The plane ride.
It took 2 flights, one from Raleigh to Chicago and another from Chicago to HK. Although it was just a plane ride, I learned two lessons. 1. I get motion sickness and 2. always carry medicine in carry-on luggage. Since I overlooked both of these things, I almost fainted in the Chicago terminal and ended up spending over 10$ on Advil and Dramamine. Other than that it was a smooth ride from Chicago to Hong Kong. I actually ended up sitting next to a girl who was also studying abroad in Hong Kong. She was a student from a Chicago University whose parents were originally from HK. We had some good conversation and helped eachother out after landing in HK with baggage and customs.
Arrival.
I took an air bus from the HK airport to my host University (Hong Kong Polytechnic University), which dropped me off at the Hong Hum Station. The Hong Hum Station is directly between the University and the PolyU Residence Halls. I was feeling pretty homesick at this point and lost since I didn't really know what I was going to do after I arrived. However, since my original buddy from HK was unable to meet me at the bus stop as orginally planned, I was able to make last minute plans with Jenny (my best friend from home, who happens to be studying in HK too) to meet me instead. It was great to see a familiar face! She helped me check in to my "new home" in the PolyU Residence Halls, which house 3,000 students (a guiness record!). Then we went out for my first meal in HK. The meal was pretty tastey and not too expensive. Eventually though we parted ways and I had to face the fact that I was going to have to figure everything out on my own..
jenny!
Roommate.
My roommate, Mia, is an exchange student from Finland. To my surprise, we get along really well and we have a lot in common! We've done pretty much everything together since Jenny and I parted ways. I've also learned a lot about Finland culture since I've met her. For instance, in Finland education is free (including studying abroad)! Also, kids start drinking as early as elementary or middle school. The drinking age is 18 there and they don't get their liscence till their 21. Mia took a couple years off from school doing interesting things, such as cleaning airplanes, traveling to Australia, and working for an exchange program in Finland before going to college, which I don't believe is too uncommon there. She is here studying Hotel Tourism and Management. I cannot express how thankful I am that she is my roommate since she will be such a huge part of my experience living in HK for 4 1/2 months.
Toiletmates. (thats what they call them here)
aka the 2 girls we share our bathroom with. Both girls are also exchange students, however one is from France and the other from Holland. I hope to get to know them better in the coming months.
Living.
It's been quite an ordeal settling down. My roommate and my friend from NC State, here on the same textiles exchange program as me, have been running all round the city searching for items essential to our new life in HK. It took us 3 days, tons of walking, lots of questioning, misunderstandings, and subway rides to find and do a million little things.
Each day the residence halls feel more and more like a home. Although they are ridiculously small, I think that the way the rooms are set up make it feel comfertable and homely. There is also plenty of storage space. Not to be super girly or anything but I think the rooms are really cute! I'll post some pictures of the room once we've fully settled in. The bed is smaller than a twin bed. It's actually more of a piece of hard foam, about 3" thick, on top of a wooden plank. Not exactly luxury bedding, but I actually kind of like it. It's not that uncomfertable and I think it might be better for your back. The bathroom however, is another story. I get chills just thinking about it. The shower is .. disgusting. The toilet.. I have yet to master the skill for flushing it. It takes quite a bit of effort to flush the toilet. Sometimes I get lucky though and it'll flush the 2nd or 3rd time I press the lever. I think tomorrow someone is coming by to take a look at it. Hopefully the way it is now isn't how its actually supposed to function. My roommate volunteered the clean the shower. Speaking of the shower, my first shower was cold b/c apparently you have to turn on a seperate switch for hot water. Anyways, things are looking up in the bathroom area. Oh and I almost forgot, you have to pay for air conditioning separately for every time you want to use it. Luckily, its the winter time right now where the weather seems perfect (around 60F), so there's no need for AC.. yet. Here's the view from our window on the 7th floor, one of two all girls floors. So far everyday it's looked like this. Sunny and perfect!
