Week 2

I'm not getting into the week-issue again. Instead, moving on. Lessons this week, I take 4 courses and one workshop. The 4 courses consists of one lecture/week and then some of them has a tutorial every week and some every other week. Tutorials are similar to seminars back home. Less talk from the teacher and more discussion between students... Or at least that's the general idea.

I finally got over my cold and spent a lot of the week just getting used to things. I have noticed that I shift from being rather grateful that me and Jenny are happy staying home in the evenings - nice to study, watch something on the laptop and just relax to feeling a bit stressed over the fact that I am in Hong Kong and it's so cool that I ought to be out there every evening. But then I settle down and accept that I'm not 18 anymore, I enjoy some peace and quiet now... This week brought some rain followed by our room going bloody freezing. It was honestly warmer outside. AC standing on indoors makes the whole school cold, in some classrooms I almost want a jacket. In our room we were shivering through the nights for quite a while.

I did leave campus a couple of times during the week, I went to Tai Po (nearby market-town or whatever one might call it..) and walked around getting lost in the shopping malls for a while. Also went out in Lan Kwai Fong again, on Ladies Night (Thursday night) meaning free drinks, with some locals and some Taiwanese girls. Turned out that the free drnks were horribly yucky. Like really cheap vodka and pineapple juice. So I had a few sips. And spent the rest of the evening feeling really old and boring. We did go to a more quiet and calm place where the cheap vodka was mixed with cranberry, great improvement. Still, went home early.

Wednesday me and Jenny went with one of her classmates, Yinyin, around in Tai Po, to the railroad museum and a Taoist temple. We also had lunch and just walked around in shops etc.

                                                                        Vegetarian restaurant!

 Railroadmuseum

Temple. Did not take pictures inside but it was really nice! Rather small, kind of local temple. Just inside the doors there's another set of doors or at least a door opening - for the gods. So for humans there's side doors. It feels fairly hard to get a good understanding for religion here, I've tried talking it over with a few friends and a few monks (? I guess) in the temples, but a combo of language barriers and just difficulties in explaining something that's so "everyday" here and so very strange to me in a good way makes it hard. But interesting!

 Some fun fruits - giant versions of lemons and limes. Said to be more like grape. Haven't tried yet.





                    And tiny bananas! :D


Friday we went around in Sha Tin, went back to IKEA to exchange the pot we bought (didn't work on the insanely annoying induction stove thing...) and had a nice walk around.






Walk along the water





Fantastic trees







It'll be the sheep's year soon.





And somehow people walk around in jackets. Whilst I'm in a short summer dress wondering how I can be so warm..






During the weekend me and Jenny took a walk down around a bay ending up in a fishing village, really fascinating. One of many times when I've felt that pictures won't reflect what I see. From there we went hiking up a "mountain" which turned out to be not a nature reservation area as I thought, but a giant cemetery. Wherever a nice view was to be found there were lots of.. well, graves feels like the wrong word. But like little places where families clearly go to remember their dead. I would normally find it odd to take pictures of it but to be honest - we started taking pictures before we even understood what it was. So yeah.

 Many boats seemed to be sinking. Saw a whole fleet of them under the surface



                  Our big fella, great      landmark as he can be seen     from just about everywhere                             around here.

For dinner we went to Hard Rock Café, fantastic to eat just some "normal" food for us. And Sunday was spent cleaning, doing laundry and so on. Home-stuff.

First school week

So the first school week! In Sweden we tend to be quite good at using week number (i.e. what week it is in the year, week 1-52....). Here they seem to use a slightly different system, most of my course syllabus (syllabuses feels wrong so ought I do as with cactus - syllabi? yeah) Ok, sorry, so most of my course syllabi have a very well worked out planning included in them, what each week's lesson will be regarding, what to read aso. Only problem is that they all start on week 1 - fair enough, week one of study. But then some of them seem to count weeks when there's no lessons, like Easter, whereas some of them do. So all of a sudden I have two different types of weeks. Not to mention the actual week number.

Ok, so now that I have covered all the useless facts about week counting, back to my first school week here (week 2 in actual counting ;-) ) I will ramble on forever about my courses at a later point, at this point I just want to "catch up" with the blog so I can start writing short but more frequent posts. So Monday consisted of going to the bank and the management office here in the hostel and so on, some paperwork and paying rent and whatnot. Then we decided to try the canteen (CanC) for lunch. Basically there's big screens with the different menus from the different counters and little machines where you can order and then pay with your octopus card (yes, like an oystercard! :D But octopus. I laughed so hard first time. Still mix them up fairly often) which is a card onto which you can add money and then use to travel (bus, light bus, tram, ferry and MTR) and pay in most convenience stores and supermarkets. Sadly we didn't have octopus cards then so we had to go to a cashier. We soon realized that English might not be sufficient to communicate so a bit of pointing and showing with fingers what number we want and we thought that great, we have ordered one set of rice with vegetables in an oyster sauce each. Over to the counter where we don't have to talk at all, just had over reciepe and somehow we walk away with rice and a curry sauce with some sort of meat. Fine by me, less OK for Jenny who's a vegetarian.

