Study Abroad Blog | Blogging From Abroad | "You do so many varied activities!"

30 Jan

My good friend Leah Ann said that to me talking on AIM the other day. In the past week I have been to a parade for Chinese New Year, seen fireworks at Victoria’s Harbor, learned about Hong Kong’s history from one of the top 5 museums I have been too (and I’ve been to a TON), went to the horse races (and won 46 HKDs, as we like to call dollars here), went to a pro soccer match, wandered around Causeaway Bay, and ate breakfast at 4 in the morning at some American style diner. I’m living a pretty fast, full life in my first two and a half weeks in Hong Kong.

We went out for the Inaguration last Tuesday, which was pretty crazy. I found a place downtown that was televising it… at 1AM our time! We all made a night of it, dressed up, hoping the foreign press would be there (and they were, but as far as I’ve heard I wasn’t on CNN :( )

I keep wanting to write about what it’s like to study abroad, more than what all I do… so what is it like?

The first couple days are disorienting. I want to say the first night here goes on top 5 worst sleeping experiences ever, up there with a flight over to Italy last summer as well as a night spent in the Charles deGaulle airport. Orientation was almost disorienting… I came to Hong Kong like I went to Italy – knowing only a couple people from study abroad orientation. I have kind of a reserved personality, so sometimes I have trouble around groups of people I don’t know at first, but the thing with studying abroad is… you have a ton of international students who don’t know anyone either! So groups form pretty quick and you find a group of people you have similar interests in, etc etc. The first few days are exhaustingly full – trying new things, walking everywhere, learning dozens of names and faces and hometowns. So the first week was pretty much a blur.

Hong Kong is an amazingly clean city. I’ve never seen such a clean place in my whole life. Everything is so efficient here as well. Huge groups of people move pretty quickly from place to place – it isn’t like in America where you wait for hours and hours.

Public transportation is another pretty new concept to me. I dabbled with it in Milan this summer, and have used it when traveling… but here I am living for four months without my car. It’s not really that bad and the walking is getting me back in shape.

So this is a pretty varied post, kind of like my life in Hong Kong.