1003 more years on my life? Good deal..?

On Friday we took an 8 hour tour of Hong Kong as a part of the exchange student orientation activities. Our first stop was Repulse Bay (Cheen Soy Wan), named after a British warship, on the south side of Hong Kong Island, where we got off to explore the statues and interesting touristy areas. This sign kind of explains the area better:

The first statue our tour guide told, or "warned" rather, us about was the white Buddha statue on the left of this picture. If you touch the male baby that means you will have a boy, and if you touch the female baby, then you will have a girl. If you want twins you can put both your hands on at once. We steered clear. The other two to the left of that one were for good luck and money. As we were looking at them, some guy came up and got all up on the statue on the right.. It was a little intense. And then we learned that you were supposed to rub it from the head to the toes for good luck and then touch the gold one in the middle for money. Okay..


Here you can see our tour guide who led us around by waving a big red flag. Embarrassing. Ahead on the trail is the archway that increases your life by 1000 years if you walk under it. A little much?


Here are some more statues and the entrance of a temple.






"He's throwing the shock!" Yelled one student in our group about this statue. Way to go.




The beach was very nice, although it was too cold to think about swimming or tanning or anything. They have a big sign posted on the beach with the water temperature. I think it was about 66 degrees that day. There is also a famous apartment building on the bay that was built with a large hole cut out from the center. The hole was cut so the dragon could fly down from the top of the mountain to get a drink of water from the bay and then fly back up to its home on the mountainside.




As soon as we saw a local family throwing coins to attempt to land them in the fish's mouth, of course we ALL had to try. So of course 30 students swarm around this giant fish statue launching their coins in the air and pelting innocents as they bounced off of its face. It didn't get old until about 15 minutes later. Then our tour guide told us that the statue didn't mean anything, that it was just decoration, but tourists wanted to believe otherwise. We looked around for a door at the base where the daily earnings could be collected each day from all the suckers like us.




We don't know what the rams meant or if it was unlucky to stand on them. I suppose we would have tumbled into the water below us if we did something wrong..

This red bridge adds 3 years to your life when you cross it. But if you walk back the opposite way then it takes 3 years off. So you cancel out unless you go back a different way. The sign posted on the bridge stated 3 days, so you may have to do a lot more laps then..

I clearly added 3 years.



Next we went to the Jumbo Kingdom floating restaurant in Wong Chuk Hang.


This is the ferry that carted people across to the restaurant.






The outside view of the restaurant from the ferry.

There was a seat for the dragon, or the king.

No one could translate "Lazy Susan" for me. I don't know what else to call it, but that's what our food was served on so you could grab whatever was in front of you until someone turned it.

The dinner was really good (soup, shrimp, main courses of pork, chicken, and fish, and oranges for dessert) and it was a lot of fun! They served us all courses and took our chopsticks out of the sleeves and folded our napkins onto our laps for us. It was pretty neat.


After dinner we went to Wan Chai to watch the nightly 8:00 Symphony of Lights, where the entire skyline lights up in time with music. There are 33 skyscrapers that participate, and many of them are additionally decorated for the new year. I didn't get the best night pictures but it was still neat to see! And this is only one side of Victoria's Harbour. The skyline arced around to the right twice as far as this picture shows.

47 hours later: The first few days overseas

HK INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT

10 hour flight across the ocean and we made it to the Hong Kong International Airport on Lantau Island. We actually flew over Beijing and I saw the Great Wall from the plane! It was about 10:30PM Hong Kong time when we arrived. The airport was pretty neat and a lot more efficient than Alaska!


Alex's uncle picked us up and had kindly bought us both Octopus cards with 114 Hong Kong Dollars on them already (about $15) that are used for ALL public transportation (bus, subway..) so everyone has one. The uncle didn't speak much English so I kind of just followed and we hopped on a bus (all the buses are double-decker and drive like crazies) and then took a taxi to campus. This was about an hour ride.

Here is a map of where the airport is in relation to where we needed to go. There are bridges connecting the islands that aren't shown on this map.

