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Deona's Adventures in Germany!	I bet you thought I was still in Hong Kong!

deonadeclue

Name: Deona
Country: United States
State: Georgia
Gender: Female

Interests: There is no such thing as a hobby and a Georgia Tech Education
Expertise: I'm a hustlah babe! I just want you to know! It ain't where I been (ATL Shawty!), but where I'm about to go (Hong Kong)!
Occupation: Student
Industry: Engineering

Message: message meEmail: email me

Member Since: 11/17/2003

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Tuesday, March 30, 2004

Due to high demand here are new pictures of me and locals.....

lol. Okay obviously not locals, but this is "Pimpin Pear" and "Pimpin Mo", during Rugby 7's! Scarry...... and yes those are business cards.

This is me Sarah, Abimbola...... and another black person (in white shirt) whose name I forget @ the moment. Still Luv ya girl! lol

This is Mark..... He's a bartender @ Bar George...... Actually he's not local either, but he is Asian (and cute).

HK is being taken over by Scooby Doo's!!!!!! I'm being attacked!! But Caren and Phyllis seem to be enjoying it!

There are some locals..... Maggie and Cybil w/ me Deah Caren and Phyllis!

Me Maggie and Cybil show off our million dollar ( I'm talkin' USD!) smiles!

Me and my girl Nikki! Okay obviously they have all made up American names. lol

Me and the new crew. =)

Me and my buddie Jourex on the MTR! Don't those glasses make me look sophistocated?

Okay......... thas all there is, there isn't anymore. I am going to Vietnam, Thailand and Cambodia over the next 12 days, so this will have to hold over until then! I'll have plenty of pictures for you though! Until then........

1:09 PM - 56 views - 2 eprops - 1 comment - email it

Monday, March 29, 2004

Okay......... so I have been a Xanga slacker........ Sorry........ umm..... school here isn't as easy as I thought it was, but it is still definitely earier than Tech! But really I had a long story, and I had to wait until I could figure out how to upload good pictures... Well I figured it out (lol! Yeah riight, thank you Qing for helping me!) so here is..........

DEONA BACKPACKING THROUGH MAINLAND CHINA!!!!

So we started off thinking we would visit Shenzen China for the day. Here is a picture of the city

Very modern. We got there, I got my eye brows arched.... but here they arch your eyebrows by pulling every hair out of your head that doesn't make your eyebrows look nice. Then we ate and went shopping... Here's the market. Let's play a game of "Where's Deona" can u find me?

Then after that we got massages, pedicaures and facials..... It took like 4hrs and cost a total of let's say $30 US dollars. Gotta love China! But because it took soooooo long we missed the last train out of China back to Hong Kong..... And so the Journey began. We then took a bus to Guanxhou.

Once we got there we played basketball with locals........ of course I got injured again and had a huge bruise on my knee. They are all soo afraid of my skills!

Then we went down town and hit up the club.

Here's me riding to the club!

I met this guy there and we went out to eat with all of his friends afterwards. Talk about a hilarious bunch. They were the Hip Hop crowd of GuangXhou, rap is everywhere and it has definitely black visitors very popular everywhere we go!

Jeff and Tim having fun w/ Budwieser!

Sorry sideways....... but Tim was my favorite! He wishes with a passion that he was American, and if you talk to him..... he'll whisper to you that he wishes he was black! The ambition of that young man. lol

Here's the group throwin up their respective gang signs...... lol. You know I am representin' the A-town!

The next day we did the tourist thing. We took a ferry ride on the river there. It was really nice. Here's a picture from the outdoor deck.....

Very nice!

And we also went to the "Five Rams Statue" which is the official GuangXhou thing to do. Here's a lovely picture of it

Aren't I just a wonderful picture taker!

Hmmm....... that night we walked around and had philosophical converstaions about life and did Tai Chi at sunrise by the river.

Again wonderful picture taking skills at work!

Then we were off to JuHai to fly kites and ride 3 person bikes...

That was Jeff flying my butterfly......... it eventually got ran over by a couple of cars..... lol. We gotta work on our kite skills/

And here is us on our 3 person bike....... we didn't go more than 2ft. but it was fun!

After all that we were really tired...... we went to Maccow and came home! What fun.

5:53 AM - 35 views - add eprops - add comments - email it

Saturday, March 06, 2004

What's up? Such a lovely day today was...... I got up walked around a bit. I met up with the guys to play basket ball, because as you all know I am an excellent basketball player! But I guess I was too much for them, they gotta a little intemidated by a female whoppin on the court I guess, and they tried to take me out. lol.

I think I am just continuing the streak of illnesses, because now my ankle is twisted. I had to go back to the room and try to hobble around for the rest of the day. It's not that bad, just a little swollen and a little painful. But on the bright side, I have been watching a lot of interesting Asian Cinema since I have been confined to my room. I watched "Look Left, Look Right" which was a good chick flick recommended by my roommate. And a couple other movies.

But other than that, life in Hong Kong has been pretty regular. Well I keep this one short!

11:20 AM - 26 views - add eprops - add comments - email it

Sunday, February 29, 2004

Okay....... I wrote an article for the school newspaper here at HKUST. I figured I share, since I told everybody I would share what my name meant. Hope you enjoy! (Oh and I am sure there are typos!)

