Saturday...Cultural tour of Hong Kong, what could be cooler right??? WRONG...what a waste of money. It was a tour set up for the exchange student at CityU, but turned out to be BORING!! We had the option to choose cultural tour of Hong Kong or urban tour - the obvious choice is culture. If I want to see buildings and explore tall skyscrapers, I can do that on my own time...I'm not going to pay someone to show me that stuff. Okay now back to the tour, its 10 am, and everyone is so excited to get on this coach bus and see Hong Kong. Our tour guide (you can see her in my album in the little pink shirt), is beyond ecstatic and is talk talk talking away while we leave CityU. She points out little sites here and there, tells us that Jackie Chan's OFFICE is a block away from our school but he only comes about once a month. (really...that was all I needed to know, thanks for my cultural tour, I'm done now!!!) JK...So we drive through the new territories and see some of the night spots during the day (completely different scenery). Then we all took quick little naps as we hear we are taking a 2 hour hike once we park.
We wake up to the biggest paved hill ever and walk up to find a museum. It was the Heritage Trail Visitors Center (sorry but its NOT CENTRE..like it says on the brochure...and yes I know I'm not stupid HK was a British colony), and the Ping Shan Tang Clan Gallery. We walked through quite quickly and learned a little bit about the past rituals of marriages and other customs. Then we took a quick walk to some temples and looked around at the views. The bus picked us up around 1 and drove us to the Seafood Restaurant. We were served chicken, pork, oysters, shrimp with eyes and their skeleton, beef with celery, a cabbage that looks similar to bok choi, fish in lemon sauce, dry white rice, and tea. So far I'm sticking to the pork, fish, veggies, rice, and tea. We finished up lunch with the tradition of eating oranges. Apparently in Chinese culture it is rude to just ask for the bill, so instead people ask for oranges signifying the meal is coming to an end.
After lunch there was a seafood market which we walked down. Sorry I didn't get any pictures of it, but it was smelly and all raw seafood that was the same at each stand. Next time I'll take more pictures!! At the end of the market we reached the ocean, but not just any ocean, the ocean which leads to China. So we all squinted through the smog and saw some building outlines...hooray!! After this we were taken to some visitor center that had some bridges nearby. We didn't really learn anything about why we were taken there. After that it was home to get ready for Macau, oh wait, just kidding!! That tour wore so many of us out we all took naps and said we'd go to Macau another time. No point in wasting money when we are going to Thailand on Thursday!!
PICS FROM THE CULTURAL TOUR: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2562167&l=70887&id=6844049
After me and the girls (Jasmine who is like in all of my pictures, goes to S.F. State, Latora who studied in Ghana last semester, Sarah from Canada, and Audrey from IU)...went to Mongkok to find some food. After my excessive coughing and loss of voice we also decided to get me some medicine and hope I'd get better! After walking around Mongkok for probably half an hour ...we finally found a restaurant that was basically the most amazing food we'd all eaten so far. I had a shrimp and salmon caesar salad with french onion soup, others had spicy crab soup, a sandwich, and gourmet pasta. Everything looked so good on the menu it was really hard to choose. The desserts were the best looking but we were honestly stuffed from our meals that we decided we'd have to come back again. Next we went off to go bowling in Kowloon Bay with some other people including a Hong Kong local. A couple of us watched while a couple spared the night away...ha..ha. The night ended in great fun and we took the last MTR home and passed out softly and soundly.
Sunday I literally did homework, watched every possible show on MTV.COM, and slept all day. I was determined to get better and gain my voice back. I totally don't regret not going to Macau, it was a lazy day that I needed. So around midnight (between Sunday and Monday) I say goodnight to my parents, finish booking my hotel in Bangkok, and talk a little bit to friends back home. Get in my bed start watching a movie on my ipod touch :) ....realize at 4 a.m. I'm still up coughing...not okay!! sooo I change my alarm from 10:40 (my classes on Monday don't start till 12:30...) to 8 o clock, determined to go to the medical clinic....UGH!!!
So at 8 I wake up ....and head down to the clinic. Fastest doctor visit I've ever had. They doctor prescribed me 4 medicines (who knew I needed that much) and that was that. Medical care at CityU is great!!
Finally time for my first class, my IS class where I don't know a single soul, until today!! First I talk with the professor (which local students never do), then I meet a girl, Selina, from Shenzhen, China. She was really sweet and whenever someone was saying something in Cantonese, someone would translate. The class is pretty simple its all about logical algorithms and programing them into computers...the not so simple part is binary code, but we'll see how that goes.