HKUST CAMPUS

The uncle helped us find our Residence Hall, luckily Alex and I are both in Hall IV. He helped us check in and get our keys, as the check-in staff didn't speak English either. So I just signed my name and glued my picture where they pointed. The uncle was kind of exhausting in his babying of us, but whatever he was just trying to make sure we had everything taken care of before he left us. I am in room 401 all the way at the end of the hall, which is ironically the same room number I was in freshmen year living in the dorms, so I told my old roommate Sarah and she thought it was hilarious! I'm miles away from the bathroom and the floors are not carpeted, which is a bummer, but I do have a balcony right outside overlooking the Bay (Clear Water Bay) and the track, so that's great!

I got up at 5:00 AM the third day to run on the track. It was so nice out!

My roommate's name is Yu Kee and I met her right away when I moved in, but then she left the very next morning to go home to Malaysia for the Chinese New Year and won't be back until school starts on the 2nd. It is actually very nice to have the room to myself as I adjust and get settled (Especially since I keep waking up anytime between 3:00 and 6:00 AM).


Here is a map of the campus. Everything is based off of an elevator (lift) system, so it's really confusing. It looks like you should be able to easily walk around to get from place to place, but that is NOT the case as I quickly discovered I was living on a cliffside and campus was a lot larger than I had thought.

I could see all the way up the mountain where I wanted to go, but had no idea how I was supposed to get there. So the first full day I woke up at about 3:00AM and then got up at about 6:30 to shower. There was way too much running through my head in order to fall bad asleep so I organized my room a little and then went to explore campus and take care of a bunch of things. I was frustrated about getting my internet set up because I didn't have a username and password yet for the university's network. So I couldn't even look up where I was supposed to go! I wandered around for a while by myself trying to figure out how to get up the cliff because there was hardly anyone on campus or awake yet. I finally found a girl who spoke English and she took me through the lift system. I would have never figured it out on my own. Everything is connected by bridges and then lifts that go only from the ground floor to the 11th floor. So I guess it's easy to know what button to push when you get on! So at each separate elevation there is a different part of campus. All the main stuff, like the academic building and the International Students Office were all at the top. It took me all morning to take care of paying for housing, getting my money exchanged and into a bank account, getting my student ID, getting my internet set up.

They told us that everyone speaks English here, "so you will be fine." Well that is definitely NOT true. I met one faculty member (our exchange coordinator) who spoke English well, and that was AFTER I had struggled through most of everything already. I actually had to depend on my Cantonese at times to communicate with people and figure out what I needed to do or where I needed to go. And the people who speak English the best are the students and the professors, but none of the students are really back to campus yet because of the Chinese New Year, which is on the 26th.

FIRST TIME IN THE CITY

I ran into Alex on campus and then we explored campus a little more together, and I helped him figure some things out too. Then we felt like we did all we could do so we decided to head to the city. We hopped on a random bus (used our Octopus pass all day) heading out of campus and got off at a random stop in Tseung Kwan and we walked around to Po Lam and found a little mall that suddenly became a never ending mall! It was ENORMOUS. It just kept going and going and it seemed like we should have gone in a circle but we never saw the same thing twice.

We didn't buy anything except for lunch when we stopped at a random restaurant called Fairwood that had a few things on the menu in English. I tried to order in Cantonese but they didn't have the thing I was ordering. The cashier got really nervous and said "Ying mun, ying mun" desperately to the girl next to her, meaning "English, English!" Neither of us got what we ordered. I got a really good soup with rice noodles and a chicken wing. Alex tried to order fried rice and ended up with noodles, and he is fluent in Cantonese. Epic fail. We drank scalding hot water for our beverage.

Here is Alex after he burnt his mouth on the water.

I fit into the all-orange colored restaurant with my bright orange shirt. How embarrassing.

