What's been happening

So, not much to share in recent days.  The weather has been bad to awful for the past 10 days, and this has kept me housebound a lot more than usual.  I even missed 3 days of work last week because of the weather.  It stopped being fun after day 2.I have been spending a lot of time getting ready for the trip to Hong Kong in late March.  I realized that I was going to be traveling from one climate, very early spring, to a totally different climate, what would pass for late spring-early summer when I arrive in HK.  So, I've been shopping for some clothes and various and sundry items that I know I will need for the trip (like bifocal sunglasses that have readers built into them for reading maps, guidebooks and directions without having to whip out the readers and remove the sunglasses).  All you youngsters have no idea how irritating it is to no longer be able to read/see anything without reading glasses!I have also been reading up on the food in Hong Kong.  One book is just about the food scene there, and another book teaches you how to decipher a menu that is totally in Chinese.  So...I've been learning the pertinent Chinese characters for all manner of meat, fish and fowl, various ways to cut and prepare the dishes, etc., as they show up on your typical Chinese menu.  If I see a place that has food that appeals to me, I don't want the language barrier to stop me from ordering something interesting.  My ability to speak Canto is still fairly rudimentary, so I probably won't be able to chat with the waiter/waitress about what is on the menu like I could in France or Spain (at least not this trip), so I want to be able to at least point to something on the menu and confirm that it is fish, pork, tofu, etc.  (I do know those words in Canto.)And speaking of Cantonese--I've instituted a moratorium on forging ahead in my Cantonese course until after the trip.  From now until then, it is all review, review, review.  I need to consolidate everything that I have supposedly learned in the past 2 years and have as much as possible in long-term memory with easy recall for the trip to Hong Kong.  Realistically, without daily use in an immersion setting, you tend to forget about 50% of what you leaned initially, so some of the review is, in fact, relearning.  But that is okay.  I have learned enough other languages to understand how I acquire languages and what it takes to develop a high level of recall.  Mostly, repetition, repetition, repetition.  This is the unglamorous part of learning a language and it always seems to take up much more time the the "fun bits".  But I have been indulging in some entertaining review--hubby and I are watching yet another 40 episode swordplay series.Well, I guess that about covers it.  Mostly just doing a lot of grunt work and things that wouldn't be of interest to normal folks.  The language study part, in particular, has a tendency to put people into a trance in 5 seconds, so I talk about it very little.  The shopping isn't much better and the food, well, unless you are really into Cantonese/Chinese food, again, instant Sominex.  But you can bet that these same people will be interested in all the stories I'll have to tell upon returning from my trip.