UST Track

I have make a good group of local friends on the HKUST track team, and they gave me the Chinese name Yan once they found out my last name is Young. Yan means happy.

This is really the only place I have made good friends with the locals. They don't seem to like to talk to the exchange students because they think we are lazy when it comes to schoolwork. So I haven't met too many locals in my classes.

But track has been going great here. The coach is fantastic and he coaches both the men's and women's teams. At our last meet he yelled at me every time I tried to talk to him and told me that I was wasting his time. So when I needed to ask him a question about my race, he would just ask if I was going to continue wasting his time. I stood up to him (perhaps sassed) and the rest of the team got a great kick out of watching it.

At the meet I learned that to cheer the runners on you have to yell "Gai yau Sarah!" which literally translates to "add oil" .... so get moving!! The locals think it is hilarious when I start yelling this to people during their races. :)

Our 4x4 team!

Chinese New Year

The Chinese New Year started on Jan 26, and it was such a sweet thing to experience. The first day of the Lunar New Year was the "World's Happiest Party" celebration... basically a 3-hour parade.


We went with a huge group of exchange students to see the parade in Tsim Sha Tsui, but we only went 2 hours early.. which was not early enough to get a decent spot to see from. I actually had more fun mingling around with all the exchange students since I really couldn't see much of the parade anyway. I got a few good pictures of it though. There were a lot of dancers and dragons and not too many large floats.

They passed out these disco ball globes that say "The World's Happiest Party 2009" on them.

The crowd at the parade definitely made it a little frustrating to be there, but at least now I can say I experienced it!!

The next day of the new year brought on the greatest fireworks presentation I have ever seen in my life. My new group of Norwegian friends and I returned to TST on Jan 27 to see the show. We got to the city pretty early so we ate dinner first at Fridays.

Dinner took a lot longer than expected, and it was cutting it close to the time the fireworks were starting. Suddenly as we were scrambling to figure out the bill, we heard a big boom and everyone in the restaurant rushed out onto the convenient balcony that no one knew was there. So we actually ended up watching the half-hour long show from way up off the side of a skyscraper, avoiding the millions of cramped people down below. The only disadvantage of our spot was that we missed the syncronized music that went along perfectly with the fireworks (I watched someone's video of it later), and some of it was hidden behind buildings. But it was still GREAT! After the show we were fascinated by watching the floods of people streaming all towards the MTR station down below, and watched them for a good 20 minutes. So then we were really glad we avoided that.

Looking at the crowd below!

Another Chinese tradition for the new year is to give out "Red Pockets" with money in them. I got one from the track coach with $20 HKD! Woohoo!

Sik Sik Yuen Temple and the Avenue of Stars

Sik Sik Yuen Temple in Wong Tai Sin

On January 24th, two friends--Tor (from Norway) and Sally (from Virginia)--and I took a tourist visit to see the big Sik Sik Yuen Temple. This is a major temple that the Hong Kongers travel to seek good fortune before the Lunar New Year (which was on the 26th). The main religions housed there are Taoist, Buddhist, and Confucianist.



We had to curve through this elaborate maze of gates and crowds of people to get to the temple, each curve asking for a $2 donation. All the while we had to hold our breath because of the thick clouds of incense smoke EVERYWHERE. People would carry a clump of 50 incense sticks to bring up to the troughs to place them. They had workers constantly sweeping up all the ashes on the ground. You could definitely tell who was a tourist because there would be a random person in the line who was carrying one lonely stick of incense. We did NOT buy any. Maybe if they had been sparklers I would have been persuaded to join in.



Pictures weren't allowed inside the temple, but there was a large "display" of statues and tons of flowers and fruits. It was really noisy because the people knelt on cushions and vigorously shaking out chim from a can and the rattling sound echoed ridiculously loud through the hall. The chim are wooden sticks with fortunes on them, and whichever one drops out from the bottom slot is your fortune. BUT the catch is that you have to pay a fortune teller or "interpreters" to explain the fortune for you. All of them are apparently bad fortunes, so people have to try for hours. We didn't try.


Behind the temple is the Good Wish Garden, which we liked a lot better than the temple (Much clearer air). There was a koi pond and a waterfall. So pretty!

Avenue of the Stars in Tsim Sha Tsui

Our next touristy destination was the Avenue of the Stars in TST. So we had to take the MTR (train/subway) from Wong Tai Sin to TST. The Avenue was right near the Peninsula Hotel (super expensive, luxury area of TST)... there are Rolls-Royce taxis in front. The Ave was pretty fun, although we were pretty cold walking near the bay. There are tons of stars for local film stars. We found Jackie Chan's and Bruce Lee's handprints.. but didn't recognize any of the other names. (Except there were two Hui stars.. so I told Alyssa Hui I found her famous relatives!) There were also gift shops dedicated to both Jackie Chan and Bruce Lee.

Had to take the cheesy tourist photo!

Michael has been tagged on Facebook as the Bruce Lee statue.

An Indian guy approached Tor and read his mind for like 5 minutes. Sally and I stood uncomfortable watching this guy guess how many siblings Tor has and what he wrote on a piece of paper. Then when he was finished, he gave him a "lucky bead" and then asked for some "lucky money" for his wallet. When Tor said no, sorry, and we started walking away, the guy followed us and kept saying it was "Good money..It's good!" Tor continued saying no, sorry, no... and then suddenly the money became a charity for children.. and then for homeless children, and then for handicapped children. Yeah. We quickened our pace and he ran after us yelling to give him his lucky bead back!! It was awful!

After we escaped the crazy man, we met up with Alex and his friend and decided to go to an Irish Pub for dinner. Of all the strange, new things I could have had for a meal in Hong Kong, I ordered an appetizer of garlic cheese bread in an Irish Pub. It was pretty good and greasy cheese bread, and we were all having good conversations when suddenly I noticed my neck and face to be really itchy. After an abnormal amount of scratching my neck and face, I went to the bathroom to find I had broken out in huge, welty hives all over. I have NEVER had allergic reactions to food before (except apparently pineapple when I was 3)... so this was ridiculous! Maybe if I had eaten some exotic, authentic seafood dish with a million foreign animals and plants all thrown together, an allergic reaction would have been a little bit more understandable. But no, garlic cheese bread. I figured maybe it was time to go home.