Post the Eighth - Tours, or The Time of My Life

Last weekend is going to burn itself into my memory. I don't think I'll ever do anything so cool again...

So Saturday was the HKU sponsored tour of Kowloon and the New Territories. We met at around 8:30ish near the Main Library on campus and got to spend some time bonding in the early morning. The tour started slightly late, but we finally loaded up into some luxury tour buses. They were very comfy though limited in leg room... but comfy nonetheless.

Here was the itinerary for Saturday:
- Yuen Po Street Bird Garden
- Lantau Link Visitors Centre & Viewing Platform
- Wetland Park
- Sik Sik Yuen Wong Tai Sin Temple
- Chi Lin Nunnery & Nan Lian Garden

It took us a little bit to get to the bird garden, but when we got down, we were smack dab in the middle of a flower market. I don't think I've ever seen orchids as beautiful as the ones we saw there... they were stunning. Orchids are among some of my favorite flowers, and to see loads of them everywhere in all sorts of vibrant colors... it was beautiful. We walked a bit further to the Bird Garden, where bird owners were displaying their birds for the public. Pet owners here love their pets and spoil them silly, but they also like showing them off. There was a man with a huge bird (I forget the breed) that delighted in putting the bird on the tourists (us) for photos... but the poor bird finally got irritated after a while (not surprising, really. I would have bitten someone if I'd been passed around like that). There were several shops in the bird garden - birds, bird cages, and live crickets were the specialty. Yes, ladies and gents, live crickets were on sale, and they were being bagged and tagged right in front of our eyes. Rather creepy, really.

If you get the chance to go the Lantau Link Visitors Centre, I highly recommend it, because the view is completely worth it. We got pictures of the Tsing Ma Bridge (the world's seventh longest suspension bridge, it could pass as the Golden Gate Bridge) and the Kap Shui Mun Bridge (the world's longest cable stayed bridge) along with the surrounding mountains and ocean. Very scenic, very worth it.

We got lunch at the Wetland Park; the only restaurant available was the Cafe de Coral, which is a fast food chain. They obviously weren't expecting us; the people were shocked by the crowds of foreigners clamoring to order. After lunch, we roamed around for a bit; even here, you could see civilization (aka tall apartment buildings) not too far away.

Sik Sik Yuen Wong Tai Sin Temple was my favorite stop on this tour. The temple was exceptionally crowded for the Chinese New Year, but there's a place that you can enter for HK $2, and it was beautiful and serene. I think that if I stayed there and just sat and thought that I'd achieve more peace than if I attempted to meditate. The architecture was beautiful, and the fact that we could find such serenity amidst the backdrop of the bustling city was truly impressive.

There's a tradition at the temple where you are handed a can of sticks. You shake the can until one stick falls out - it has a number on it that you can take to the side shops and get your fortune told. I figured that I'd probably never do this again, so I went ahead and paid for the fortune. My number was 83, but as to what was foretold... well, that's something I'll keep to myself for now.

The final stop was Nan Lian Garden and the Chi Lin Nunnery. The Nunnery was closed, so we only toured the garden. I had a very difficult time deciding between the temple and the garden as my favorite, but in terms of beauty, the garden wins hands down. We were greeted by local high school students; the idea was to encourage them to speak English, so they served as our tour guides. Some of them looked quite nervous; one was reading directly off a written script. The girls who were assigned to us were quite shy, but a few were more adventurous than most. They told us about the history and the type of architecture that were there, and overall it was a very good experience. I, being the sole American in the group, got dragged to the side to be "interviewed" by the teacher (we were being videotaped as part of the project), and when I was done, the teacher complimented me as being "spontaneous". HAH. It seems she told the same thing to my friend Nanda too when she got interviewed. Eh...

We came back to the university around 6 pm, and a few of us went to the local supermarket to buy dinner. We came back to the dorm, and one of the girls informed me that my ROOMMATE had moved in. This prompted a group of girls to crowd around my door as I struggled to find my key to let us in. Vicky wasn't there at the time, but she showed up a few minutes later. She's from Mainland China, and the universities just got done with exams. She's very nice though.

