Getting Oriented

We recently had our Exchange Student Orientation and our Institute of Textiles and Clothing Orientation.  We met lots of exchange students at both, were toured around the facilities, and had lunch with some of our new classmates!  After the exchange orientation we had our first evening out to Lan Kwai Fong with some Danish and Norwegian students.  The bars (clubs) were very suave and the dancing was definitely extreme. We came home "early" at 2:30am and the rest of the crew got home around 6am. Crazy. The next day was the ITC orientation for exchange students.  The ITC program sounds amazing.  The design studios look like Project Runway status and they have similar weaving, knitting, and dyeing labs to COT except smaller. They showed us a video of the Institute on a floor to ceiling, 180 degree theater screen and then showed us to the rest of the facilities.  The other students we met in ITC are from Australia, Germany, Sweden, and the UK.

The Theater at ITC

After eating lunch with the design crew from RMIT in Australia we decided to continue exploring the city and walk down to the Harbour.  On the way we took a footbridge to a neat little row of shops including a delicious bakery that reminded me of Italy.  We split a sweet bun and continued weaving our way through the city in the general direction of the water, we thought.

Delicious Bakery

Eventually we got to the water and stumbled upon this neat little open park space directly on the water.  From here we used a footbridge to cross the large highway of traffic and strolled along the Harbour until we made our way up to the famous Star Ferry. Along the way we passed the Avenue of Stars and saw Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan's handprints.

Park on the edge of the harbour

On the way back we stopped at a chinese restaurant and I ordered cooked vegetables with nice noodles.  Nothing crazy, but delicious!

In front of Hong Kong Island

WAD on the Harbour

The rest of the day was pretty calm so we would be ready for the weekend.

Today, Saturday, we got lunch at the old canteen on campus, steamed rice with tomato and egg, and then went to meet the exchange group for a city tour.  We were luckily on a bus or else it would have been 5 hours walking in the rain.  Here are some facts our tour guide, Timothy, told us.  Hong Kong has a ratio of three guys to one girl.  The name of Hong Kong came from fragrant garden because there used to be many incense factories in HK.  Hong Kong only taxes three things, gasoline because they do not promote hurting the environment, and tobacco and alcohol because they are bad for your body.  First we drove to the Chi Lin Nunnery.  The overcast sky actually help set the mood at the nunnery with the cooler weather and the amazingly calm, monk singing type, music.  We could walk around the nunnery and see the different areas they had set up for prayer and reflection.  

Right inside the Nunnery

After this we drove in the rain to Stanley Market which is known by tourists as a great market to see, yet is not the best price or the most authentic.  The drive up was on a cliff overlooking the water, reminding me of the drive into Sorrento, and the view was amazing.  We were able to walk through the market, visit the Murray House, which is a colonial architecture style building with fancy modern restaurants inside, and even relax on the beach for a few minutes before heading back to the coach.  

Sneakily taking a picture

As we got off the bus, Debbie's buddy, Carmel, came up to us to ask if we wanted to go with her to eat dinner. Yes please! We went to the Metropolis Mall, that we have walked by everyday in the tunnel and had no idea that it was three stories of indoor restaurants and shops, and went to a fusion restaurant as she called it.  Debbie and I split fried japanese style dumplings, fried rice with seafood and pineapple, and I got a kiwi, apple, pear, and ginger fruit juice.  It was really interesting talking to Carmel and asking her more about learning English and getting her to help us with Cantonese phrases.  We are now attempting to get up the energy for an evening out!

Thought this was an interesting concept

On the rocks at Stanley Beach

Arrival

View from our dorm room

We finally made it after a long 16 hour flight! You would imagine that the flight would have been painful, uncomfortable, and obnoxiously long, but it really wasn't too bad.  5 movies (including The Last Song!), 3 meals, and a few hours of sleeping later we got off the airplane to meet Debbie's HK buddy, Carmel. She took us on the bus into Kowloon where school is located. There we met my HK buddy, Tracy. (Yes they go by english names here). We got checked in to our dorm rooms, Debbie and I are "toilet mates" and Andrew is a floor above us, and we threw our stuff down. From there our buddies took us to buy cereal, water, and A sheet, they sell them separately here so we all slept with one fitted sheet and a pillow last night. Our buddies are great! We would have been completely lost without them. We were starving and walked around trying to food and I regret saying that we ate at McDonalds.  I do not even eat there in the US so it was devastating to have that as our first meal here, but it did still have HK flair.

The Happy Meal gifts at HK McDonalds

That was pretty much the extent of our evening and we actually got a few hours of sleep before waking up this morning. It has been busy so far. We went to a "Hong Kong Culture and Cantonese Corner" class that our buddies told us about and it was AWESOME. They taught us a bit about the HK culture and everyday lifestyle and then we broke up into groups and learned some basic words in Cantonese.  The highlight of the event though, was meeting other exchange students. Our group had kids from Korea, Taiwan, Sweden, and Germany. Phonetically, these are some of the words we learned. Feel free to try them out loud at work or in a public place.

Thank you = mm goi
You're welcome = m sai ha hey
Excuse me = m ho yi si
Bye bye = baai baai

Our group in the Cantonese activity

From here one of the current HK students and his friends from Korea took us to the "Canteen" in the student hall for a quick lunch.  We had steamed rice with spare rib and pumpkin. Pretty good. After this we had another long journey with our buddies, again, amazing.  They took us on a tour of PolyU campus which is across the footbridge from the residence halls to show us the important buildings AND they treated us to lunch at the Chinese restaurant on campus where we mainly got Dim Sum and a delicious mango pudding. Then they took us to get even more necessities like toilet paper, a fan, and shower shoes. We went to a store called Jusco that was a mix between Dollar General, Walmart, and an extremely large department store with produce. Slightly stressful, but we made it out alive. Tonight we plan on going bowling and maybe out for drinks so we'll see how that goes. And we just met a girl from Australia that said there are 3 other students here that go to RMIT (where we are going next), so we are going out for drinks with them on Friday! A few pictures to leave you with.

Dim Sum with the buddies

Dried seafood mainly. Used to make Chinese soup. (For you Dad)

Our School

My address at school in case you need it:
Whitney Medlin Room 1564
Polytechnic University Student Halls of Residence 1
Hung Lai Road, Hung Hom, Kowloon, Hong Kong

Getting Ready

Hey Everyone!

Welcome to World Wide Whitney. Cheesy, I know. To fill people in that do not know, I will be traveling abroad to Kowloon, Hong Kong as part of my Master of Textiles Program through NC State.  Two other students will be traveling alongside me, Andrew Hicks and Debbie Lambeth.  We were all in textiles undergrad together and Phi Psi Fraternity so we are very excited to be spending the next year and half with each other!  After the Hong Kong leg, we will all travel to Melbourne, Australia for the Spring semester.  Throughout the course of our study abroad time we will be taking classes on textiles and fashion and visiting different textile companies around the globe to learn about their individual supply chain strategies. I hope you enjoy keeping up with the blog and if anyone needs my Skype name, it is pretty simple as wjmedlin.

-Whit