After a nice and lazy morning, I went to the last part of my international student orientation. We listened to someone from the registrar talk about how to register for classes and add/drop period. Then the Tuen Mun Police came to talk to us about safety in Hong Kong. After sitting through hours of talking in the lecture hall, we went to a 90 minute Cantonese class. At first it was fun and useful, but then we started learning TOO much. It was hard to remember what we had learned at the beginning of the class. Then I had to stay for yet another meeting during which all the American exchange students met with a representative from the US Consulate. She was pretty cool, but after a long day of sitting, it was hard to pay attention.
After the meeting, I walked with Iris (another American from Pennsylvania) and Sophie to Fu Tai and we ate at a Chinese restaurant called Home Faery. I had some cooked broccoli with rice. It was very delicious.
 |
| Sophie's dinner plus her coconut coffee and Iris' coconut bubble tea |
Then we went swimming and ended up swimming 7 laps (one more than Sophie and I's original goal)! Sophie and I stayed up just chatting in her room and I didn't get to bed until late so this morning I slept in. I woke up at 11 and was just lounging around my room when someone knocked on my door at 11:30. It was two peer mentors telling me that we were meeting for the New Student Orientation (NSO) at 11:40. That of course meant that I had 10 minutes to get ready for the entire day. Already five minutes late, I was just about to leave when my roommate, Trace, arrived to move in. She didn't have a key so I left her my key. For the NSO, we were put into groups. I was in group 10 with other people from my hostel. I was the only non-Chinese in the group. There was one other exchange student from Mainland China, but at least she could understand some Cantonese (or so she told me). It was very lonely. We went to dinner at a Chinese restaurant. Two girls sitting next to me who turned out both to be studying translation talked to me a little bit, but otherwise it was a very quiet lunch for me as everyone else was getting to know each other in Cantonese.
 |
| Some of the Food (not all of it had come out yet) |
After lunch, we went to the auditorium with all the other groups. Every hostel, it turns out, has it's own chant. Right after Trace came in to return my key to me, the auditorium erupted into a mad house. During this craziness my keys were lost and never found so I had to go somewhere to buy a new key for HKD100. Needless to say I was pretty pissed and embarrassed. But it wasn't the end of the world. Anyway, this chanting that each hostel did was insane. People got so into it. It was like watching different people cheer for sports teams.
(Here is a video of chanting)
We listened to a bunch of people talk and I got pretty bored. There was one point when they sang the school's anthem, which is in Cantonese. They invited all of the international students to come up on stage to sing it with them. Pressured by my group to go up, especially when they called American students to come up first (I think it's because Americans are stereotypically outgoing), I reluctantly joined other international students on stage. We even had to introduce ourselves to the entire NSO. I mouthed the words to the anthem, as Cantonese is very hard to pronounce, especially when you have to read the romanization of it.
After the speeches and ordering a new key, my group had to go take the required fitness test, which I hadn't heard of until today. They took my blood pressure and resting heart rate, weighed me, measured my height, measured my "fat rolls" on my arms, belly and thigh, tested the strength of my grip, made me do as many sit ups as I could in 1 minute, tested how far I could stretch my arms while sitting with my legs out straight, and tested my heart rate after doing 3 minutes of step up and step downs on a bench. It turns out that I was always average for girls or sometimes I did even better than the normal numbers for boys and girls. It was interesting to take a fitness test, since I hadn't done anything like it since middle school.
 |
| Part of fitness test |
After the fitness test, I went back to my room for a brief second and then had to go eat dinner with my group. We ate box dinners and that was when some of the guys in my group started talking to me more, asking lots of questions about what I was studying.
 |
| My dinner minus the apple |
After dinner, we had a fire drill. During the fire drill, one of the guys in my group told me about what happened to a Hong Kong tour group in the Philappines (for those who don't know: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-11055015). Apparently all programs on TV were stopped last night to broadcast coverage of this hostage crisis. I had no idea and when we had a moment of silence this morning during the speeches for the hostages, I hadn't a clue what they were talking about. I feel terrible not knowing, but there was no way I could have known without a TV.
After the fire drill, I was tired so I went back to my room instead of going with my group to get dessert. I chatted for a while with my roommate. She is very friendly and I think we will get along.
 |
| Trace and I (a photo of a photo she took) |
I think I am getting sick because I have a sore throat and was tired all day. This is a really terrible time to get sick, so I hope it goes away soon.
Another interesting article I ran into on BBC: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-11062708
Aren't you glad you aren't in that traffic jam!?
Orange soda!! Thats cool :)
ReplyDelete