The initial dinner plan got changed very quickly; we were convinced to go out to dinner with a couple of girls from PMSR and other exchange students. The total number of students? 15... yeah... it was impressive and loads of fun. After taking a bus and walking around Central a bit, we found a place in SoHo (South of Hollywood St here) called "Taco Loco" and ate there. Vicky had her first taste of "Mexican food", and I had a tiny sip of a margarita. Loads of firsts all around. It was very fun being crowded into a large booth and talking and laughing, although someone didn't pay and thus we all had to pay extra. But it didn't matter in the end.

Sunday was the Hong Kong Island tour. The itinerary:

- Breakfast at a local cafe
- Sampan ride at Aberdeen
- Repulse Bay
- Stanley Market and Murray House
- HK Museum of Coastal Defense

There were a lot less people on this tour, but I personally think they missed out. We started out with breakfast in Central; everyone got a pineapple bun (it's a milk bun with several cuts on the top in the pattern of a pineapple) and an egg tart (a Portuguese (or as Adam claims, a British) treat like a tiny custard pie) as well as a choice between milk tea, coffee, or a mix of the two (a local favorite). The bun and tart were delicious, but everyone got the mix despite only two of us (me and another girl named Ellie) ordering it. All in all, it was AWFUL... we attacked it with lots of sugar but it was to no avail.

We then departed to the sampan ride, and it was so much fun. We were totally obnoxious and we didn't care; we waved to everyone and yelled and laughed loudly. The view was spectacular, and we got to see several boat houses as well as people drying fish by hanging them by the tail with string.

The next stop was Repulse Bay. According to a few people, if you ask the locals where the beaches are, they're very helpful... but they can't quite pronounce beach... the result is... well, I'm sure you can guess (big hint: female dog). So that was the running joke on the beach, but all crude jokes aside, the beach was the best stop. The water was gorgeous and soothingly cold (even though it's winter here, it was unusally hot that day), and we got lots of pictures (and sand everywhere from sand fights/dragging people to the water).

Stanley Market has a temple nearby, but we got lost and thus didn't go. At this point, we got lunch; several of us (myself included) opted for the rather fancy Thai restaurant while the rest went to McDonalds (it was apparently shitty). The food was pretty good; I had chicken satay in a peanut sauce with a cucumber relish. We talked about traffic, bugs/snakes, and what kind of meat you can eat in Australia (one of the girls at lunch is Australian) among other things. After lunch, we met up with the others outside a small Buddhist temple. I burned incense for family and friends there to pay my respect. Afterwards, we roamed around the market a bit and took quite a few pictures before heading to the last stop.

The HK Museum of Defense was boring. But at this point, I guess we were all extremely tired and not very interested, so the time dragged on. But we got a very pleasant view of the city and the surrounding mountains, so it was not a total waste.

All in all, the tours were super amazing. I know I've missed hundreds of little details, but so much happened, and I'm glad I got to spend it with the people I did (not that I didn't miss you guys).

School is a bit boring at the minute; Stats is review for now, CS is semi review, but both Physics... how do I describe it...

It is a bit like being lowered slowly into a vat of bubbling acid.

But for now, I'm very happy with where I am, and I'm super excited for the Chinese New Year. We get the whole of next week off! I'm planning on seeing things here in Hong Kong with a couple of other people staying here, so it should be good fun. Now all I need to do is finish my damn Physics hwk and I'll be free for the next few days.

So from Hong Kong, good morning and have fun in class for those of you in Urbana!

Post the Seventh - Physics Death

As per the title, Physics will kill me. So here are my classes and my analysis

CSIS1120 - It's a lot like CS 231 for right now; we're doing number representation at the minute, but we should shortly be moving on to the new stuff... I hope. But I will review it just so that I don't get caught off guard. I still feel really bad for the professor, but I give him props for teaching on top of the talking.

STAT1301 - Not a bad class, but that could change. The teacher is a self professed gambler (English is not too bad, but he stutters with "ah...ah...ah..." frequently)and has gambling examples for everything...but he's not a bad guy. There are two other exchange students there, so it shouldn't be so bad. We'll see

PHYS2627 - Quantum. My mind wants to explode. But I met a very nice local student who's also in 1415 AND a physics major, so I have someone to back me up. This is my only female professor, but the English is heavily accented. Luckily that's translatable... her handwriting, on the other hand, is not...

