his shop to cross his arms and stare at us WITHOUT SHAME. He stood there watching us the entire time even when we stared confusedly back at him, and only went into his store when we got in our car and drove away... creepy man. 

Anyways, this is what goes down at a typical family lunch gathering... 

But actually, I wanted to take pictures with my brother that day because I thought we matched so nicely with the grey + white + red + navy outfits (not planned)... and I wanted to show you guys my new red $4 bag - the latest addition to my collection of thrift store purchases! I love it because it adds colour to any outfit. (side note: I have been going thrift shopping lately and I'll probably post some of my other awesome finds tomorrow!) Okay, bye for now :)

family walk

My parents like to take walks around our neighborhood every night. I joke that my dad is the UNofficial Blockwatch guy in our area because he somehow knows random facts like which houses are shady and used to have marijuana grow-ops. But one fine night, they decided to venture out to the Richmond Dyke so Lawrence and I tagged along for a good ol' wholesome family walk. My brother brought his nice camera so we took some pictures along the way...

****

This is my favourite picture out of the ones that I took. These honeysuckle flowers (uh okay... I don't think they're actually called honeysuckles) remind me of elementary school because someone told me and my friends that you can take each of the tiny purple petals and suck on the bottom ends of them because they taste like honey. They actually did!!! Does ANYONE else remember doing this, or am I just crazy?

The stalks on this plant looked like celery. 

I was tempted to eat it because I was so convinced that it was.

This was a freakishly cool foreign monster plant that I just liked...

... and THIS shot of two Chinese fishermen looks more like China than Canada.

Now here are some more scenic views that my brother took:

In that last picture, the bird in the bottom right corner is actually a giant hawk that suddenly came out of nowhere and flew towards the fiery mountainous region that looks like MORDOR (Yes! Lord of the Rings reference!) haha.

None of these pictures are photoshopped or altered

 because that's just how beautiful nature is.

 :)