woo hoo

I leave for thailand in less than an hour!!! ahhh im soooo excited! I wish you all a happy Chinese New year and ill write agian on Feb 2! 

much love

view from the ferry

me shaking the cup of sticks to get a fortune at a temple... too bad my fortune was only in Chinese haha...

Inaugural Speech / Thailand

HI everyone... so its almost Midnight to make it wednesday and that is when Obama's speech will play here! So all us americans are having a little party to watch history take place! The guys are buying american beer and hot dogs, and i am making some mac and cheese... that the best we can do with american food here haha... I am so excited to watch because this is the first time I have understood all this political stuff ...  I knew id grow up some day ;)

I leave for Thailand for 11 days tomorrow! I will be back february 2nd and I am SOOOOOOOOO excited! We are planning on being in Bangkok  for a few days because they have a Chinatown and we want to be there for the Chinese New Year... Then we are off to some islands and to do some exploring! I am soooo excited and i hope it is safe there! I cant wait to come with with some crazy pictures and stories to tell you all!!! 

Happy Inauguration day!

xoxo

china continued

ok so Shen Zen is really unsafe apparently and I just found out... i know its a huge pick-pocketing place but apparently it gets worse.. so maybe that was my first and only time there haha... thank goodness i was with 4 guys when I went! Anyway, i bought this really really pretty tea set (im a dork) so i cant wait to use it with all you at home... it has the strainer and everything so I will have to go to a tea store here where they have jars and jars of tea leaves and buy some to take home! It is interesting because they have tons of tea sets where the cups are literally the size of like 2-3 water bottle caps put together... that doesn't really make sense to me but maybe since they aren't adding sugar or sweet-n-lo then it is no problem :)  Before we went into Shen Zen, we ate at a dim sum restaurant... dim sum is a traditional chinese meal like spanish tapas where you order lots of dishes and they coome with about 3-4 small pieces per plate so you try a lot but you dont eat more than a bite of one thing... I was excited because there was lots we could order without seafood in it! The food was really good and really cheap... lunch was $35 HK dollars per person (about $4.5o US dollars)... food is a lot cheaper here though so that is more than we pay for meals on campus... 

It is so cool because our campus is under construction and all of the scaffolding is made of bamboo... literally huge buildings have scaffolding of bamboo.. its amazing... 

I am getting used to walking up the 100 steps and then the hill to get to the first part of campus from my dorm... it still sucks but i am getting quicker at it :) It is actually much easier in heels the walk up the hill when we are going out because you are already leaning forward from the heels! I will be very impressive in my heels when i get home! haha

I leave for Thailand on Jan 18th (wednesday)  and get back February 2nd at night! I am so excited to be there! I can't believe i am getting this opportunity to go! I am nervous again about being safe there but I am staying with 2 guys in the beginning and then meeting up with tons of international kids on the way... there are sooooo many of us going there for the break! I amsure we will travel all over the country and go to soo many amazing place that i will tell you about and show you when i get back! 

thats it for now cause i gotta go work on a group project but miss you all!

It was fun skype-ing with those of you at Ben's today! Miss you all...

THE REST OF YOU BETTER SIGN ON SKYPE SOON! haha

my skype name is cassielaurel 

peace out

chinaaa

So yesterday me and a few friends went into Shen Zen, which i would compare to the Tijuana of Mexico, to explore and do some shopping... We had  to cross through the Hong Kong immigration an then the China Immigration... The police are way scary... they look at the passport and then at you like 6 times... its super awkward ... we all made it through no problem so thank goodness for that! When we got the it was just like a big expanse of flat land with big buildings, and it was just dirty... Hong Kong is immaculately clean everywhere and china is not at all... We all felt so dirty when we came home... we had no plan why there so we basically just walked around for 5+hours... They had tons of cages on the sides of roads and in the entrances into restaurants with live chickens, ducks, frogs, watersnakes, fish, etc... if you can image it, you could find it there. Luckily we didn't see any dog to eat.... My friends bought pirated movies for like 1 US dollar and they actually work and are pretty good quality... Others bought backpacks for super cheap because we are all going on a trip after next week over the break for Chinese New Year... I am sad I wont be here for the new year but i heard that there is not much going on if you dont have family here since its a big family holiday... I am not finished but i gotta go so i will finish my china story in a little!

partyy

its thursday night so you all know what that means... Ladies Night at LKF!!! we had a big party at the I-house (the international dorms) and now we are all off for the night! I hope you are all doing wonderful and I miss you all so much! I wish you were all here with me! Ill be back at 4am !!! much love :)

