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.

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.