This is some middle eastern food and thai desert I had for lunch the other day at a mall with Brigette. Total was around 7USD.
Orientation.
I had orientation today where I was able to see all of the other exchange students. There were many students from the US, Australia, Germany, France, and Mainland China. There were also several students from Finland, Austria, Canada, and Sweden. After the orientation we took a campus tour. It was like a really complicated maze. There are so many tall buildings with so many different rooms and floors for different applications. For instance, in the main building (M Core) there's a bunch of office and computer floors and then randomly theres a resturant on the 13th floor. The campus will take some getting used to, but overall I really like the architecture and lanscaping that they've done with the buildings and courtyards. The school cafeterias also look pretty good and the food is cheap! Here's a dinner I had for just 3USD.
Shopping.
I haven't done too much shopping other than when I was looking for some essential items, but even so, I've seen some pretty interesting shopping areas. I went to Mong Kok, which was like a night market with tons of fake ..everything (they even had designer catalogues where you could pick which bag, watch, shoes, etc. you wanted and they would make it for you or find it amongst their collection of fake designer goods) and other random things. I also went to this one really interesting shopping center called JUSCO which was essentially built into the shape of a lifesize cruise ship in the middle of the city, just a few blocks away from where I'm living.
Mong Kok
Mong Kok street entertainment
Ladies Market at Mong Kok
Here's JUSCO (the cruise ship shopping center..) and some taxis
Overall things have been going pretty well. Probably the hardest thing right now is the language barrier because there's a lot less people who speak English here than I thought. Also, a lot of people here will just start talking to me in Cantonese b/c they assume i understand since i'm asian.
Oh and I want to say thanks to all my friends for the little travel gifts, they were really thoughtful and came in VERY handy, and for coming to say goodbye and helping me pack. I miss you guys! Keep me updated!
If you ever wanted to know what some of the cemeteries look like in Hong Kong.. here's a picture! I thought it'd be interesting to see one so I agreed to help my friend find her grandmother's grave with my roommate. This is just a small part.. there's actually a whole mountain of tombstones behind these. Also, my friend informed me that often times in HK they move graves.. and that's why she needed help looking for it. Unfortunately we arrived past grave visiting hours... so the search has been delayed for another day.
This is Brigitte, my textiles classmate whose on the same exchange program as me from NC State! We were in shock when we saw how chic the Textiles Department looked.. so we took a picture :)
Thai dinner I had with Jenny at a shopping mall in Sha Tin! About... 13USD between us.. pretty good I'd say.
Jenny heading the other way at the subway station.. :)
Some of the knitting machines at my Knitwear design lab. I've been to 3 classes so far. One thing I'm going to have to work on for these classes is my attention span. Each class is 3 hours long... some teachers will give a 5-10 minute break.. but it doesn't really make much of a difference. However, the classes so far have been pretty interesting and I'm excited about what I'll learning and the different projects I'll be doing.
So I still don't quite understand what it was they were doing, but anyways this is a picture of the "Proposed 7th Xuemin Hall association." Basically each floor of the residence halls (there are a total of I think 17 floors for residents) has its own "Proposed Hall Association" (i don't know why they use the word proposed..) which plans events exclusively for the residents on their floor and sometimes with partnering floors. Well this picture is the Hall Association for my floor, called Xuemin (each floor has a different name) at their "open consultation night" where other "proposed hall associations" came and asked questions about their events.. however, it was mostly in Cantonese so I didn't quite understand what they were talking about. But they went around to each room the night before at a strange hour of 11pm encouraging everyone to attend the consultation for support. So my Finland roommate and I went. Some future events in store for our floor include a semester dinner, sweet soup gathering, bowling, a fruit gathering, a beauty workshop (as I mentioned before, we're one of two all girl floors), and a mandatory High Table Dinner. I was told all residents are expected to attend the High Table Dinner and in the correct formal attire. So.. looking forward to that, it should be interesting!
