Sun Nien Fai Lok, Gung Hay Fat Choy!

Happy new year and may you become prosperous!

I did quite a bit of walking, traveling, shopping, and eating this week for Chinese New Year break. But before I start recapping.. here's a little bit of last week.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Our hall had it's semester dinner last Tuesday. This is where all the 7th floor residents were invited to eat dinner in the common area for a fee of 25HKD/ person. Each floor has its own semester dinner. For our floor, the semester dinner wasn't just dinner, but an initiating of the new Hall Association members for the current and and coming semester. It got pretty sentimental (and awkward). Anyways, for dinner we had different kinds of rice pots (rice with pork, rice with ribs, rice with chicken, rice with chicken feet, rice with duck neck.. i think, rice with beef... and so on. Then we played "lucky draw" and Bingo. Lucky me, i was 30 of 40 to win the lucky draw and Bingo. So i ended up with a much needed pair of fuzzy blue slippers (decorated with colorful hearts) and cookies.

The Common Area

Our rice pots..! basically.. the rice pots are supposed to be so hot that u can crack an egg inside of it and it will cook when mixed with the rice.. and the rice that gets burnt along the inside edges of the pot is one of the best parts of the dish. oh and in the middle are our veggies (spinach i think..)

The Xuemin Hall Association (Old Initiating New). The cutting of the pig (yes there's a pig on the table.. an entire roasted pig) is a common celebratory tradition amongst the Cantonese.

Finally we got to eat.. I think my entire table was made up of exchange students.. with the exception of 3 girls.

However, the party wasn't over after rice pots and "mass games." After dinner.. there was dessert :) or.. a workshop on making "sweet dumpling night snack."

Glutenous rice + water = dough

Rice dough + red bean or black sesame seed filling + boiling water = sweet dumpling snack :)

I ate 10+ of these.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Moving on to Thursday..
there was an exchange student welcome party at the Polyu Residence Halls (this is where i live).
I'd say of the 200+ exchange students.. at least 85% came. We each got a hong bao (red envelope) with one of the 12 different zodiac symbols. This grouped everyone into 12 different "teams" for "mass games." I got a Dragon (which was pretty crazy since the Dragon is my zodiac symbol). We played a bunch of random games.. which suprisingly.. my team rocked at. For one game.. they would put up the beginning of the challenge on an overhead and each team would have to send up who they though would be the best representative for their team.. and then the actual challenge would be revealed.. and then whoever won the challenge (ie. smallest finger, biggest head, etc (these were the actual challenges..)) gained points for their team. I was sent up for "the most flexible..." and the challenge was "waist" and we had to do limbo. I WON.
Here's an example of another challenge.. that we won as well .. :)
Oh and did i forget to mention that the overall first place winning team was the DRAGON team?! As a prize.. we got chocolate and more cookies :) Afterwords.. just about every one of the exchange students went to Lan Kwai Fong to Party (in front of 7-11...)

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This was longer than i thought it would be. Anyways the following is stuff I did over Chinese New Year Break.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Saturday
I met up with Richie, a family friend from home (who is studying in Taiwan at the moment) for a lunch buffet with his program friends from Taiwan. They came to Hong Kong for their Chinese New Years break. The Buffet was ridiculous. It was in some fancy hotel and cost about 300HKD per person. We were there from noon to 3pm.

I took pictures of my favorite part... dessert.

Strawberry, chocolate, and vanilla fountains....and Yes, those are sticks, strawberries, melons, and marshmallows for you to use in the fountains. After the ridiculous buffet.. we went shopping around Times Square.

Then we ate more food. I mean.. we ate dinner.

fried noodles

forgot what this was called... some kind of noodle with beef.

and of course.. dessert. THIS WAS SO GOOD. I think it was.. glutinous rice balls, red bean, rice, and some sort of pudding and tapioca, and .. i forget the Chinese name for the thing on the right.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sunday
Disney Land, Hong Kong (Chinese New Year Special)
I took the Disney Land Resort train to meet up with my family friend from home and his program friends at Disney Land. It was like your average metro.. only all the windows were in the shape of mickey mouse's head and the handles hanging from the upper railings were mickey mouse shaped as well. it was cute.

Disney Land.. asian-ized.


Tea cups!
mini fantasia hats.. :)
Space Mountain!
Winnie the Pooh ride

Overall.. Disney Land was pretty awesome. I had my doubts at first b/c I had heard the Disney Land in the US and Ocean Park (the other theme park in Hong Kong) were both much better than the Disney Land in HK. However, i think if you really have an appreciation for Disney.. you'll enjoy it.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Monday
in Macau with Richie + friends.

around 10:30am we took a speedy ferry to Macau (about a 55min ride). and the first thing we did.. was catch a taxi to eat at a famous portugese resturaunt on the far side of Macau. (Macau is pretty small so it didn't take too long. fyi: Macau is a mix of colonial portuguese infrastructures and culture, a mediterranean China coast, and mini Las Vegas)

Chicken. (the best)

Pork.
Salad + Portugese style Fried Rice. The tomatoes were so fresh!

