Blogging
From Abroad

One thing that many students lack here is the ability to sleep, which some may look at as a good thing. I mean sometimes my one wish would be if I could live off 2 hours of sleep a night and be great the next day. Unfortunately, the locals here received that wish before I did. They just don’t sleep here. Now don’t get me wrong they sleep a little bit, but I guarantee you they are rarely getting 8 hours of sleep. I would say roughly around 4 or 5 hours a night.

Now I am one of those early to bed early to rise kind of people. However, my whole sleeping cycle has been completely switched around while in Hong Kong. The earliest class doesn’t start until 9:30AM. The last class won’t end until 8:30PM. After that, societies and study groups will get together at 10PM and sometimes won’t end until 4 in the morning. I talked to one local that said he doesn’t even start studying until midnight because he has club meetings at 11PM! I just don’t know how they do it? I think it’s fascinating how different their living style is from the U.S. Now don’t get me wrong because I know that there are many people who stay up late in Morgantown, but the way they do it here is just so different.

Moreover, they stay awake with very little caffeine and absolutely no alcohol is ever involved. You may think if they are up so late that they are going out or hyped up on Red Bull, but it’s just them living the way they have always known. Therefore, when they aren’t studying late into the night nor going to a meeting then what are they doing? Playing games. This is one thing that I find so different from the U.S. The locals play games ALL OF THE TIME. At 1 in the morning I passed a group of locals that said they were getting ready to play games. What games? They aren’t usually playing board games either. They just make up games and then play them. I still haven’t found out exactly what these games are, but they enjoy them so much that they will stay up until 5AM and then sleep for a few hours and go to class. Although one time I saw a few kids smashing Pringles on the ground, so I asked what they were doing. Oddly enough they just said, “Playing a game.”

The hostels (dorms) are booming at 2AM and completely dead in the afternoons. Therefore, my 11PM to bed and 6AM mornings have been completely shot. I once tried to go to bed early (midnight) and a few different clubs knocked on my door to see if I wanted to join in their meetings. When they found out I was sleeping they kept saying that it was crazy how early I was in bed. I guess this is just one of the many things you have to get used to. It has actually been very interesting and kind of fun because it’s just a completely different life at night. Someone the other night asked me if I wanted to study with him and said he couldn’t meet up until 1AM, and I found myself actually seeing this as normal. It’s just me starting to mold into a local.