Nobody said anything about tryouts!!!!

Gah! You guys nearly got rid of me for good today... I just about died today. My friend Sui Fong had invited me to go out and play basketball this morning. I was under the impression that it was just going to be a few girls getting together and playing a friendly game of b-ball.

Well, I arrived in the gym and found out that it was freakin' tryouts for the university basketball team! I figured I'd give it a shot, (no pun intended) even though it's been 7 years since I played basketball. Upon getting on the court, my extreme rustiness made itself known.

I managed to keep up with the other girls for the first hour, though I was rapidly running out of steam. I think the coach was worried about me, because I was the colour of my t-shirt (red) and sweating profusely. I can't believe how many baskets I missed. I sucked bad.

The thing that did me in was the shuttle runs... Sprints from the baseline, to the foul line, to the baseline to the middle line, to the baseline to the other baseline and back. Gah. I was a full second or two behind the other girls on both sprints. Half way through the second sprint, I just about collapsed because my legs were so jellified.

I decided that the fact that my heart felt like it was being dribbled up and down probably wasn't a good sign, and gave up after the sprints. Walking home I talked with my mom on my cell phone and could barely hold the damned thing to my ear because my arm was so tired from shooting baskets. I also didn't walk down the stairs... I more or less fell down them. When I got back to the dorm, the door was locked, and I was so exhausted and numbed that I couldn't remember the password. I had to hang up on my mom and phone one of my roommates so she could tell me the password.

Luckily a cold shower (bless the cold!) managed to revive me, because I had made plans to meet Emily for lunch. I ended up going shopping in Tsim Sha Tsui for 10 hours. (Well, Emily and Kimberly went shopping - I just followed them around and resisted buying more purses.)

I had told my pal Lidia that I'd meet up with her around 10-10:30 because it was her b-day. So around 10:15 I seperated from Emily and gang and wandered around Tsim Sha Tsui on my own. I was calling Lidia compulsively, but she wasn't answering her cell for some reason.

I've decided that I don't like wandering HK by myself at night. (I'm sure my mom will be relieved to hear this.) I can never tell when I'm in a sketchy area or when I'll suddenly be in an abandoned area. Plus, the hawkers tend to be more aggressive to white women. I didn't like walking by myself and having all these brown people (sadly, all the people who approached me were brown) thrust themselves toward me and asking me to buy "rolexes" or offering to help me with my single tiny bag. Definitely not cool.

I ended up coming home and had to walk up the mountain because I missed the last university shuttle. Gah. Basketball in the morning, shopping in the afternoon, mountain climbing at night. I'm so tired.

Oh, and I nearly had a heart attack while walking around campus. I was climbing a staircase when something freakin' moved in the bushes and made a racket. I think it was a frog, because it hopped and smacked into the leaves then stood still. But even though CUHK feels like a safe campus, that startled the crap out of me. Maybe it was a rat. I hope whatever it was got eaten by a hawk or whatever other predatory creatures we have on campus.