After we were completely stuffed, we went to MGM and Wynn Macau Casino to check out the gambling scene. (This was the 2nd time i got carded.. first time was in Lan Kwai Fong at a Club/bar). At Wynn Macau I played slots with a free 100 credits I got from a woman handing out flyers. I made around 8USD (yayy). and lets just say Richie was down..

Then we went to do some site seeing.

The Ruins of St. Paul
Colonial sideMacau Museum - unfortunately it was closed by the time we got there.

we got this great skyline view though!
Snack shop - common in Hong Kong as well

For dinner we went back to Hong Kong Island. We ate ate Richie's friend's uncle's restaurant.

shrimp wonton and noodle soupniu jing (beef tendon) Mmmmm :)

Before parting ways.. we all stopped to eat some ice cream at Haggen daz :)------------------------------------------------------------------------

Tuesday
Tuesday was the night of the ridiculous fireworks show along the harbor. I joined Richie and his friends at one of his friend's parent's place in Hong Kong for Ox tail dinner and the fireworks show. The view from the top of her building wasn't that great so we just watched it on TV... haha. Maybe next time.. i'll make my way over to the harbor to see the ridiculousness of Hong Kong fireworks. here's some google images of the crazyness.
http://images.google.com/images?q=chinese%20new%20year%20Hong%20Kong%202009%20fireworks&hl=en&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wi

After fireworks and dessert.. we went to the American Club in the mountains (by Repulse Bay). The American Club was HUGE. I'll try to add pictures that Richie's friends took when they post them.

We also went to the Peak. The Peak at night was as surreal as it was when I went in the day time.

Wednesday = shopping at IFC mall and saying bye to Richie!

Thursday Night = dinner with 2 of Richie's friends who stayed back and his friend's family. We ate at the most famous rice pot place in Hong Kong (near temple street).

rice pots - fyi the spoon is in a hot cup of tea.. for cleansing..

inside one of the pots :)fried oyster pancake w/ chili sauce :)

Its late.. hope u enjoyed the post! I might add more later.

Inauguration

so with the inauguration of our future president.. I give you Obama written in chinese.

this past week

So on Thursday for my Global Fashion Marketing class I got to go on a tour of the Hong Kong Fashion Week and World Boutique trade shows. It was such a great experience! We weren't allowed to take pictures so I only have these two. I also got to see a fashion show there. It wasn't anything fancy but it was really neat to see a real live fashion show outside of school.



I meant to post this earlier but anyways, here's some photos of the design lab/classrooms at HKPU. It's like a large studio sectioned off by glass walls for classrooms, machines, and displays.


Here's something random. A Pizza Hut! I don't know if you can tell from this picture, but the Pizza Huts here are all really fancy, like fine dining. Eventually I think I'll go eat there to compare the food and prices to our Pizza Hut back at home.

On Saturday I went on a City Tour with a bunch of other exchange students. Our first stop was the Golden Bauhinia Square.

Then we went to visit Ma Mo Temple. Where everyone was praying, making wishes, and burning inscense for the new year.


Next we went to the Peak and got a skyline view of the city.

These are some girls I met who are also on the exchange program at PolyU. The girl on the left is from France and the two in the middle are from Holland.
There was an icecream truck so we all got some delicious soft serve icecream :)
We also went to the Stanley Market and Repulse Bay. I was told the bay name came from an old British boat. This area was crowded with tourists and westerners.Soccer is also really big in Hong Kong. Here are some kids playing in a fenced in soccer field by the bay. Much like New York City, these fenced in soccer fields are a common solution to highly populated cities.

After the tour, Brigette and I went to Central/ Lan Kwai Fong where many westerners go to drink, party, and go clubbing. I was told and witnessed that many foreigners will buy beer at the 7eleven and drink on the streets before going to the bars/clubs in order to save money otherwise spent on expensive beverages in the bars. Here's one road leading to Lan Kwai Fong.


Eventually we got hungry and decided to try out some Hong Kong Mc Donalds. In general the menu is pretty much the same.. except they have curly fries!.. and cute little decorative cartoons on their packaging. Also, it wasn't any healther.. just like at home I still felt sick after I ate it.
What is a city without some protesters? Here's some foreigners protesting for "peace in the middle east." I couldn't get a picture but after they were kicked off the premises by the local HK police, there were some drag queens making a bit of scene in this same spot.

On Sunday Brigette and I decided to go to Hong Kong island to see the Vivienne Westwood "a Life in Fashion" exhibition!

corsets!
a suit made of rubber!
Booties..?

Then we went shopping.. :)
And in this mall we found a ridiculous store completely made up of little japanese toy machines.

Here's some of the toys you could get. Brigette and I spent a long time deciding which machine we wanted to waste our coins on. Here's another mall we went to with some giant 3 story escalators.
We also had some delicious food at a local restaurant; pork rice rolls and congee with thousand year old egg, squid, peanuts, and a bunch of other miscellaneous bits and pieces... for only 3USD per person!

So today after class there was a boys and girls acapella group singing in the middle of campus. (they have acapella groups too!.. and they weren't too bad either)
that's all for now.