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