So I asked a random student walking past if she could translate for us and problem solved :)

I then had my first lesson (Yes, we had before this walked around campus and found both of our classrooms so as not to be late and lost. And yes, I was the first to arrive. But no, I wasn't in the right place :P Got there on time though). All of the lessons in the first week were of course more or less introductions. The teacher introduced themselves, the course, the structure of the course, one of them showed pictures of his cat and wife... In one class were we all asked to introduce ourselves, bit time consuming and to me a bit frustrating as many here speaks fairly quietly when speaking in English but they seem more than happy to chat away at normal levels during the actual lecture... One of many differences. I've talked a lot about it with both other exchange students (we are all equally shocked. Someone actually brought a pillow to class and slept - if it was in my class I probably would have taken pictures...) but also with locals and they say that many have been under so much pressure during their secondary education that by the time they get to university they feel like they have earned to relax. But I think that come exam period people will get going. I guess. Maybe.

I also managed to get a cold so most of this week was spent going to classes but sticking to myself - I didn't wear a face-mask (you know, the surgical ones) and coughing without a face mask here is probably the height of rudeness. Evenings were spent in bed watching movies to be honest.

Friday I started feeling better, just in time for a whole afternoon of information! The IO had organized so that different people came and had little mini-presentations for us, the police, the sports complex, the IT people etc. But before that all kicked off we got to try some local street foods. Some of it was nice. Some not so much... Friday night we (exchange plus Kinson, one of the buddies) went for dinner in Tai Po. Great to have Kinson there - he just ordered in a bunch of different things and we all just shared. :-D

Saturday was another IO activity, a trip to the Peak (which is a peak, believe it or not) with fantastic views over Hong Kong. Hard to get in on camera as the pics ends up slightly... well lets call it fog. Or just dirty air, to be honest. After looking at the view we went for a "hike" around the peak. Seeing as it was all on pavement I think of it as a nice relaxing stroll. Still lovely view. 

After this we went to the terrace of a shopping center to celebrate one of the international tutors' birthday. And from there to what seems to be the party street of Hong Kong, Lan Kwai Fong. 

So as a result, Sunday was spent doing nothing at all ;P

The Peak

 The group! :-D 

First weekend - a million faces and names

Ok, so very first weekend was overwhelming and fantastic. Anyone who knows me at all knows that I am terrible both with remembering faces and names, so I'm always a bit out of my comfort zone when I meet large groups of people. Or small groups. Really as soon as I meet anyone I start worrying because I know that even if I make a huge effort to remember their name I most likely won't remember their face. But my usual sway around this is to smile at everyone and pretend that I know them. Then if I do know them then it's good that I smiled, if I don't know them then I just come off as an over-friendly weirdo, which is fine.

Started off with breakfast which consisted of a sandwich from 7Eleven as we hadn't been to a shop yet. And then registration in IO (International Office). It feels nice to meet the people we have been emailing with for so many months. After registration we meet all the other exchange students, a group of maybe 20. Most of them are girls from Korea, many from the same university so they are friends. There's a guy from the UK (Sim), a Swiss girl (Lucia), two students from France (Adrien and Agnes), a Finnish girl from Malmö (Emmi) and an Australian girl (Larissa). We did the usual round of presentations and if I had written this post on that day I probably wouldn't be able to name any of the others. And after some more information from the IO we got to choose some stuff from two big tables of things that earlier exchange students had left behind. Plates, cutlery and so on. Really handy and such a good idea! That also means that whatever things I don't want to bring with me home will be useful for someone after the summer :)

After this we went outside to meet our Buddies. I'm quite sure I've mentioned mine before, Jennifer and Venus. We have been chatting on whatsapp since before I left Sweden and Jennifer meet me at the airport. So it was nice to meet her again and Venus for the first time. We (the three of us and Jenny and her two buddies Jobie and Nicole) went for a tour of the campus which was also a quiz. The tour ended in a room where there was lots of people - all the exchange students with their buddies as well as the international tutors (a group who work here with workshops and so on to help local students with their English) and two long tables filled with food.

After lunch we got a short lesson in Cantonese, lots of fun! In the afternoon we all went to Sha Tin, another place here in the New Territories, not too far away, where there's not only an insanely massive shopping center (ok, really it's several different massive ones but as they are all connected I felt like it was all the same place) but also IKEA. So we bought some of the stuff we needed, some pots and pans, an extra double duvet to have on top of our stupidly uncomfortable beds. We had dinner there, noodles again, this time with chicken rather than cow balls ;P

Sunday was another warm and lovely day and we went to see Jobie's church in Kowloon. It was all in Cantonese (expect to see those words fairly often on this blog ;) ) but Jobie and one of her friends translated for us. A lady even had found the English version of the songs (hymns?) on her iphone. After the service we went out for Korean food and then around town (not sure what part), saw some more shopping centers and then a fantastic street market. We tried some local streetfood and in general just had a great day.

So all in all a fairly long weekend filled with both new people and impressions.

 One of many wonderful views from campus

 Outside the sports complex. Free gym and both indoor and outdoor pool :D

 If it's "selfie" when it's just one person, "wefie" for more than one then surely a whole group is a "groupie"?

 Classic wefie.. wefy? wifi... Hm.. Selfies are really popular here. Something to get used to.

 My home. Hall C/Robert Black Hall. At the time with a pirate theme.

 It's all so beautiful.

 Main Plaza. Or central plaza perhaps. Central part of campus anyhow with the canteen and 7Eleven as well as library, coffee shop and lots and lots of classrooms

Sunday:

 A picture for Ralph who told me about this. Bamboo scaffolding, absolutely fantastic! Felt like a bit of a stupid westerner standing there looking at scaffolding and being all amazed, but I was genuinely quite impressed.

 The world's most vertical city

 In Korean restaurant, hoping for some yummy food

 Yumyum!

 Sunday is the day off so good day for a nice picnic.

 Such a mix of architecture. New and old, tall and less tall.

 Street market in Mong Kok

 Poor little fish. And puppies..