Second class, time for Transportation Logistics. We had to get into groups and the professor encouraged all of the exchange students and local students to mix together. So I'm in a group with Matt (from Purdue), Luis (from Arkansas), and 4 guys from Hong Kong (Raphael, Kwan, Jerry, and Keenan). Seems pretty exciting...we'll see how it goes!
After class, met up with Jasmine to go to Taste (the "expensive" grocery store) to get some dinner. In the evening (guessing around 6), all of the fresh stuff (sandwiches, wraps, salads, sushi) goes on sale. It was a really rough decision on what to choose but I ended up going with the equivalent of a spider roll...and got some raspberries for dessert...yum!! We had back to Student Res to eat. I put wasabi on all of my rolls, biggest mistake of my life. Apparently wasabi in HK is about ...I don't know I'd guess 10 times as spicy as wasabi in the states. After already having an irritated throat from my cough the last thing I needed is to be coughing from wasabi. Lets just say my face was red and I couldn't stop coughing for a good 5 minutes...at least the cafeteria was loud :). Anyways, tomorrow is my friend Jasmine's 21st bday so we are all going out to celebrate, or rather I'm tagging along for a little bit since drinking is clearly not on my menu tonight. Everyone is really excited for Hong Kong and counting down the days...or rather hours!!
Miss the US a little bit.....(minus the weather of course). If anyone has any suggestions/comments/concerns for Thailand, let me know please :) razberries71@gmail.com
Monday, January 19, 2009
Friday, January 16, 2009
First week of school!
In continuation of my last post, pizza hut wasn't all its cracked up to be. First of all ...when you call for delivery, the phone answerer only speaks Cantonese. Then they try to offer you all of these crazy deals. We ended up getting a large pepperoni (with little cheese, but I guess I am in HK), and a large ...seafood pizza?? It had lobster, chicken, mushroom, cheese, and Thousand Island dressing as the sauce. I don't know about you guys, but I like dressing on my salad, unless its ranch of course.
Monday - first day of classes - First I had Problem Solving for Business Information Systems, and as far as I could tell, no one I knew was taking that course. Finally find the classroom in the ONE ACADEMIC building on campus (very small compared to IU), and the door is locked. So I start panicking, I'm 10 minutes early...class couldn't have started early. Well it turned out to be the previous class wasn't finished, and didn't finish until 5 minutes into our class time. I walk in and turn out to be the only exchange student in a class full of Cantonese chatterboxes. Oh well, IS class is over with, onto the tutorial for Transportation Logistics. I walk in and see 10 familiar Western faces, what a relief. Our professor, who is actually attaining his PHD right now, talked and talked, and made some not-so-funny jokes, but class flew by. Next was lecture for Transportation Logistics. I have never met anyone who could speak English so fast in my life. Seems like an okay class though, we watched UPS ads the whole time. Finally, one day down, 2 to go!
Tuesday - wakeup super early (okay...8:20, early enough for me) for my Intro to Work Behavior course. That 3 hour class flew by, the teacher was extremely passionate about his subject. After that I went to Crimonology. I was so excited to see familiar faces in that class as well, considering that was not a business class and the majority of my peers are business majors. Four classes down and 1 to go.
Wednesday - Woke up to have breakfast with my friends and was looking forward to delicious french toast. Well apparently french toast is not a breakfast item in HK and you aren't allowed to order it until after 11, that was disappointing. Time for my final class of the week....off to Chinese Civilization II (in English of course). The professor was very passionate about this subject and I'm super excited to learn about Chinese History.
And we are done with classes for the week. I know it may seem like a short schedule, but 6 hours in a row Monday, 6 hours in a row Tuesday, and 2 hours Wednesday is NOT THAT SHORT. The rest of Wednesday I did some grocery shopping and went out for sushi (my first time in HK). I've never had better sushi.....anywhere. It was sooooo delicious and fresh. I did of course stick to my usual California Roll, and Spider Roll (of course called fried soft-crab roll, but it was easy to find). Later that night we went out to Lan Kwai Fong to a club and had a great time.
Thursday I took the time to get all of my classes in order and clean up around my room a little bit..(I'll post pictures of that next week). I got a little sick and at some point between Wednesday and Thursday I lost my voice....and developed a horrible cough, but those are the only symptoms...in case any of you were worried. I'm totally feeling fine, minus this annoying cough that kept me up for 2 hours the other night...oh well!! What else on Thursday ...I went to sushi again, and tried 3 handrolls for the first time and fell in love. It's like eating an ice cream cone full of sushi. I tried salmon sushi...the real kind, not a roll, and fell in love. The salmon is sooooo fresh!!! Anyways I took it easy Thursday night because the other option was to go out and eat snake, drink snake wine, and drink snake blood. I thought I would save that for later on in my trip.