Lamma Island

Lamma Island is a little seafood / hiking island about an hour + away on the metro and ferry... It was our destination for the day... they had tons of seafood restaurants (which i wont eat) and other little restaurants and the beginning and end of our hiking trail. There is not much else besides the trails, restaurants, and beaches, but it was a great day. 10 of us went and had lunch at a place that overlooked the water and then started out on the trail... The trail took about 1 hour and led us back to a different spot where the ferry would pick us up... It was funny because at the highest part of the trail I saw an asian man wearing a USC sweatshirt so I asked (thinking it would be a long shot) if he went to SC and sure enough he did. He spoke great english and was really friendly and gave me his name to facebook him and told me to contact him if i needed anything at all... What a small world! My "trojan family" is really everywhere haha... They had some of the shops where you could pick out what fish you wanted from the tank and then they would kill it and prepare it for you for lunch... Yuck to me but at least its fresh food... They day was really fun and it was island 1 out of over 200 to visit! I will need another trip back here to hit all the islands :)

Chinese New Year is in two weeks and I just booked flights to Thailand with 2 friends (one from SC and the other that i met here). I didnt want to miss the new year here but its a big family holiday so there will not be much for us to do here... We get a week off of school so this was my big chance to travel! I am so so excited to go to Thailand! I have wanted to go since i did a history report on it in my 9th grade history class... We will find hostels to stay in when we get there and figure out our travelling as well when we get there and ask around for some good places to go... We have temples and beaches on our lists of places to go so that gives us a good start... I heard there are really cheap beach massages there so I am super excited for that! More to come soon!... bed time now cause i have school tomorrow:)

china power

Today we had an organized city tour of Victoria Peak (view over all of the city), Stanley Market (where you buy all the fakes), and the harbor where they have a laser/light show. It was a very long day but it was really fun and good to see this all in one day! I will have to go back to Stanley Market though :)... I really want to buy a nice tea set so i will try my bargaining skills there sometime... And hopefully i can have everyone over when i get back at my new apartment for a little tea party (on a night we are all recovering from being 21) ! They had a meal for us at another college in hong kong in a "Cantine" which is like a cafe... just like the cantines at my school you never know what you are going to get... we had spaghetti noodles with liek a bean sauce (gross), weird chiken, and soup broth with cabbage... hahah not the chinese food i was expecting to eat here to say the least haha... after the tour there was like 10 of us that went to a 7/11 to buy beer and we sat on a bench overlooking the harbor and the Hong Kong skyline which is absolutely amazing... i will post some pictures tomorrow. It was such a great day! Tomorrow there is a small group of us going to Lamma Island or something so we will see what that has in store for us! Then i gotta get my books and get into school mode... I am going to jump in with some people who are planning a trip to Thailand during the Chinese New Year when we get a week off of school! I am super excited and will hopefully book tickets tomorrow! miss you all and miss american chinese food (but i miss chipolte and their chips more!)

Liebe Gruesse (Love and Greeting in German thanks to my roommate!)

bars and clubs :)

I can't wait to be 21 and be able to go out in LA when i come home... It was soo fun going out here... unfortunately it takes about an hour on the subway to get to the place with all the bars and clubs, but only like 30 minutes home in a taxi. there were probably 50+ exchange students out all together in Lan Kwai Fung  where there are like 2 or 3 streets of bars and clubs... thursdays is ladies night so drinks are free for us and then the guys just pay a cover... its cool cause all the bars are open into the street so people are hanging out in the streets talking and gathering to go to the clubs after. They play basically the same music as we do with all the hip hop and pop music so that was nice :) it was so nice having all these exchange students out together because it made the clubs really fun when we knew half of the people there.. the clubs don't close til 5 am i think but my feet were killing by 4 so we left... my roommate from hong kong was at the same club and she wanted to go home so she bargained with the taxi driver for a cheaper ride home haha... a still i will not know how to do since i don't speak a word of cantonese... 

Yesterday i went shopping at and 8 story mall which is so crowded i'd almost prefer not to shop.  I got a much needed heavier jacket because it is freezing here at night as i had mentioned before... i found mitten so i sleep in those now too (i'm lame). Then we went to a market area where all the shops are in the street and really cheap... they sold everything there; technology stuff, fish, clothes, shoes, basically anything you want you could find there... everywhere smells like fish and smelly tofu so I am still not quite used to the smell yet, and i dont know if i ever will be... 

To all my friends reading this I hope you all had a fun break and a safe trip back to school! Miss you already and I wish i was on the row with you all! Miss you all like crazy!

much love :)

the view from the racecourse
time square of Hong Kong
The steps up the The Temple of 10,00 Buddhas

the view from my room and the worst beds ever!

stuff

so my sense of direction is as bad here as in the US... which i didn't think was possible. The racecourse was not a few subway stops away like I thought but rather 4 different subway lines away..haha so it took us like an hour and a half to get there. The stadium was awesome... it was half open so the stands looked out on huge buildings.. it was soo pretty... I bet 10HK dollars on a horse which is like $1.25  and my horse lost horribly... I never was good at betting... haha but it was fun nonetheless and you would have never known you were in HK in the stadium, it was full of europeans and americans! I didn't feel like the odd man out! 

I think America needs to rethink some things because us exchange students from america are the only exchange students who only speak one or 2 languages... all the europeans speak 3-6 languages proficiently! its amazing... not only do i not understand the chinese people, i don't understand the europeans haha... The europeans are also amazed that I drive a car instead of take public transportation and that I am not legally allowed to drink in the US... They all began at like 15 so I am hoping I can survive going to the clubs with them. 

