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.