Friday, finished getting my books (sooooo cheap compared to the US) and was invited to travel to Lantau Island with some Europeans. Our trip with 6 people turned into a group expedition filled with about 16 exchange students. We took the MTR to Lantau Island and took the cable cars up to BIG BUDDHA, and he is big (especially his ears). Anyways it was a really neat experience and we thought we were totally seeing a part of history until we found out that we are like living monuments compared to big Buddha (he was built in 1993, therefore that makes me an ancient living monument). We walked around the other landmarks and took the Wisdom Path (I hope I gained at least a little knowledge), and saw a monestary. It was definitely a neat experience. For those who had more time on their hands, they chose to walk down the mountain - until they found out it was a 4 hour HIKE and ended up busing down instead. We however took the tram back down.
CHECK OUT MY PICS OF BIG BUDDHA....:) http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2560635&l=bedb3&id=6844049
We went to Thai for dinner in Mong Kok after our excursion to the island. In case you didn't know, Americans are like the only people who eat Pad Thai (or at least call it that, everywhere else it is named some form of fried rice noodles). So I ordered fried rice noodle fried seafood, thinking I would get some fried shrimp (similar to maybe tempura)...WRONG. I got a plate full of pad thai with some octopus, shrimp, something we couldn't figure out, and a clam/oyster insides or somethin...but the noodles were really good. :)
Well its 1 am Saturday morning and between dinner and now, I have made plans for Chinese New Years to travel to Thailand with about 15 + other American exchange students and will keep you updated on that. For now, I've got to go to sleep because tomorrow (I guess in 9 hours) I will be going on a cultural tour of Hong Kong and then off to Macau for a night of fun and gambling!
Monday - first day of classes - First I had Problem Solving for Business Information Systems, and as far as I could tell, no one I knew was taking that course. Finally find the classroom in the ONE ACADEMIC building on campus (very small compared to IU), and the door is locked. So I start panicking, I'm 10 minutes early...class couldn't have started early. Well it turned out to be the previous class wasn't finished, and didn't finish until 5 minutes into our class time. I walk in and turn out to be the only exchange student in a class full of Cantonese chatterboxes. Oh well, IS class is over with, onto the tutorial for Transportation Logistics. I walk in and see 10 familiar Western faces, what a relief. Our professor, who is actually attaining his PHD right now, talked and talked, and made some not-so-funny jokes, but class flew by. Next was lecture for Transportation Logistics. I have never met anyone who could speak English so fast in my life. Seems like an okay class though, we watched UPS ads the whole time. Finally, one day down, 2 to go!
Tuesday - wakeup super early (okay...8:20, early enough for me) for my Intro to Work Behavior course. That 3 hour class flew by, the teacher was extremely passionate about his subject. After that I went to Crimonology. I was so excited to see familiar faces in that class as well, considering that was not a business class and the majority of my peers are business majors. Four classes down and 1 to go.
Wednesday - Woke up to have breakfast with my friends and was looking forward to delicious french toast. Well apparently french toast is not a breakfast item in HK and you aren't allowed to order it until after 11, that was disappointing. Time for my final class of the week....off to Chinese Civilization II (in English of course). The professor was very passionate about this subject and I'm super excited to learn about Chinese History.
And we are done with classes for the week. I know it may seem like a short schedule, but 6 hours in a row Monday, 6 hours in a row Tuesday, and 2 hours Wednesday is NOT THAT SHORT. The rest of Wednesday I did some grocery shopping and went out for sushi (my first time in HK). I've never had better sushi.....anywhere. It was sooooo delicious and fresh. I did of course stick to my usual California Roll, and Spider Roll (of course called fried soft-crab roll, but it was easy to find). Later that night we went out to Lan Kwai Fong to a club and had a great time.
Thursday I took the time to get all of my classes in order and clean up around my room a little bit..(I'll post pictures of that next week). I got a little sick and at some point between Wednesday and Thursday I lost my voice....and developed a horrible cough, but those are the only symptoms...in case any of you were worried. I'm totally feeling fine, minus this annoying cough that kept me up for 2 hours the other night...oh well!! What else on Thursday ...I went to sushi again, and tried 3 handrolls for the first time and fell in love. It's like eating an ice cream cone full of sushi. I tried salmon sushi...the real kind, not a roll, and fell in love. The salmon is sooooo fresh!!! Anyways I took it easy Thursday night because the other option was to go out and eat snake, drink snake wine, and drink snake blood. I thought I would save that for later on in my trip.