After our mall excursion we took the MTR which is like the subways in England, and they say "Mind the gap" in Cantonese and then in english with a British accent. We went in search of Alex's grandma, which we just had a little piece of paper with her address on it. We walked and walked after the MTR and surprisely found "Boboa's" tiny apartment in Tsz Wan Shan up above the little street shops. All the apartments are either enormous sky scrapers or all built above other things. She was so surprised we found her but she was SO adorable! Very animated but didn't understand or speak any english. She said I was very beautiful and I spoke to her some of the phrases I know and she said I was much better at saying the tones correctly than Alex is. So we listened to her talk forever, trying to pick out things I recognized, and Alex translated a little for me. Then she was just being a grandma and gave him $500 and FORCED us to eat food. She really wanted us to stay for dinner but we were exhausted and I was starting to not feel well, thought I was going to pass out in the middle of the city. We finally headed home by around 7:00PM.

I got stared at the whole time we were in the city. I didn't see a single other Westerner... ! I tried not to act too touristy. Some people assume I know what's going on or that I have been here awhile because I wasn't in a big group of Americans and didn't look terrified, so they would say things to me in Cantonese, thinking I would know what they were talking about. Glad I wore my bright orange shirt and green pumas that day. Everyone wears bright colored shoes, or boots. And has charms on their cell phones, even old men, seriously.

MONG KOK

The next day, January 20th, I woke up at 5:00AM and ran on the track. Alex and I made another excursion to the city, this time to Mong Kok, which is a big shopping and street market area. We bargained for a Sim card and a charger for my HK cell phone that my friend gave me. I paid 108 HKD for both, about $14. Not bad. Luckily I know all my numbers in Cantonese so I can argue with them about it a little so I don't get ripped off.

Here is some of the food they sell on the street. Everyone told me not to eat food off the street. We had octopus and bubble tea anyway, no bird flu. :)

Mmm octopus on a stick!

I didn't really get too many good pictures of the city in Mong Kok cause NO ONE takes pictures. We were once again trying not to stand out too much. The number of people that were around in that crazy area was just ridiculous. It's impossible to avoid running into people and the stores are absolutely packed.

We found a boot store and I wanted to buy a pair. There were about 6 girls working in the store, grabbing random boots off the shelf, "You like this one? I get you this one." No I just wanted to look around for a minute. Before I knew it they had grabbed me and sat me down on the little stool and had both my shoes off. They put like 7 different pairs of boots on me and were getting really frustrated that I wouldn't just decide on something. Alex tried to tell them that I was thinking about it and they pulled him in the back and started yelling at him and trying to bargain with him. He just tried to explain that I was still looking around the store, we weren't even asking for a lower price. Suddenly the pair that I had wanted got 20 dollars cheaper, and then 50 dollars cheaper. So I bought them and ran out with nice pair of brown high heeled boots for 200 and left a very angry boot store staff. Yikes.

That was so exhausting for both of us that we had to head back to campus. It was around 10:00PM, and I called it a night.

I'm just trying to get to Hong Kong!!

I never thought my ridiculously long flight to Hong Kong would result in a 3-day adventure. The only thing to blame I think is the terrible Minnesota weather of 26 below on the day of the flight. January 16^th, 2009 I was scheduled to fly from Minneapolis Airport to O’Hare at 6:00AM, then from O’Hare to San Francisco, and finally from San Francisco to Hong Kong. Overall it was originally supposed to be a 22 hour flight with only 1 hour layovers at each stop.

Of course I was so anxious and excited and a whole mix of different emotions the night before that I only slept for an hour, from 2:00AM to 3:00AM. My parents and I got up at my apartment at 3:30, leaving by about 4:15. It was super cold outside but we made it to the airport fine. Everything went smoothly all up until the point of actually just about to take off. I got my boarding passes all set, I found my travel buddy, Alex, and we found our gate right away. After sitting on the plane waiting to take off for an extra half-hour (the throttle and other parts of the plane were frozen), they made us all get off the plane and get in line for another one. They dealt with each person case by case, and of all the people flying to O'Hare, our final destination must have been the furthest. So we were obviously going to miss all of our connecting flights, and they decided to switch us to an 8:00AM flight out of Minneapolis and then a direct flight from O’Hare to Hong Kong at 12:17PM, which would have actually made us arrive an hour earlier than the original itinerary. The first flight was easy, and then we had a lot of time to kill in O’Hare before our 12:17 flight to Hong Kong. By this time, the effects of no sleep had starting kicking in and Alex and I could only explore the airport a little before we both just wanted to sit and wait.

