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