Friday, finished getting my books (sooooo cheap compared to the US) and was invited to travel to Lantau Island with some Europeans. Our trip with 6 people turned into a group expedition filled with about 16 exchange students. We took the MTR to Lantau Island and took the cable cars up to BIG BUDDHA, and he is big (especially his ears). Anyways it was a really neat experience and we thought we were totally seeing a part of history until we found out that we are like living monuments compared to big Buddha (he was built in 1993, therefore that makes me an ancient living monument). We walked around the other landmarks and took the Wisdom Path (I hope I gained at least a little knowledge), and saw a monestary. It was definitely a neat experience. For those who had more time on their hands, they chose to walk down the mountain - until they found out it was a 4 hour HIKE and ended up busing down instead. We however took the tram back down.
CHECK OUT MY PICS OF BIG BUDDHA....:) http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2560635&l=bedb3&id=6844049
We went to Thai for dinner in Mong Kok after our excursion to the island. In case you didn't know, Americans are like the only people who eat Pad Thai (or at least call it that, everywhere else it is named some form of fried rice noodles). So I ordered fried rice noodle fried seafood, thinking I would get some fried shrimp (similar to maybe tempura)...WRONG. I got a plate full of pad thai with some octopus, shrimp, something we couldn't figure out, and a clam/oyster insides or somethin...but the noodles were really good. :)
Well its 1 am Saturday morning and between dinner and now, I have made plans for Chinese New Years to travel to Thailand with about 15 + other American exchange students and will keep you updated on that. For now, I've got to go to sleep because tomorrow (I guess in 9 hours) I will be going on a cultural tour of Hong Kong and then off to Macau for a night of fun and gambling!
Sunday, January 11, 2009
January 11, 2009
So I figured I would give everyone an update and thought this would be the easiest way to do that!! If you have any questions about anything, let me know at razberries71@gmail.com :)
Jan 3 - Yay!! I turned 21 and got to fly all the way to HK by myself!! So the day started off well, quick flight to SF and drinks with my sister Kyra then time to board the plan in my nice and comfy clothes in my nice and comfy aisle seat. Well my seat partners were a couple who were clearly taller than I was and wanted to change seats with me. I was not really willing to give up my aisle seat for which turned out to be an 18 hour flight (3 hours worth of delays including mechanical issues and being over fueled). Eventually the couple gave up and turned out to be really knowledgeable about the area in which I needed to get to (Kowloon).
Jan 4 - Landed in HK 3 hours late trying to find Sean and Andrew (2 boys from my school) very worried. I was the one with the hotel reservations which would have left them w/o a room for the night. Eventually we gathered everyone's luggage and took the Airport Express (mtr) to Kowloon. We got off and took the elevator numerous times trying to find a shuttle to the hotel..which our hotel didn't actually have. So we rode in a taxi and saw the bright lights any big city would have. It was beautiful (and humid to say the least). We arrived at our hotel and went out for Thai food.
Jan 5 - Took a taxi to the school and checked in at City University of Hong Kong. After unpacking the 3 of us walked more than ever to get an Octopus card (like an Oyster card in London) and a sim card. By 5 at night all was taken care of and we were ready for our first night out with the exchange students. We went to Ikea where we had our real first shopping experience changing HK dollars to US dollars in choosing which pillows/blankets to purchase. After this excursion our day was finished with HOT POT cooking. This entails taking raw food (everything from live crawling shrimp or raw beef to plain old vegetables to fish intestines) and sticking it in a pot of boiling water. Then of course you eat it. The bok choi was good :) After returning to the res (residence) some of us went to a local close by bar where we all got a taste of what drinks would be on the menus at bars in HK.
Met my roommate as well on Monday. She is a local student from a town outside of Beijing. She chose to live with an exchange student. She would love to study abroad in America, Canada, or France. She is also very amusing and curious about everything. She has told me that she likes to listen to my voice, which took me a while to understand and eventually she said "you should be a tv reporter because I like the way your voice is." Today (Sunday) we were speaking about colleges and masters programs and after I said something about how each school admissions program is different due to different requirements, she exclaimed," you are actually very thin." I thought for sure she meant a different word for thin since the comment was totally not on topic. But no, for sure she meant that most Americans are "fat" and I was thin and in shape. Her mind just travels and its very unusual for any local student to feel this comfortable asking me this many questions, but its very fun!!