Tonight we are going to Lan Kwai Fong (spelling???) on Hong Kong Island to go clubbing! Even though i am of age here, t will still be weird to go out! Its lady's night tonight so I will drink for free! you cant get much better than that haha... we take the subway for like a half hour then a ferry to get there, and a cab home. I probably wont be home til like 5am so this is new for me unlike at school where parties die down around 2... I am excited to go and see this famous night life I have heard so much about! The night life was even written about it Nylon Magazine! Thats it for now! 

miss you all terribly

much love

coldd... brrrrr

So contrary to my belief that my southern california clothes would be great for the humid and hot Hong Kong, its really COLD here at night...I wear sweats and socks and a sweatshirt to bed and curl up under my one cover they provided me... i need to go get a big blanket asap! And a big coat as well... and my roommate from Hong Kong says it will get colder than this next month! I want my warm weather back... I am going to horse-races in an hour with a big group to watch the races and bet on the horses... Im sure it will be great and I will bring 2 sweatshirts to be safe! I'll let you all know how the races went! wish me luck! miss you all

 much love :)

Crazy City!

I apologize ahead of time for this post because it will be very choppy... 

I do not recommend the flight whatsoever... it was 14 very long hours of trying to sleep and not being able to.. but the good news was that i got here safely! Once i got out of the plane, i was so overwhelmed by the airport because it has a big open area for people to come pick you up and i was supposed to find a friend in all that mess of people... and hour later we found each other and we set on our way to School... we go in a taxi with a man who didn't speak english (perfectly normal for cab drivers) and lucky handed him a sheet with the school name written in cantonese... he couldn't find our dorms so he stopped a kid walking on campus and had him get in the taxi with us to tell him the way to the dorms... I was totally exhausted by the time we got there so I did a little unpacking and then passed out...

The next day consisted of orientation which was actually only a welcome and a brief overview of how to get classes, add and drop them, and what we needed to do on monday... needless to say it was not informative like orientation at USC... We then had a meeting to see what classes we were signed up for but of course the website didn't work so that wasn't too successful either...  Later 25 of us international students went to Hong Kong island to get dinner and watch the light show... the little restaurants fought over us to get us to come eat at their restaurant and tried bribing us with discounts as well... we settled for a Thai and Vietnamese food place.. I pick out a dish seemingly safe from sea food and not too crazy to try for the first real meal in Hong Kong... 

The next day we had a whole day to do whatever we wanted to a friend and i went to Sha Tin (one bus and 2 subway stops away) and walked around for a little bit. We then went to the Temple of 1,000 (or 10,000???) Buddhas which we only had to climb 400 stairs for :/ before that when we thought we were going there we climbed the stairs (and used the escalators) to the Pu Fook cemetery... we were wondering where all the buddhas were... we got plenty of confused stares as families were picking out sites and we were strolling around taking pictures haha.. the Temple though was amazing... there were tons of life size buddhas in different poses as we walked up the steps to the main building and pagoda at the top... the building had like 12,500 little buddhas (the temple name really doesn't make sense) basically comprising the walls along with an area to pray at in the middle... When the people prayed they would hold up burning incense and leave it in little sand boxes when they were finished... once we made the trek back down the stairs we saw IKEA conveniently located around the corner of the entrance to the temple... I was able to pick up some necessities while being herded through the isles like cattle... 

also conveniently located was the 8 story mall that opens into the subway station where i was able to get a blow dryer and straightener.. when i finally found an electronic store that i thought would sell the blow dryer, i asked the employee where to find them since i would never see them with the crowds in the store.. he didn't understand what i was talking about for a while until it clicked when he then put his hand up to his head and made a whoosh sound like a blow dryer does... haha

Today was the first day of school and it was actually pretty good... i had one international student in my first class and 5 in my second so i was not alone... the teachers' english is still hard to understand so i am hoping it will get easier... the campus is on a hill and of course my dorm are on the bottom of the hill so once again there are more stairs to climb and hills too... campus is huge but people are very friendly and helpful when i stop them to ask for directions (who would have thought i would get lost everywhere in hong kong too)... typically the first person i ask recruits a friend who speaks better english than him/her to tell me how to get there and then they congratulate their friend on this good english which is cute... 

I miss all of you and can't wait to hear about all your days for those of you going abroad... its quite an experience... 

much love

in 13 hours I will be at the airport!!!

Hi all! 

So its the day before I am getting really nervous, but excited too! My flight leaves at 720 am and I have one layover and then i will be in Hong Kong on January second at like 7pm... My bag is wayy over the weight allowance so I will have to figure that out before I leave... I'm a huge over-packer... I can't wait til i get to school and then I will be a lot less nervous and a lot more excited!  I will get a Chinese roommate when i get there so i hope she is nice! I am living in international dorms with over 150 other international students so it should be a blast! I cant wait to post pictures to show  where I live and all around campus and the city! 

Happy early New Years to you!!!

-c