PHYS1415 - Holy Hell. I will seriously die. The man keeps saying "Oh, you're HKU students, it's a prestigious university, you know all this." GAH. The professor speaks English perfectly fine, although he tends to lapse into Cantonese. I've met a few local students here and have had dozens of questions asked about the US and the education system (they want to study abroad). I put up a disclaimer immediately, but I guess I'm the only direct source of information they have...

On that note, Week One is done, I'm mindlessly scared of my work, but this weekend is when all the tours take place, so I'm going to have to work diligently. I've already got my first 1415 assignment, due next Friday before the break, but after that, I've got nine days to catch up. I was planning on going to Bangkok, but it turned out to be more expensive than expected... so that got nixed. But hopefully I will be able to see another part of Asia before I go... if my classes permit...

For now, life is good. Food is pretty easy to come by; I've stocked up on snacks and the like for vegetarian days and have taken to drinking soy milk and V8 (I need vegetables!). Milk tea is a popular drink here, and I like it (it reminds me a little of Indian tea). So here's how the food thing works here:

There are several amenities centers, and each of them have restaurants. There's a dim sum/fast food restaurant in the Pokfulam Amenities Center (right next to my dorm), a coffee shop in the Global Lounge (where we ate sandwiches at orientation), another restaurant down at the amenities down Pok Fu Lam Road next to Starr Hall and Lady Ho Tung, and several restaurants in Chong Yuet Ming, which is in the dead center of campus. I generally eat there, so this is how the system works:

There are two food options there: one is a sandwich and tea shop, and the other is a conglomeration of restaurants: Chinese fast food, Chinese BBQ, International, and Western Cuisine. You pick what you want from the menu and order and pay at the counter before heading into the lines. Here (and in a good portion of restaurants), you put your receipt on your tray so that the people behind the counter can see it and call it out to the chefs. They place your food on your tray, and then you're off to find a seat and eat.

The food is very good and costs about US $3, which gets you quite a sizeable meal and a drink. The problem is finding a seat when it's super busy... the local students aren't really all that approachable. But it's worked out so far.

Well, that's how things are on my end. From Hong Kong, good morning.

Post the Sixth - Days, Camera, ACTION! Part Two

So I left off with exploring Queen's Row last time, so I guess I'll pick up from there.

I bought my mom a handpainted teapot that I thought was cute; she has a tiny collection of decorated ones in the living room, so I figure I'll add to that. Afterwards, we went to the local mall/supermarket (the supermarket's name is Wellcome, so that'll really screw up my spelling of the actual English word from now on...) and picked up some snacks and the like. We then returned back to the dorms for a brief break before heading into Central for dinner. We ate at a chain restaurant... I don't remember what it's called, but it's pretty popular. I GOT VEGETABLES ON THE SIDE. IT WAS AMAZING.

You get to miss the things you don't have after awhile. Even vegetables.

Afterwards, we rode the trams around Central to Causeway Bay, which is a shopping area near Central. We roamed around for a bit and got bubble tea before breaking up for the night. All in all, a good day.

The next day started off pretty lazy. I joined two other girls from my hall, Yasmine and Celine (they're roommates down the hall and are both from UNCC), and we went down to Central again and took the Star Ferry across Victoria Harbour to Tsim Sha Tsui, an area on the Kowloon side of Hong Kong. We grabbed lunch and roamed around for a bit before going to the Avenue of Stars, which is the Chinese equivalent of Hollywood Boulevard (I think that's what it's called? It's the place in CA where the stars have their handprints). Celine, who's Chinese, squee'd over names I've never even heard before, but we did find Jackie Chan's handprints and took pictures with that. We then went to the Hong Kong Museum of Art. It was actually pretty cool and very nationalist in nature.

When we got done, it was nighttime... and to see Hong Kong at night... absolutely mind blowingly beautiful. It's right up there with Chicago on the most beautiful places I've ever seen. We got to see the lightshow, which I have to say is the coolest thing I've seen yet. The lightshow happens every night around 7:30 or 8, and all I have to say is that pictures don't do it justice at all. We had a great view; there's a little area right next to the museum to get a good view of it, and we joined the crowd there. After the show ended, we got a few good shots of the skyline before deciding to buy pastries for dinner and heading back for a three woman party in my room since I don't have roommates (at this point, I'd be very surprised to see someone show up and join me... in my triple... :D).

