A Chopstick Affair: November 2010

Thanksgiving and Hiking at Shek-O Peak

Happy Thanksgiving! I am very sad to say that this Thanksgiving I sat in class all day and even had a pop-quiz. How's that for a holiday? Amanda and I enjoyed a lazy Thanksgiving in, chatting with parents and family via Skype and resting up for classes the next day - nothing extremely exciting. But, on Friday, three Americans from North Carolina fixed us a fantastic Thanksgiving dinner! We had all of the fixings, I am so surprised that they were able to find the ingredients that were needed. Amanda and I definitely did not have the courage to tackle making a Thanksgiving dinner in Hong Kong and were so happy that they put on such a great dinner.

After dinner, I headed to my favorite place - the Avenue of the Stars overlooking the water. We enjoyed some wine and the view for a few hours... I will really miss that when I leave!

Carving the turkey

All of the ladies at Thanksgiving dinner

On Saturday, we stayed in, got some rest and enjoyed dinner with our German friends at our favorite Thai restaurant. Never in my life had I had curry, or Thai food, until I came to Hong Kong, but I love it!

Sunday, we headed off to hike on Hong Kong Island. The hike was only about 5 km and supposed to take about 2.5 hours, but we finished much quicker. After taking a ferry, train, and bus, we had finally reached our destination and began the hike. It was quite busy since it was Sunday and the trails were mostly filled with foreigners.

On our way we met an American from NY who was actually here for work and teaching at our university. Surprisingly she said that she hated big cities and such a busy lifestyle, it did not make sense since she was from NYC... Anyways, she proceeded to say that she hated Hong Kong and that all of the teachers at the university had taken her out to crazy restaurants to have the HK delicacies. I really felt bad that she had such a horrible experience, so we gave her some suggestions to finish off her trip - hopefully she will enjoy the city more!

After finishing up our hike, we went to meet our friends at Big Wave Beach - there were actually huge waves! Our friends had went there for the day to surf so we joined to watch the fun. It was perfect weather - sunny and warm.

On the bus to go hiking!

View from Shek-O peak to Shek-O beach. Great golf courses and beautiful beach homes!

Big Wave Beach

Notice the speedometer.

We took public light buses that seat about 15 people. They don't have a running schedule but simply leave when they are full. You can ask them to stop when you need to get off and enjoy getting to your destination quicker than a normal bus. However, the drivers are quite crazy. The speedometer in the bus tells all of the passengers how fast the driver is going. HK law states that these drivers aren't allowed to go more than 80 km/hr (about 50 mph), otherwise it starts beeping to tell the driver to slow down. Thank goodness.

This week is our last week of classes at PolyU until our marathon month of finals. I wish that I could just get the finals over with before the holidays, however I have exams until the 23rd of December. Yuck! We have many plans to explore the rest of the city between studying for finals. It is amazing that we only have 3.5 weeks left to be here. Time sure flies.

Caitlin

November 21, 2010

Well, these past few weeks have been filled with homework, midterms, and many, many papers! But, things are finally starting to slow down until finals in about two weeks. It is truly amazing how quickly time has flown, it feels like yesterday that we were getting off the plane and struggling to drag all of our luggage to the PolyU dorm. It's really a reminder that time flies and we should really enjoy every moment.

This week Amanda and I will be working on setting up a Financial Plan for our make-believe "clients" in our Financial Planning class. We have a group of 6 people - 1 from Slovakia and 3 from Mainland China in addition to ourselves. It is truly a learning experience to work with such a diverse group! You can really tell the difference in cultures from the East and West... especially the desire to do groupwork on Friday and Saturday nights! Who would ever want to do that? But we all have one thing in common: we think our teacher is crazy! The class is based upon building relations with clients and helping them to understand their future financial needs. Since financial planning originated in America, he generally turns to Amanda and I for answer or our opinion... however he generally seeks our opinion on very subjective topics. Some of these include: whether women can be "bought", our feeling of corruption within the U.S. government, and my favorite, whether we think that Chinese men with long fingernails are strange. We were asked about the last topic a few weeks ago. Amanda said, rather bluntly, "I think it's gross." (side note: most people here are much more blunt than in the U.S., so it was not taken poorly) However, I said that sometimes this happens in the U.S. and that it's a matter of choice. I really didn't want to offend anyone in the class that may have long fingernails, even though it is a terribly gross habit. The teacher proceeded to ask me what my major was. I replied, Finance. He said, "Caitlin, you should not go into finance, you should go into politics because you always give answers that are (with air quotes) 'politically correct.'" I was rather offended, however his next topic discussing women in business made me want to give him some lessons on being "politically correct"!!

