Orientation

View from the gym Parte uno

"So... Don't touch any birds."

I started off the day by trying out the gym that was inside my hostel. I had been told it was small by some of the student ambassadors and it definitely was. With about two treadmills, two elliptials, two bikes, a few other machines and a free weight rack, it definitely serves its purpose. There were only about two other people in there with me at this time (8 a.m.) so there was plenty of room for everyone to do their own thing. Oh, did I mention the great view?

View from the gym Parte dos

My second day was all about orientation for the CUHK International Summer School (ISS) students. We all bused down to Yasumoto International Academic Park (YIA) where the orientation for the 400+ ISS students was held. At 11 a.m., Louis Wong, our Regional Program Officer, began our orientation. The first thing I noticed was how great his English was. Unlike our Vice Chancellor, who later spoke, Louis barely had a Chinese accent, and even had a bit of a British one. His inflection was on point and his jokes were actually understandable (and quite funny). From what my fifteen year old cousin told me (she grew up in Hangzhou and I just saw her a few days ago. I've seen her pretty much every other year when I went back to China with my family), students in China learn British English and when they speak out loud, it's very slowly with great emphasize on each syllable.

The large lecture hall we had orientation
was just to the right on the inside. All the ISS
students have their classes just up those stairs
in Wu Ho Man Yuen Building

This combined with the heavy Chinese accent, slightly weird British accent, and oddball inflections made it pretty hard to understand the Vice Chancellor (My roommate is the same way. I have to get her to spell out the English words she's trying to say sometimes... So we usually just stick to speaking Putonghua).

Louis Wong's presentation was titled "Surviving in Hong Kong". He went over some important things like how to use the subway rail in Hong Kong, and not to get on the wrong way or you'll end up at Lo Wu (where I crossed the border from Shenzhen to Hong Kong) and without a visa you'll be arrested, transportation on campus and others.

So apparently it rains a lot in Hong Kong. Got that. However he warned us if a typhoon comes our way, classes will be canceled. Louis then showed us a clip from the Hong Kong news of what a category 8 storm looks like (basically people were flying around on the sidewalks and getting hit by trashcans). He told us, "if you don't want to end up on the news, stay indoors." Louis also taught us a few Cantonese words to help us. I'm still pretty sure I'm mispronouncing all of these but so far I've only used Nei Ho (pronounced 'Nay Ho') which means 'Hello' and Mm Goi (pronounced 'Mm Guy') which means 'Thank You'.

My roommate and I at orientation!

Some other notable quotes are:

"We are on a very big hill." ... Yeah, got that, too. There's basically no flat ground on campus-only uphill or downhill. I'm still pretty lost on campus so I don't really know how to walk from my hostel to this first part of campus (Yasumoto International Academic Park and Wu Ho Man Yuen Building are very close to the subway station I first came into) so I always take the bus. Our very big hill (small mountain), is big enough that my ears pop a little bit when we go up and down campus. Still, the view is GORGEOUS.

EVERYONE RUN.

"So... don't touch any birds." Pretty much the funniest thing I heard the entire day. Louis was telling us about the different University Health Services on campus and warned us about the spread of influenza. One of the ways to catch it is from birds. Maybe it was because of how serious he sounded but everyone in the auditorium was laughing. We might actually die though.

At the end, we took a massive group picture with all of the International Summer School students. I'm in the sixth row pretty much right in the middle. Louis told us all to do the 'Asian pose'. It was great.

After a light lunch at one of the many cafeterias (they call them canteens) on campus, my roommate and I returned to Lee Woo Sing to relax a little before the next part of our orientation began. CUHK was taking us all to a Super Star Seafood Restaurant for dinner. They pretty much reserved the entire restaurant for all of us. After loading us all into buses, it was about a 20-30 minute ride to the restaurant which was past the Shatkin Plaza/New Town Plaza that I was at the day before.

Air conditioned bus (THANK GOD)

Street outside the restaurant 

Hordes of ISS students in front of the restaurant

The inside of the restaurant was gorgeous. It had beautiful chandeliers, red flowery decorations, and enough room to fit us all.

There's about another half to the left that I couldn't get in the picture. 

The menu for our 9 course meal. YUM.

We learned that the black chopsticks were for getting food
on the table into our own plates and the white chopsticks
were for eating. 

There were about ten others that I shared a table with from all over, including Denmark, China, England, Australia and another American! (I've only met around five so far so it's always exciting) There were cans of Sprite and Coca Cola on the table for us to drink (and when we didn't start drinking them immediately, our waiter kept coming over and telling us to take it. A little stressful but I think he was trying to make room on the Lazy Susan. Even later, after we'd mostly finish one dish, our waiter would come back and try to pawn off the rest to everyone sitting at the table, like he was trying to make room for the next dish (even though there was plenty of room on the table for more than one dish... I'm still confused. All the dishes were previously ordered by the CUHK program and every table was served the same meal. 

