Tuesday thoughts

Well, I don't have a super-coherent line of thought for this post, but here goes.


We're flying out of Hong Kong to Xiamen tomorrow afternoon.  I'm pretty excited to be back at a college taking classes; this has been a very cool week, but I haven't changed that much since orientation week of freshman year -- I'm ready for school to start!


Tonight some of the others and I are going to the Mid-October Festival.  Becky and I want to see the sky lanterns... especially after watching Tangled.  :)  


We also have our first quiz tomorrow.  I always get nervous about first quizzes (since you don't really know what the professor considers "a quiz" until that point) but I think it will be okay.  Today we had a class on reading pinyin -- that was enough to leave my head spinning and to decide that if I ever become Supreme Dictator of the World (or am put in a position to make these kinds of decisions), all languages are going to use IPA.  It's not especially beautiful for handwriting, but it is consistent and can be applied to all languages, and I am too much of a linguistics-freak to not appreciate that.  


Tim protested, but Dr. Jay agreed.  We also want to convert the US to using Celsius and metric systems.  


(I would probably even let languages keep another mode of writing!  But IPA would have to be learned by everyone... and commonly used... it would make sense with computers, too.  *sigh*)


It's way less humid today than it was when we first got here a week ago, which is lovely... although it's still quite warm.  Apparently the weather suddenly gets very pleasant around the first week of October -- good by me!


It has been interesting to be a lot of places where I am in a minority as a caucasian; it happens all the time when I'm on the MTR.  It doesn't really freak me out... I guess I have just always wondered how it would feel, and now I find out that (in Hong Kong at least) it really doesn't feel any different than anywhere else.


One of the biggest pains of being in a foreign country:  being perpetually paranoid about having my passport where I feel it at any given moment.  Life would be so much simpler if pickpockets weren't a concern.


I can't remember if I've mentioned it here before or not, but we have a pretty awesome group of students this semester.  It feels small to me (maybe because the Israel trip was double this size) but I like it.


I also like cargo shorts.  ^_^


My tan is fading rapidly.  That is a note irrelevant to pretty much everything, I just keep noticing it, because it is not fading all that evenly and so my fingers and the edges of my hands are now much whiter than the tops of my hands and arms, and it looks weird.  Oh well.


I have Plain White T's 1,2,3,4 stuck in my head.  


So, the advantage of coming outside to get the internet during the middle of the day is that there are not mosquitoes.  The disadvantages are that no one is online to talk to, except friends in Japan, and that it is much warmer.


Annnd... I think that is about all the randomness that I have to write about.  


*crash* [that was a branch falling off a small palm tree across the road]


Adios!


Or... as I really should say... Zai jian!

Singapore!

On Sunday afternoon, some of the other girls and I went down to the harbor to swim/wade/take pictures.  There were a lot of young kids with their parents.

A little boy was wading near where I was wading.  "Why is it so sharp?" he asked, probably rhetorically.

"I think it's because of all the shells stuck on the rocks," I said.  The ground below the waves was sharp indeed; we had decided to leave our shoes on, and I had cut my finger on a shell.

He looked at me with some interest.  "You from the US?"

"Yup," I told him.  "Where are you from?"

"Singapore," he said.

He lives in Hong Kong, but it sounded like they moved here from Singapore.

Anyway -- not a very important interaction, but it was fun.  I love how kids are so much readier to ask random questions.

Friday and Saturday Adventures in HK

Well, what to write about tonight? Other than the fact that, sad as it is, I'd be perfectly content to head to bed right now... and it's only 7. Oh well.

It's crazy to realize that it's Saturday. We've only been in Hong Kong since Wednesday, and I have no problem going adventuring all over the... city... country... whatever you want to call it. :)

Friday evening I was coming back from the library when I ran into a bunch of the rest of the group heading out to Kowloon. “Wanna come?” they asked, and I agreed, because hey, how often do I get the chance to run off to the downtown of Hong Kong? So we took the MTR (which I love, and I'm extremely grateful for practice on the DC metro system...) and went first to the Space Museum (LOVE! It has virtual hang-gliding... enough said?) and then watched the Symphony of Lights. That was spectacular and... everything is kind of made epic right now by the fact that it's in Hong Kong (which I remember Jess telling me about Rome...) but I think it was epic in its own right.

Then, since a bunch of people wanted to get dinner, and Tim was in Explore! mode, we ended up catching the Star Ferry (again, it's pretty cool, and if you think I'm exaggerating, you'll have to check it out yourself). We wandered around Hong Kong Island for a while, trying to find a place to eat, and we ended up in a random Chinese restaurant. It was good... except that we managed to lose one guy from the group along the way.

