The Harbor

My new favorite place is the Hong Kong Harbor.

I found that in the mornings, people go jogging there, the weather is perfect off of the water, it's right by the dorms, and it's the perfect spot for asian people watching.

(Soooo asian)...

Fun facts about the asians:

1. Their idols are Jackie Chan and Bruce Lee (why Chuck Norris isn't included, I cannot understand...)

2. They really do use the peace sign every time they take a picture.

3. They dance in public (either as dance teams or a single person working out (so weird....)

4. All of their ads and billboards are asian cartoon style.

Lots and Lots of Noodles

The adventures being.

I have been spending my first several days here wandering the streets with other international students, eating yummy noodles, and staying away from the mystery meats.

Here are some pics from the streets around my dorm:

New Years in Hong Kong...figure it would be baller status, eh? Didn't Chinese invent fireworks and all? Jokes on you. 15 bajillion people squished onto the Hong Kong Harbor to watch the fireworks at midnight over Hong Kong Island. They lasted about 3 minutes and were just little sparkles off the top of buildings....lame. Couldn't even take pictures it was that bad.

I decided I am going to start putting fun facts about Hong Kong asians at the end of my blogs:
1. They try to make Mickey D's classy.

2. They are uber skilled with chopsticks. Shit's hard....
3. They don't have big feet (I may be in trouble if I want to buy shoes).
4. Everything is dirt cheap (groceries, wine, etc), except coffee is mad expensive (Starbucks is more expensive here than in the US) and alcohol at bars.

5. They eat Ramon Noodles.
6. They love Karaoke more than life, and cannot sing to save their life...
7. They wear the absolute weirdest things (I will have to snag a pic later).
8. They do not use fake sugars and have only Tobasco for hot sauce (ick).

What to do when I get to Hong Kong...

Sadly for me, the airport is an hour away from PolyU. How to get there?? Thankfully they are used to tourists there so I just asked a worker, bought an Octopus card, and hopped on a bus.

This gave me my first views of the city: it is constructed over a beautiful landscape with palm trees and ocean, and yet miles and miles of horribly designed and old skyscraper are destroying it. The city is massive, and the street level of all the buildings are shops with bright neon lights and huge signs. Its pretty cool to see Rolex stores next to little dumpy trinket shops.

My room...about 3 ft wide and 10 ft long. I am pretty sure the mattress is made of cardboard.

(view from my window)

PolyU is interesting. All of the buildings on the campus block are connected together for the first several levels. It’s kinda weird. 

Annnnd we're off.

Hey everyone. So I thought I would start a blog to capture all my moments in Hong Kong, for either anyone who wants to stalk my journeys, and so that I don’t forget myself.

So let’s see where the adventures begin.

Well, I arrived from my first flight into Newark NJ being a little emo kid after all of the goodbyes (you could say I am not too happy to leave all of my shoes behind…).  My next flight from Newark to Hong Kong boarded on time, yet we sat in the plane for so long due to a light on the plane not turning off (against some flying rule or something….) that the flight staff went past legal time that they could work. In other words, this flight was screwed, and we were all shipped off to a hotel for the night to leave at 6am the next morning….Way to screw up my travel plans, since I timed my flight to arrive at the same time as others from my school so we could get lost in the city together trying to find Hong Kong Poly U (where I will be studying).

Thankfully Tony was able to get an extra day of leave and come stay with me so that I wasn’t in a hotel room by myself all night.

So rise and shine, get to the airport, aaaaaand we don’t leave until 10am. Quality service at Continental…

So finally we take off. Not gunna lie, it isn’t a terrible flight. I didn't need to use the barf bag, and I got to see some fantastic landscape out the window. 16 hours though, is really really really long. Anyways, the flight actually took us over Greenland and the freaking North Pole. Didn’t see any signs of Santa, wanna know why? ‘Cause in winter, the north never sees sunlight. All them movies that show Rudolph tramping around a sunny North Pole are just redonculous….reeeedonculous. But Greenland had the most movie perfect ice-capped mountain ranges that looked traitorous and magnificent at the same time.

I didn't get much sleep and the food they served us was Hot Pockets (mmm boy….??) but I watched the most amazing sun rise as I flew over Russia and Mongolia and China. Tried capturing it on the camera but it doesn’t do it justice. 

The Chinese rivers look like the winding snakes in a flat tan and grey landscape.