This week I have been a bit homesick. With the holidays approaching it is hard to be away from family - but it's a learning experience I could not pass up. However, I think the desire to go home stems from not wanting to deal with exams in the upcoming weeks. Exams here are 50% of your final grade... while I have done well so far, I am a little worried! It's also hard to strive for A's when I have already accepted a job after I graduate. For those of you who I haven't told, I will be working for Bank of America in a management rotation program. Perhaps the most exciting part is that I will be geographically flexible for the first 2 years with the company! Amanda also just accepted a job in Boston with EMC, so we are equally unmotivated when it comes to schoolwork.

Now onto the good part... this weekend was the Wine and Dine festival in SoHo (an area on Hong Kong Island filled with expats, wonderful restaurants and many bars). We headed out Saturday night to enjoy the wine vendors and music. We went to dinner at an Italian restaurant - it was wonderful! I am really starting to miss food from home and find myself craving In-n-Out burger - nothing in Asia can compare! After dinner, we roamed the streets of SoHo for an hour or so before heading to a wine bar to enjoy some live music. What a nice night!

Sunday afternoon, we went to Kowloon Park, a park just a short train ride from the dorm. This was my first time at the park and I will definitely return a few more times before leaving Hong Kong. Every Sunday there is a Kung Fu show from 3-6pm, what a show! I found it very relaxing. Some of the moves are very slow and the music, while typical Kung Fu music, is rather relaxing, too. I ended up sitting next to this older Chinese man who, by the looks of it, had never seen an American before - or he wanted to rob me, on or the other. He stared and stared at me for the entire show. Too bad he didn't speak English and I don't speak Cantonese, I think we would have had a funny conversation. Then, about halfway through the show a chunky little boy came and sat down next to me... no, not next to me, ON ME! I tried to scoot over a little, but there was no room... we were cheek-to-cheek watching the show. He kept tapping me and giving me the thumbs up to the moves that they were doing. It was so funny, but his father would reprimand him every time he bothered me, but he didn't learn and kept poking me at every new move. Such an entertaining afternoon!

That's all for now! Happy Thanksgiving to you all!

-Cait

A group of women doing Kung Fu - they were really good!

They have a work-out course in the park!

Flamingos!

New Age Kung Fu - aka teenagers dancing to American music. They were really good.


Kowloon Park

Life in Hong Kong

Well, I am right at the half way mark of my study abroad and have been doing a lot of thinking about how I like the city, whether I would move here again someday etc etc etc... To sum up all of these thoughts, I definitely think that I would move back to HK if given the option - not permanently, but for another extended period of time. Hong Kong is so unique, very westernized with it's own culture. I love the fact that you can take the subway everywhere (even though it is annoying at times), that on my walk to school I can look across the bridge and see the skyline of Hong Kong Island, and the culture of locals mixed with expats. It really is a phenomenal place to be, I am so blessed to have had this opportunity but very sad that it's almost over.

These last few weeks have been bogged down with homework, midterms, essays, exams, and lectures. The coursework here is very challenging and much more difficult than I had anticipated. Many of the questions on the exams are seemingly straightforward and comparable to exams in the U.S. I actually really value having essay exams, even though about half way through my hand cramps and I must force myself to keep writing. In the States all exams are multiple choice. While these exams really can be challenging, I don't think it actually forces you to learn the material. However, while the questions here in HK are comparable, the grading is very different. The expectations are much different and it is seems that each teacher is looking for different qualities in the students, making it hard to benchmark my work against the rest of the students. I think there really is a learning curve to the style of teaching - hopefully I will be able to succeed in all of my classes, but it is questionable at times. Thankfully, I am not the only one who feels this way... we'll see how it goes!