Assorted Barbecue Platter. In the middle is black mu er
(pronounced 'moo err') which literally translates to
'Wood Ear'. It's a type of mushroom that grows on trees.
My mom always cooks this at home.

Sweet Corn and Tofu Soup. This was definitely my favorite.
I believe there was egg, tofu, corn, pork, and green onions in it. Very light :)

Deep Fried Scallop Salad Roll. This was also one of my
favorites. The entire roll was actually incredibly soft and
easy to bite into.  Inside was scallop and pineapple
(so it was sweet) and outside was something
along the lines of deep fried noodles. Omnomnom.

Deep fried Grouper filet with Sweet Corn Sauce. I
wasn't able to snap a picture before we all started
eating, but this was also very good. The deep
fried part was softer (because of the sweet corn sauce).
SO GOOD.

Sweet and Sour Pork with Pineapple. I think this dish was
the one I was most disappointed in. Although it was
good, it was just too typical American (not real) Chinese food.
(Kind of like Sesame Chicken, General Tso's Chicken, etc.)

Mushrooms with Chinese Broccoli. YAY SOME
VEGETABLES!

Roasted Crispy Chicken. I think this was the most controversial dish of the meal. In Chinese culture, it's pretty much the norm to eat the head/feet/other parts so all the Chinese people at the table were pretty unfazed. The other half of the table was absolutely horrified by the head and even more horrified when one of the Chinese members at our table ate it. I think we may have scarred them for life.

Deep Fried Taro Fish. So guess what... Not real
fish! We didn't know what 'taro' was and assumed it
was a type of fish (Logical right? Taro fish?) Nope.
This is made up of Taro Corms. I never really
cared for it before and frying it didn't make it taste
that much better, unfortunately. 

Jelly Cake. It didn't have too strong of a flavor to it, and I
think the consistency threw off some people at our table. 

Cotton Candy Rabbit. I'm not sure where they
got the Cotton Candy part because these are basically
marshmallows in shapes of rabbits covered in coconut
shavings. They were almost too cute to eat!

After the meal, we carried ourselves out of the restaurant and back into the buses waiting to take us back to campus. The rest of the night was pretty quiet and eventually, my roommate and I went to bed.

First Day in Hong Kong

LOL.

On my first day in Hong Kong (June 29th), it was just as chaotic as I had expected it to be.

I started off the day doing some final packing for my 9 a.m. flight to Shenzhen (which is a neighboring city in Mainland China close by to Hong Kong). I actually flew to Hangzhou, China a few days before to visit relatives (and also to try to adjust to the 13 hour time difference). Surprisingly, I didn't have much jet lag this time around. The only really noteworthy part of this flight was the video they showed about all the safety features of the aircraft and what to do in case of an emergency. Pretty standard video right? WRONG. I honest to god could have died laughing. They had traditionally dressed Chinese actors/actresses assisting to demonstrate everything with the stewardesses in the video and had them doing even more traditional tai chi movements. I guess this was pretty typical though since I seemed to be the only one amused by it.

Forever in the Foreigner Line

Eventually, I reached Shenzhen where I next had to ride the subway from one end (the East Airport) to Luo Hu (where I would cross the border to Hong Kong) which took about an hour and a half. Luo Hu is HUGE and has the subway station, a train station, customs and immigration all under one roof. I followed the signs through the place indicating "Hong Kong Immigration" or "Foreigners" and ended up at a very long line with lots of, well, foreigners. Oh, I'm also technically considered a "Hong Kong Resident" since I have a student visa from the Chinese University of Hong Kong. (I learned this the hard way when I had originally went to the "Foreigners" gate and was told to go upstairs to the "Hong Kong Residents")

Finally, I made it through all the immigration gates and saw Hong Kong for the first time.

About 75% of Hong Kong is countryside 

After a short, five stop, subway ride, I arrived at the University subway stop. By now it was right around 3 p.m. After asking some people how to actually get to my University, I walked through a tunnel under the subway station and saw a huge line of people waiting for something. One of the helpers I had talked to earlier had said to just keep walking straight to get to my dorm so I had assumed it was within walking distance. Boy was I wrong.

I ended up getting on the bus that came about ten minutes later with all the people that were there and I was the only one with a huge suitcase, backpack and purse so naturally I took up a lot of room in the bus. Since the stairs were narrow I was pretty awkwardly carrying all my luggage up into the bus.