Skipping over much of the angst and whatnot that this provoked, everyone did make it home (albeit that we were on the last train to Ma On Shan, and had to get the guys at the gate of the YMCA camp to unlock it and let us in... oops) and then it was time for bed.

Then Saturday!

This was our very lovely “free day” to do whatever in Hong Kong. A bunch of the group ended up heading to Macau but I (liking to do things by myself) headed back downtown after getting in some story-writing with people who are 12 hours off. So first, I hit the Jade Market, at the suggestion of Dr. K. It was fun, and I was rather proud of not getting crazily lost (although Hong Kong is very well marked with signs and whatnot, and the MTR goes everywhere... so I'm just going to be embarrassed if I do get really lost in Hong Kong) and managed a little bit of bartering.

It is much less creepy to barter with women than it was with guys who were dropping marriage proposals like spare change in the Arab Quarter in old Jerusalem. It also saves my sanity to do it by putting in numbers on a calculator rather than arguing between languages that we certainly don't both speak.

Anyway. Then I headed back to the museums. I was (silly me) thinking of hitting quite a few of the museums. This did not end up happening; I went into the Hong Kong history museum. Which was awesome. And I spent the entire afternoon there. Also, it cost me $5 to get in. Hong Kong dollars, that is... and that's under a dollar US. Very much worth it. grin

Then I was hungry... so I came back to the camp. And here I am.

In one other piece of news, which hopefully is completely irrelevant to anyone in the US – 7-11's here sell various bottled drinks, one of of which is called “Longan and Chinese Wolfberry Drink”. It is very high on the list of nastiest things I've ever drank, but I was thirsty, so I did drink it.

One other thought – living in a country where it's safe to drink tap out of the water is lovely. I'm missing that right now.  

For your viewing pleasure...

Pictures!

And a question for y'all to be thinking about... I can only put 200 pictures on flickr that will be accessible.  So... do you want me to keep uploading them, or do have a better suggestion of where to post them, or does someone want to stick them on some kind of facebook-y page?

Anyway, photos so far.  :)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/91127236@N00/

Enjoy!

Hong Kong!

So, this isn't super long or detailed, because I want to see Hong Kong, after all, but I realize that it will probably work better if I can write on a blog instead of emailing everyone every time something cool happens.  I'll fill up your inboxes that way.


Soo.... let's see.  Obviously, we're all in Hong Kong -- 15 students, our program director and his wife, and the program assistant (who is like a combo TA/RA).  It was a long flight, but fortunately that part is done... until it's time to go home.  Gak.


I emailed my one professor a short list of what we've done and then realized that I forgot a few key points on it... so here it is, without much further explanation.  Feel free to google stuff, or to post and ask questions, which I will try to answer.  At some point.  Maybe after I'm home.

airport in HK (beautiful airport...)

YMCA camp in Ma On Shan (so a bus ride there)

MTR to Kowloon (a train very much like the DC metro, Kowloon is the huge downtown...)

getting lost in the markets there (but not too badly)

exchanging money

wandering into the art museum (which I want to check out further on our "free day", aka Saturday...)

checking out iCenter

buying dinner in the Sun City Plaza (which meant experiencing the Wet Market -- I so totally felt back in Jerusalem!)

classes

finding the library

playing card games

trying to unpack in housing sort of similar to the kibbutz in Israel, only more of us and less dresser space

Um... I feel like those are the main things we've done since getting here.  It's pretty intense.  The languages in Hong Kong are English (very handy) and Cantonese (not at all handy, since I don't speak it!) which uses Chinese characters (somewhat handy) -- but the traditional ones (again, less handy).  Anyway.  It's been fun!  

I have not eaten anything extremely crazy yet, sorry if this disappoints anyone too badly.  I am getting plenty of practice using chopsticks (even to pick up slippery green leafy stuff -- the chopsticks are, of course, attracted to trying to pick up the piece on the bottom of the pile, which does NOT work so well... oh well!)

I got to sleep for about 12 hours last night... which was awesome!  And pretty good for getting me un-jetlagged!

The girls in the program have somehow already heard about Dag.  They want pictures.  It came up because we were discussing my sandals.  Yeah... enough said, I think.

Hmm... let's see.  Hong Kong really reminds me of a mixture of Jerusalem and DC, with the ocean thrown in.  :)

Time difference between here and home is 12 hours.  So I didn't bother to reset my watch (*cough* I can't figure out how!) because I'm lazy like that.

I think that's about it for now.  Feel free to leave comments/email/whatever!