My Chinese name is *Dec Hu Die (Xiqing please insert chinese characters). When I arrived here, and began classes we began with introductions. And I noticed the strange phenomenon of everyone having American names such as Judy, John and Stacy, in an effort to make the teaching process easier for Professors who would like to call on their students by "name". I was a bit taken aback by this common place. In many cultures your name carries the weight of your family pride and a meaning so special that your parents would like to brandish you with it for the rest of your life! So in an effort to connect with an Asian culture and also to provide a greater meaning to my name than the American culture typically allows for, I decided to create an Chinese name for myself. This name describes my reason for being here in Hong Kong, my hopes and goals for my time here, and how I seek to understand my new cultural experinces while here and throughout my life.

For those of you who speak Cantonese, I am sure you may wonder how does *Woh Die, Butterfly convey this much meaning? Well my answer is that I identify with many of the characteristics associated with the butterfly. Initially many people assocaite butterfly with the term Social Butterfly, which basically desrcibes a person who is comfortable is social situations and perhaps very friendly. And perhaps, initially, that is how many people may see me, describing me as very nice and sociable. I would have to call myself a Catapillar here, as compared to in America. I am only humbling crawling to become more social and fluent in this culture. To make new friends and to dabble in as many arenas of Hong Kong life as possible. I want to learn about the differences and the similarities that our two cultures share. However, I must say that this is only my most basic reason.

As I am sure most of you know. Butterflies are often found in flower patches alone, feasting in the flowers beauty; They also spend a long time in complete solitude while in their Cocoun stage while metamorphisizing from catapillar to the magnificent butterfly. I feel that this is my cocoun. Although I do have a lot of space with which to explore whilie her in Hong Kong, from the extremly busy markets in Mong Kok to the exciting nightlife her in Wan Chi and Tsim Tsa Tsua, to even the relaxing beach front of Sai Kung and the Mountiain tops of Po Lam. I am still a fish out of water, a stranger in a very foreign country, and well removed from everyone and everything that I know back in America. Here I have no peer or parental pressures to weight my decisions with. Everything that I do in Hong Kong is in a vaccuum, separated from my loved ones back in America. This leaves a lot of independence in my decisions and a good meter to base these decisions against. That meter is, myself. My main hope and goal while here is to become more one with myself my beliefs, and disbeliefs for that matter. This time in Hong Kong has been a great time to also learn myself! And I have found that even in the few weeks that I have been here, the learning and growing potential has been monumental.

Finally, my family name in America is DeClue. It is comon practice here to shorten the last name of a Westerner to the first syallable to produce a new Asian name. *Dec was still also a fitting last name for me, which in Ancient Chinese it means to teach, lead, and enlighten. This is what I hope will be the end case of my adventures while here in Hong Kong. After one has attained great awareness of themselves, the only way to further replicate this process is through teaching others about yourself, culture and the bits of wisdom that one has gained through out life. Thus one can learn via teaching. I only hope that this experience will so change my life that I will be able to better understand myslef and my purpose to others. Thus living my life is a constant cylce of Learning, Growing, and Teaching; Catapillar, Coucoun, Butterfly.

I came to Hong Kong with no specific expectations of what I would find here. But I now see that perhaps what I will find here is myslef!

~Deona DeClue

*Dec Hu Die

8:10 AM - 22 views - add eprops - add comments - email it

Sunday, February 22, 2004

Well today was a very lovely day for me. I woke up at about 9:30, ate breakfast and headed off to Po Lam to "Walk 10,000 Steps for Health!" After being lost for about an hour we made it to the gathering and they gave us hats! So basically we climbed a mountain! A walk like that never would have taken place in America without every man woman and child signing a waiver for accidental death...... There were many parts where if you just slipped a little bit, and fell back.... you would die! Okay, may I exaggerate...... but it was very steep! But also very fun!

Here are some pictures!

Can u see me and Irene (fellow Geogia TECHer) throwing up the A-TOWN in Hong Kong?!?! It's worldwide baby!

This is once I mastered the mountain! Can u see those biceps!?!? Rocky Jr. Holla!

And here is me doing the Vanna White thing with the city of Po Lam!

Then I had Hardees! Nobody really cares about Hardees in America, but as an American in Hong Kong, I was soooooooooo excited to have it in my life! They had mashed potatoes, corn on the cobb, fried chicken etc. It was American-Decent, Hong Kong-Excellent.

And I saw my first Asian Cinema here.... It was this movie called "Leaving Me Loving You", I figured it'd be a classic chick flick...... but it was soo much worse! Basically the movie starts off with this couple breaking up..... One of their friends leave.... an old man dies...... and then they get back together at the end of the movie. I was disapointed to say the least. But maybe the next one will be better.

Oh and I have a Chinese name now. It is Cai Hu Die, I won't share what it means yet.... But basically all of the kids here make up American names so the teacher can pronounce it, and to make it easy on forigners.......... so I come up with a Chinese name. Makes sense riight?

For my mom..... My number again is 852-9430-7391. Call me and I will give you my address again! Love ya!

Well I'm finna get some sleep........

* A special shout out to Qing and Irene for posting the pictures so I can just cut and paste. lol =)

11:18 AM - 4 views - 2 eprops - 1 comment - email it

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