Jan 6 - 9 - I participated in more orientation programs to help me get acquainted with the university and business school. Throughout that time I trained many local dishes and discovered some tasty ones and some not so tasty ones. During these days the exchange program led us to:
To view pictures from my trip to Cheung Chau Island click the link below:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2557600&l=55b78&id=6844049
Jan 11 - Chill out day before school starts. Learned how to use the laundry machines and tonight we plan to order pizza. I will let you know how that goes. :) Hope all is well back in the US or wherever your travels are taking you!!
Jan 3 - Yay!! I turned 21 and got to fly all the way to HK by myself!! So the day started off well, quick flight to SF and drinks with my sister Kyra then time to board the plan in my nice and comfy clothes in my nice and comfy aisle seat. Well my seat partners were a couple who were clearly taller than I was and wanted to change seats with me. I was not really willing to give up my aisle seat for which turned out to be an 18 hour flight (3 hours worth of delays including mechanical issues and being over fueled). Eventually the couple gave up and turned out to be really knowledgeable about the area in which I needed to get to (Kowloon).
Jan 4 - Landed in HK 3 hours late trying to find Sean and Andrew (2 boys from my school) very worried. I was the one with the hotel reservations which would have left them w/o a room for the night. Eventually we gathered everyone's luggage and took the Airport Express (mtr) to Kowloon. We got off and took the elevator numerous times trying to find a shuttle to the hotel..which our hotel didn't actually have. So we rode in a taxi and saw the bright lights any big city would have. It was beautiful (and humid to say the least). We arrived at our hotel and went out for Thai food.
Jan 5 - Took a taxi to the school and checked in at City University of Hong Kong. After unpacking the 3 of us walked more than ever to get an Octopus card (like an Oyster card in London) and a sim card. By 5 at night all was taken care of and we were ready for our first night out with the exchange students. We went to Ikea where we had our real first shopping experience changing HK dollars to US dollars in choosing which pillows/blankets to purchase. After this excursion our day was finished with HOT POT cooking. This entails taking raw food (everything from live crawling shrimp or raw beef to plain old vegetables to fish intestines) and sticking it in a pot of boiling water. Then of course you eat it. The bok choi was good :) After returning to the res (residence) some of us went to a local close by bar where we all got a taste of what drinks would be on the menus at bars in HK.
Met my roommate as well on Monday. She is a local student from a town outside of Beijing. She chose to live with an exchange student. She would love to study abroad in America, Canada, or France. She is also very amusing and curious about everything. She has told me that she likes to listen to my voice, which took me a while to understand and eventually she said "you should be a tv reporter because I like the way your voice is." Today (Sunday) we were speaking about colleges and masters programs and after I said something about how each school admissions program is different due to different requirements, she exclaimed," you are actually very thin." I thought for sure she meant a different word for thin since the comment was totally not on topic. But no, for sure she meant that most Americans are "fat" and I was thin and in shape. Her mind just travels and its very unusual for any local student to feel this comfortable asking me this many questions, but its very fun!!
Jan 6 - 9 - I participated in more orientation programs to help me get acquainted with the university and business school. Throughout that time I trained many local dishes and discovered some tasty ones and some not so tasty ones. During these days the exchange program led us to:
- watch the light show
- watch the horse race at Happy Valley Jockey Club
- took the Star Ferry across to Hong Kong Island
- went clubbing at Wan Chai (aka Red Light District but there are many "western clubs")
- tried some bargaining and bought a coat (its actually winter in HK which means its FREEZING, something my parents did not prepare me for)
- ate McDonalds
- ate Ben and Jerrys
- got lost on the MTR from the big group
- looked at night market and decided America overpriced goods
- found out people got sick from McDonalds
- tried a salted Chinese pancake
- met with the US Consulate (who gave us food :D )
- had lunch with the dean, who ended up not coming...but still paid :)
- listened to a lecture about the police force in HK
- learned about extracurricular activities on campus
- travelled and got lost and Lan Kwai Fang (got sick and went home so still have yet to experience clubbing there but from what I could see, its more western than western could be)
- went grocery shopping
- ...I'm sure there are more, but that's a good enough list for you guys to see
To view pictures from my trip to Cheung Chau Island click the link below:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2557600&l=55b78&id=6844049
Jan 11 - Chill out day before school starts. Learned how to use the laundry machines and tonight we plan to order pizza. I will let you know how that goes. :) Hope all is well back in the US or wherever your travels are taking you!!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