Our big international flight turned out to be the most dramatic of all. We luckily got a 3-seat section to ourselves so we had room to keep our carry-on bags by us the whole time. The flight was delayed a little and ended up leaving at 12:30. Whatever, not such a big deal. BUT they explained to us that we would be stopping in Anchorage, Alaska in order to refuel. Apparently the cold weather makes it difficult to fly the entire way from Chicago to Hong Kong, so we were supposed to stop for an hour and a half. Okay, still not that big of a deal, so now we would be arriving in Hong Kong at about the original time we thought. We made it to Anchorage at 6:30PM (Minneapolis time), and I may or may not have taken a solid Dramamine nap for part of that flight. As we sat waiting in Anchorage, suddenly the captain announced that the plane was having maintenance issues (they needed to replace 2 parts of the plane) that could not be resolved that night and that we would have to stay the night in Alaska. I woke up right after that message and was very surprised to hear what I missed in the past hour that I thought had only been 5 minutes….! Alex filled me in. We’re staying in Alaska for the night??

So after 3 more hours of drama with customs and a person who had a heart attack, we finally got off the plane and all 400 of us sat around an enormous polar bear in a glass case waiting for instructions. The deal with customs was since our flight was an international one and not domestic, we obviously weren't supposed to deplane in Anchorage, but since we did, we had to go through customs. Well the customs officers weren't even at the airport, so they had to call them at HOME to come drive to the airport to clear all of us. They only brought in like 5 of them. There was no one else in the airport. This is SarahMae and I standing in the customs line.

After we made it through customs, I actually picked up some wireless in the airport (surprising since O'Hare failed on that one), so I was able to send some email and Facebook updates to Mom and Dad and a few friends. By this point, Alex and I decided to make the best of our fate of being stuck in Alaska forever and took a few pictures around the airport while we waited for TWO airport employees to write us vouchers for hotels, one by one.

Finally they bussed us all over to different hotels, and we got to stay in the Hilton for free with a free dinner and breakfast. I met a really cool girl from Singapore that I actually ended up rooming with because they accidentally put us in the same room. Totally fine with me though! So Alex, SarahMae, and I went down to enjoy our free halibut, salmon, and cheesecake buffet and we had a great time! We thought about going out to explore Alaska, but we all suddenly got super tired and decided maybe it would be best to get a good sleep in nice beds instead of depending on airplane sleep, which is actually pretty nice, don't get me wrong, complete with the cozy gauze-covered pillows and wailing babies.

We made a lot of friends and we stuck together(5 of us), so that is nice! Two people from Singapore going home, one guy going on vacation to Vietnam, and Alex and I on our way to HK. So all of them had even farther destinations.

The whole experiece was just waiting and waiting for hours. And then something new would happen and we would wait some more. I think I've seen all of Alaska that I need. No moose though. It was MUCH warmer in AK than in MN, 40 degrees. Really Minnesota? Quit failing.

Here is one section of the airport of people sitting and waiting. There wasn't enough seating in the airport... so everyone sat on the floor.

The airport shuttles picked us up at 9:45AM Alaska time (we were told 9:00AM, of course, so more waiting), and took us back to catch the new flight at noon (AK time) but there's no way we were going to get all 400 of us through security in time, so I knew that this flight would be majorly delayed as well.. Fail. They then announced that hopefully the extra parts for the plane would make it there by 12:30.. sooooo maybe at 1:00 we will leave? I thought.

More sitting around and waiting. A picture of our Team United, as David (the guy in the green shirt) dubbed us.

They said it was getting near the lunch hour so they were going to feed us right away when we tookoff. The boarding took 9 years of course, and I wasn't entirely sure why until we made it to the front of the line 2 and a half hours later... There were two ladies checking boarding passes and passports (really?? there was no one there that could have ever tried or wanted to sneak on our flight) and going through a paper list of all travelers and highlighting names as they came through. It wasn't in alphabetical order. We took off at 3:00, starving. Goodbye Alaska. I am sorry I didn't find Sarah Palin.