Yesterday was just my lazy day before school. I fired off a couple of emails to my department, watched Mamma Mia! (not a fan of the singing...) and Die Another Day (one of the girls here is a huge James Bond fan and brought her collection with her, so I'm planning on seeing all the James Bond movies backwards... Pierce Brosnan is, while probably not the best James Bond, pretty damn hot), and prepped for school. We finally went out to KFC for dinner since it was pretty late; our initial plan was to cook fish, but we weren't able to get ahold of any since most markets are closed on Sundays. We came back and had another dinner party in my room, but this was definitely much bigger; a lot of girls on the floor stopped by and hung out for a bit before turning in for the night.

Today was the first day of classes for me. MWF are all my CS classes and TTh are all Physics... not too bad, I suppose; I start at 10:40/11:40 everyday and get done anywhere between 2 and 4 everyday minus Wednesday (I only have my assembly code class that day which ends at 11:35). So today was my CS day, and inevitably, the bus was ridiculously late and I got late. I arrived about five minutes late, but the professor was late as well; he arrived a good five minutes after I did. I got quite a few looks, so I just hung out in the back to avoid the stares. The total size was about 40ish, so about the size of 1.5 discussions. It was unnerving to be in such a small class size after being used to the lofty Siebel 1404 and the tall Loomis lecture hall.

My assembly code professor is a rather quiet but well informed man (he's a doctor, but he actually sounds like he deserves the title). The poor man tried to teach, but the students, who'd been talking before he'd arrived, kept talking. I mean, it was absolutely RIDICULOUS. It got to the point where he had to stop for them to shut up, but five minutes later, they went back to talking! I mean, yeah, we talk during lecture, but we at least are semi quiet about it, not to mention the fact that the lecture halls are at least big enough that we're somewhat discrete. Really now... manners much?

I had lunch with Anthony afterwards; we tried the Student Union, but it was ridiculously crowded and I found no vegetarian options, so we tried the Graduate Hall. We pause here for a mini lecture on the campus.

So I've said earlier that Hong Kong is very hilly, and HKU is a prime example. When you look at a map, the total square foot area it takes up is extremely small compared to UoI, which sprawls left right and center. But what the map fails to tell you is that HKU is a blob shaped tall layer cake of a campus. There are literally LEVELS for the buildings. For example, the library is on one level, and above it is the theatre where we had orientation and several other buildings. There are four levels; I've dubbed Level One as being "ground level" - the main road and the main building and Level Four being the highest.

The graduate dorm is on Level Four, but since the Student Union and the CS building are on Level 3, it wasn't that bad of a climb. But I probably won't eat there again... since it was extremely expensive; I was running out of time before my next class, so we just ate there. We got soup, a main course, coffee/tea and dessert for about HKD 65, which is about $8.31. Fairly good, but incredibly expensive. (If you're in Hong Kong, however, go to the fast food places. Meals cost about US$2-3. Damn good, if I say so myself, but then nothing beats the bakeries in my mind XD).

I then went to my software engineering class, and this class has the potential to be absolutely amazing. Of course, I made the big huge mistake of opening my mouth to answer a question the professor asked... and got three billion stares like I suddenly erupted into boils and cheese came flying out of my ears. Yeah...

My professor is a British guy who's taught the course multiple times already, but the reason this class could be disastrous is the following reason: we have a group project worth 30-35% of the grade. He's letting us pick our own groups, but if you choose to be randomly assigned, we can get 10% of our grade added to the original grade. Additionally, he described the students as "technically incredible, terrible in interpersonal skills". Ashley, the other exchange student that I know from PMSR that is a CS major, is in that class and is a little leery of not being taken seriously (I can't blame her; the vibe was admittedly not the best), but I think I've got the chance to shine.

Either that or be a total bitch. Hence the potential for disaster.

But honestly? The first lecture was amazing... and this class will tell me if I'm doing the right thing in pursuing software engineering. It's less about the technical and more about the decision making, which means there's no formula or, as the professor put it, no "silver bullet". I don't know how I feel about the lack of silver bullet, but I can say that I came out of that class really wishing it hadn't ended.