In the midst of all of the studying, we celebrated Halloween last week. Many of the local people here don't actually celebrate Halloween, but our generation has taken up this tradition. In our hall, the students made haunted houses on each floor. Amanda and I decided to go make some friends on our hall and join in the fun... we were pleasantly, uhhh scared. They had made the HH in our common room by hanging black tarp and making a pitch black maze. As you walk through, people would grab your leg or jump out in a horrifying mask. I know it sounds juvenile, but it was really scary!!!! The Saturday night of Halloween, all of the exchange students went to Lan Kwai Fong - the Mill Avenue of Hong Kong. We were told that you wouldn't be able to get into the street if you showed up after 7pm, so we headed to HK Island to get our night started early. We decided to take public transportation... who doesn't want to walk around HK in a Halloween costume, right? Even though we usually get some stares for being the minority, we were really getting stares that night. People were taking pictures from across the metro and stopping to have their kids pose with us. We really were a walking show the whole entire commute.
We arrived at LKF hoping to meet many more people dressed in ridiculous costumes. But, there weren't only people dressed in costumes... there were swarms of locals with their huge cameras taking pictures of ALL of the foreigners in their costumes. And no, they weren't dressed up themselves, just headed to the expat party place to snap some good shots of everyone in their costumes. It took us about a half hour to get through the entrance, stopping for about 60 photos on the way. I really wonder what they do with these pictures - they probably have an underground website called www.crazyHKexpatphotos.com. Who knows, it was fun acting like a movie star nonetheless!

This week, Amanda's boyfriend is visiting HK from his study abroad in Manchester. They have been doing the typical site seeing and headed off to Guilin, China for the weekend. While they were sightseeing, I went to Oktoberfest with all of my German friends here. It was so much fun and great to hear how they compare the HK version to the Munich Oktoberfest. I hope to visit them during Oktobefrest in Munich!

This weekend my friend, Mackenzie, came to visit from Seoul, South Korea. She teaches English there and decided to get away from the cold and take a quick trip. I was so glad she came and we enjoyed seeing all of the tourist spots. Most were places that I had been before, except we did check out a few other places....

On Saturday we took a trip to Aberdeen. This is a famous spot on the south shore of Hong Kong Island. It is a little fishing town where many people live on their small boats; some even live on huge, million dollar yachts. We were able to take a boat ride around and ended up at Jumbo Floating Restaurant. This multi-story boat is featured in all HK books and was really a sight to see. We decided not to eat there but to find a hole in the wall restaurant instead. After taking another boat back to shore, we walked around for a while before finding a food court of types. It was a local market with hardly any English - we knew it would be good. We found a nice Thai restaurant and enjoyed a fun meal.

Mackenzie and I went our separate ways and headed to the Western Market. Don't let the name fool you, it is not Western at all! This market caters mostly to tourists and sold many souvenirs. However, they also had a whole floor of fabric imported from around the world. We did some shopping then headed over to SoHo.

SoHo is perhaps my favorite place in HK. Filled with restaurants, art galleries, boutiques, and bars, this place is one of the most unique places to HK Island. It is situated in Central near Lan Kwai Fong, however its quite the hike to get there. You almost have to hike (not quite hike, but take many, many stairs) about 8 blocks from some areas to get there - but it's totally worth the adventure. This place, like LKF, is home to many expats from all around the world. Many of the people that move here are typical finance types sent here by their job to work long hours and capitalize on the Asian market, but I suppose they get a few moments off to head to SoHo and LKF to enjoy a Western meal and nice cocktail. SoHo is definitely a must-see if you come to HK.

After experiencing SoHo, Mackenzie and I headed to Kowloon for some typical Chinese dim sum. Mmmm, the food here is fantastic though it does take some getting used to. After enjoying our meal of dumplings and noodles, we took a short nap before heading back to Central and LKF for some Hong Kong night life action. Perhaps the best part of the night (and most nights back from LKF) involved Cantonese lessons from our taxi driver. It's not rare to get a taxi driver that speaks English and is willing to teach you some Cantonese. I can't say I remember the exact pronunciation of what I was taught, but it was very entertaining nonetheless.

Phew - it's been quite a long weekend and it is 4AM on Monday, better get some sleep! Here are some pictures, Blogspot makes adding pictures into the blog extremely difficult so it's easiest to add them at once at the bottom of the blog....