Here's a few things I noticed about Hong Kong at that point:
-It was HOT. It's mostly the humidity that makes Hong Kong borderline unbearable.
-Everything seems to be a little cramped. Maybe this is just my opinion as an American coming to China since I'm not used to such densely populated areas but I seem to always be bumping into someone or something. I also could barely fit into the tiny 7Eleven outside my University with all my luggage.
-Hong Kong has a lot of rural areas. I had always assumed Hong Kong was all skyscrapers and bustling city, but on the subway ride over after I left Mainland China, it was mostly hills and tunnels when we went under small mountains.

This is the bus stop that I'll be using for the rest
of my stay at CUHK to get around campus

By this point on the bus ride I was definitely lost. There wasn't any sort of announcing which station we were at like all the other buses I had ever been on. Eventually, after what felt like an eternity, I just got off at a stop and hoped for the best. Turns out I somehow got off about a 30 second walk from my hostel! (My program calls them 'hostels' which makes me think of the terrifying hostels from the creatively named, 2005 American horror movie, Hostel) It's a pretty standard dorm though, with two beds to a room, two desks, two closets, a fridge, and a communal bathroom for the floor.

I was pretty much a mess at this point. Sweaty was kind of an understatement and I was pretty wary from traveling so long on so many different forms of transportation (I also hadn't eaten lunch). After checking in and receiving my access card, I meandered over to the North wing of the hostel.

FINALLY made it to my hostel, Lee Woo Sing

There are security gates right at the beginning of the North block that you have to swipe your access card to be let in and out (I made the mistake of swiping my card too soon after the person before me so it hadn't registered me as I walked through the gate. When I came back later that day, the gate wouldn't let me back in since I technically never left. One of the student ambassadors came and helped me get through though). Nifty, huh?

My Student ID card!

After a short elevator ride up to the third floor, I was standing in front of my room for the summer, N310. To be honest, I was a little worried to meet my roommate. I knew she was already in there, mostly because the door was unlocked but also because I was definitely one of the last students to arrive at the hostel. I had always gotten along with and became very good friends with all of my roommates in the past, whether they were random or not. I guess unlike my roommates in the past, I had absolutely no prior knowledge of who this person was. Would she like me? Would she take great offense to my sometimes snoring? I've never experienced one of those horror roommate stories that some of my friends have experienced: roommates that completely, awkwardly ignore them, roommates that bring boys into the room while you're sleeping, or roommates that get your younger sister's name tattooed on their chest (The Roommate reference anyone?).

There's also about five more feet behind me with two
closets.

She turned out to be a Chinese girl who is studying at a university in Beijing. She's kind of like a lot of Chinese girls I've met; super skinny, small, quiet, and very responsible. She's always trying to make hour by hour schedules for the next day which, although can be kind of stressful, is also kind of nice. We had our introductions; she told me when she arrived and I warned her about my snoring.

By this point, it was 4:45 p.m. and we went on the last Campus Tour given by a few student ambassadors. They showed us various buildings, cafeterias, and roads. Eventually we ended up at the iCenter, which is where we officially registered and filled out even more paperwork for the University. We also received some CUHK swag items, like CUHK black t-shirts, CUHK pens, and CUHK umbrellas. I thought the umbrellas were a sort of cool, odd thing to give to incoming students but I soon realized it was the most practical thing they could have given us... It pretty much rains DAILY in Hong Kong. So far it's just been light, five minute showers every so often, disrupted by relentless sunshine. I'm knocking on wood right now nothing more serious comes.

It literally started raining the moment they
gave me this

After a trip back up to the hostel, my roommate and I decided to go to the nearby mall (two subway stops away) to buy a few necessities. I had completely forgotten Hong Kong outlets are different from the rest in Mainland China so buying an outlet converter was kind of important. My roommate wanted to buy shoes. The mall itself is connected to the subway station (or the subway station is connected to it) and is HUGE. There are at least six levels of endless stores, some familiar brands like Calvin Klein, Gap, Tommy Hilfiger, Zara, but mostly ones I had never heard of. Each store itself isn't very big, with the average size about 15'X15' (the bigger companies can afford to have more space though).

I could eat this for the rest of my life.

We stopped for dinner at this little restaurant, and I ordered an egg, beef, and vegetable dish with rice. It was DELICIOUS but especially so because I hadn't eaten lunch that day. After that, we made a few more stops: my roommate bought a pair of shoes and we bought some fruit/breakfast at the supermarket. A short subway and bus ride later, we finally arrived back at our hostel to spend our first night at Lee Woo Sing.

Although this first day was absolutely exhausting, I think it definitely added to my studying abroad experience. On the bright side, I definitely learned how to use the bus and Hong Kong subway!