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.