Oh, and the professor? He had the same problem as my assembly code professor, except he really... really shut them up with the whole group assignment thing and how he was planning on handling it. And the thing is... this class is mandatory for CS majors, so they can't leave. He told them they'd hate this class with a big shiteating "innocent" smile since there's no set formula, which HK students love (along with memorization).

It was AWESOME.

I met the other exchange student in that class; his name is Adam and he's from England. Ashley got lunch at a sandwich shop I didn't know existed and we talked for a bit before splitting up. I went to explore another eating area that is right next door and ran into Adam again; he decided to get something to eat, so I sat and chatted with him. We headed down to the street level to catch buses to our respective dorms, and thus my day ended.

So now I'm drowning out the Obama talk in the next room (I'm not in the mood to discuss it, and I think I just stuck my foot in my mouth trying to convince Ashley not to drop software engineering. Yikes) and just finishing this post. I'll upload pictures of Central eventually, but classes are starting up now, and I'm trying to figure out what I'll do for Chinese New Year since a lot of people are leaving to visit family. But for now, I'm content.

From Hong Kong, good morning.

Post the Fifth - Days, Camera, ACTION! Part One

It's been only a few days since I posted, and so much has happened I'm pretty sure I've forgotten half of it.

We rewind to January 9th, the day of orientation. A group of us got together in front of PMSR (my dorm) to walk to the bus stop, which is up the road and to the right a bit. I've met people from all over the place now - Denmark, Mainland China, Canada, Japan, and a bunch of places that I've forgotten. We took the bus over to the main campus and went to orientation, which was in the Rayson Huang Theater, a nice sized theater that apparently fit 300 international students.

We were divided up by continent for seating, so US and Canada were put together. They began the orientation with a brief welcome before having a student group from one of the dorms (I don't remember which one) perform a lion dance. Each dorm has very different traditions, and the inter-dorm sports is very competitive. PMSR is classified as a "non-hall student residence", so we don't participate. Makes sense, really, since most (if not all) of the students residing here are exchange students. But coming back to orientation, the lion dance was interesting, though I'm not sure if they're considered good... the coordination was off a bit, but I'll leave that to those familiar to lion dance to judge (I uploaded the videos to YouTube, check the group for the link). After the lion dance, we had a few more presentations as well as an icebreaking game - we had to introduce our countries to the other exchange students via a drawing boards. The US, being the large majority, had three boards. Our group had no talented artists, so the girl with the board simply drew a big circle to represent America. We then called out words associated with the US and drew arrows to where their general location was (Ex: We had Starbucks, which pointed to Seattle). The whole orientation went from 9:45 to 1:15ish, so it was fairly long.

We went from Rayson Huang over to Swire Hall, one of the two HKU dorms that is actually on campus, and I'll take a brief break to talk about the dorms again.

So there are only two dorms on campus, as stated above, which means the rest clearly are not on campus. There are two other major groups that I'm aware of - the Pokfulam Road dorms and the Sassoon Road dorms. The Pokfulam Road dorms are about five minutes away from campus and include Starr Hall, one of the newest and the largest HKU dorm; and Lady Ho Tung Hall, the all girls dorm; as well as several others. The Sassoon Road dorms are right next to PMSR and I've been told that they are, I quote, "shit holes". So I consider myself rather lucky. The Sassoon Road dorms are next to Queen Mary's Hospital as well as the HKU medical campus, so they are technically close. There are a few more dorms even further off from the main campus than the Sassoon Road dorms, but I don't remember their names. Thus concludes the lecture on HKU dorms.

Swire Hall is home to the Global Lounge, a place for international students to hang out and catch up with their home countries. We enjoyed a free lunch here (three small sandwiches and an apple) and got to meet a few more international students. I guess there are only three people from UoI altogether, and so we met for the first time. Afterwards, we had a meeting with the US consulate, who took the time to tell us how not to get in trouble before giving a campaign speech to join the foreign service. It was interesting, but rather long.

At this point, orientation was formally over, so we split up with the agreement to meet up in about an hour to do some basic shopping. I went to Engineering to clear up a few things before journeying to find the CS department. It took me a bit, but I finally got there with the help of two local students. I was able to clear a few things up in terms of classes, but apparently I have an email account with the CS department that I need to set up.

We met up again and walked down to Queen's Row, home to small shops and awesome bakeries. Which leads to the amazingness that is the bakery.

The bakeries here are AMAZING. They put their pastries out in the window for you to drool over, and they taste as good as they look. I have yet to eat a pastry here that I haven't loved. Milk buns are amazing, as are the pastries. The bakeries also sell bread and salty pastries (pastries with meat filling, mini pizzas, etc) which are phenomenal. You find a bakery and you're set for life.

I'll take a break here and post more later since I'm getting really distracted from this post. More later.

Post the Fourth - OH. MY. GOD.

I'm alive.

Having said that, HOLY COW.

We'll start at the beginning, aka O'Hare. I said good bye to my parents and headed to the flight. United has its own terminal at O'Hare, Terminal One, so that was where my flight was. If you ever fly United, you might get a flight leaving from Concourse C, which is pretty interesting only in that getting there is rather interesting. You get past security and head down to an underpass to get to the concourse, and the ceiling of the underpass is covered in trippy lights. Yes, ladies and gents, trippy wires that light up in the colors of the rainbow. The walls are also composed of different colored lights. I was amused.

So it turns out my flight, while a direct one to Hong Kong, was in reality a flight to Singapore via HK. So there were lots and lots of people... what started off initially as a sort of full flight ended up being a full flight. But I happily passed out... for the first seven hours. After that, BOOM. Wide awake... for most of the last seven to eight hours. Luckily there were inflight movies... and airplane food to burn the time. The movies were Son of Rambow (passed out for that one), Ghosttown (semi awake at this point), Nights of Rodanthe (I tried to pass out for this one and failed), and The Duchess (wide awake). They also had episodes from a few shows on Discovery Channel as well as an episode each of Desperate Housewives, Grey's Anatomy, and another show that I'm forgetting. As for food... eek... I never was a fan of the food, but this was middling at best. Pretzels and drinks initially, then lunch was a choice between beef and potatoes and chicken with noodles (big decision there). At some point, they handed us fish ramen and an almond cookie. Fish ramen... fish by itself is shady, and I'm not a fan of ramen, but oddly enough, I did have some of it successfully... with chopsticks. Last meal was a hot turkey and cheese sandwich with raspberry cookies. And there ends my relationship with American food for now.

Right before the plane took off, I was getting ready for my long nap when a piece of conversation becomes louder than the rest (probably because it took place right behind me)

Male One: So where are you going in Hong Kong?
Male Two: I'm studying at Hong Kong University.

The medication effect fails, and curiosity wins out over looking like a nosy person, so I turned around, and there's a guy behind me who looks like he could be in college. I introduced myself, and that's how I met Jim. Sadly, I never got his last name and can no longer get ahold of him, but it made my life easier after the flight. I didn't have to drag my luggage into the bathroom with me, and we found the Airport Express okay (I'll explain in a bit).

Coming back to the end of the flight, the idea was to meet my "buddy" (my assigned guide that I asked for), at Hong Kong Station, one of the stops covered by the MTR (the local train system). I was to take the Airport Express, one of the trains on the MTR, to meet her there. So Jim and I get past immigration, get our luggage, and get on the train, which took about 20 minutes to get to Hong Kong Station. We stopped at two other places: one station that I can't remember and Kowloon, before we hit Hong Kong Station. We met Katherine, my buddy, there and then split up to take taxis to our respective dorms.

My dorm is called Patrick Manson Student Residence (PMSR). It is the only dorm classified as a non-hall student residence. Rather strange. But the general purpose of the dorm is probably for exchange students as only people have returned to the hall this semester from the previous semester. Anyway, PMSR is about a fifteen minute bus ride from campus, which means we're far from everything. Not ideal, but it'll work out somehow. We got there at about seven or eight HK time, and I managed to get the code for the door. It turned out, however, that there is no lift (elevator for the confuzzled Americans), and thus we had to drag my two fifty pound suitcases up the stairs (a lot of my stuff is disposable, and thus I will have room to bring home presents, so no worries). Help arrived in the form of another exchange student and her buddy, Maggie and Ryan. Ryan, being the helpful man he is, helped drag my suitcases up, and we got me settled into my room on the first floor (there's a ground floor and then three more floors).

Maggie didn't have her key, so she spent the night in my room in one of the other beds (I live in a triple). But she didn't have bedding and I didn't have a proper blanket, so we went to buy some things at Kennedytown, which is a five to ten minute bus ride away. We came back, set up camp, and showered (HOT WATER. I LOVE IT) before turning in for the night. I actually managed to sleep a bit... before waking up at 4:30. Ew. I managed to doze for a few more hours before finally getting out of bed and doing some unpacking. I did meet a few other girls on my floor (PMSR is co-ed by floor) but at that point I was still in "it's the morning, kill me now" mode and thus didn't properly introduce myself.

Which leads to today.

Katherine stopped by, and we got me checked in at the Pokfulam Amenities Center (PAC), which is in charge of PMSR. After that, we headed to campus for the first time. Good GOD. The place makes Illinois look even flatter than it is. Granted, HK is mountainous, but STILL. It was a bit of a walk, but we got started on what ended up being a really long day between getting all our exchange information to running around between faculty buildings to get the right documents and paying our caution money (sort of like the lab fees the Chem labs have but on a larger scale). It was long but fun. I got to see some of campus, but my classes should be only in the Physics and CS building (I don't know where my Stats class is for now).

Ah, food. Wonderful, glorious food. It is ridiculously difficult to be a vegetarian, even a part time one, in Hong Kong. They like their meat and eggs, and when someone comes over to remove the only solidly vegetarian item on the menu, it's depressing. The only vegetable to be found on the menu? Tomatoes, which were used in a sort of soup with pork over noodles. I'm actually missing vegetables. Huh...

On that note, I'll take my leave for the night; I need to find out when I register and tomorrow is orientation, which goes from 9:30 to 2:30, and then I need to run a few more errands before enjoying my first weekend in HK and last weekend before going back to classes. The jetlag is also kicking in about now, so from Hong Kong, good morning folks.

Post the Third - Goodbye Again.

I'm packed, my documents are in order, all I need to do is borrow my mom's wireless mouse and I've got all my gear.

So in about 36 hours, I'm out of the States. I wanted to write a note on New Year's Day, but I guess this is sort of my way of acknowledging the new year.

2008 is over. I can't say it was one of my favorite years... but it had it's great points, and I really do treasure those moments and the people I got to share them with.

I lost contact with a few of you, and I'm afraid that being in a different country won't help matters, but I hope that we'll get to fix that soon.

To the people I got to know better, to say that it was simply a pleasure is a great understatement.

To the people I met, I hope I'll get to talk to you more. It was wonderful to meet you.

To the other folks studying abroad, I'm right there with you for the most part, though the different country thing changes some things, haha. But hey, we're in it together.

To my hometown folks, I miss you greatly. I hope that wherever you are in this world, you're happy and safe, and it's been a long time since I've seen a lot of you, but I know we'll pick up right where we left off. We always do.

To the folks at Urbana, I know you guys will have a great semester, and I'm very jealous I won't be there for it, good times and bad times both. But I hope that you'll share it with me as I hope to share my experiences with you, that somehow we'll cross the divide. It's not face to face daily contact, but it's something.

So I guess this is where I have to say goodbye, but it's a goodbye in the physical sense. I'm always here, and if there's anything I can do, even though I'm not here (there?), don't even think twice about asking me. I'll hire some handy minions to take care of it.

Don't forget me, and there's no way I can forget you.

Goodbye again.

Post the Second - Wrapping Up

Things to pack still (after the awesome advice video)
- Towels
- Toilet paper (DONE)
- Vitamins
- Whatever else I can think of

To do
- Print passport size photos (DONE)
- Print photos for photo album
- English-Canto Dictionary! (DONE)
- Adapters (Radioshack?)/Headphones
- Test my new ATM card.

It still hasn't hit that I'm leaving yet. I think it's because it's three days away and not one day away... I think that's when it'll hit.

So I have about 43 pounds in one bag and about 20-30 in the other. The idea is that I'll have a backpack and laptop bag as well since United allows for that. Either way, it leaves quite a bit of room for things to bring back.

My flight is at 12:17 PM on Tuesday, but I'm leaving the house around nine.

Announcement: Will the minion known as A.C.E. make himself/herself known? It's kind of hard to figure out who you are. Thanks.

That's it for now.