Hong Kong weather

I've been saying how humid it is here, but to give you a better idea this is what the weather looks like on a normal day. It's always very cloudy and humid. So humid, that when I go to the water fountain in the hallway to fill up my water bottle, it gets covered in a layer of dew.

Granted I was looking out through a window, so it's brighter than in the picture, but it's still very humid.

Nan Lian Garden

Saturday we decided to visit a local garden. Although unlike any other garden I've seen there weren't many flowers. Just bushes, trees, pagodas, and waterfalls.

The garden is basically in the middle of the city under a freeway, but it was surprisingly quiet. There was also a Buddhist temple in it as well, but I wasn't able to get any pictures of it because photography wasn't allowed.

The weather that day was even more hot and humid than usual, so we were all exhausted afterwards.

But overall it was a lot of fun, and I did get a few good photos. I chose these three because they're my favorites.

Lots to talk about

Sorry it's been so long since my last post, but now that classes have started it's getting more and more hectic. I promise I'll get better at posting regularly. But now that classes have started I'll make sure to post at least once a week.

But in the meantime I have a good bit to talk about.

Three days ago we took a tour of Shatin, a city near the university. It's known for having lots of malls and shopping centers. It's absolutely gigantic. Not only is it about seven stories tall, but there are other malls in the mall. You can find anything you'd ever need there not to mention it costs $4 HK (about fifty US cents). To make things easier I purchased an Octopus Card (pictured above). You can use it in Hong Kong as sort of a prepaid card for using the subway, taxis, and even certain stores take Octopus Cards as payment options.

But of course the relaxing days had to come to an end as classes started this week. Three hours of Mandarin in the morning, and two more in the afternoon with a two hour break in between. My first class is extremely difficult, but I know it'll help me learn more characters and words. It gets even tougher when we have to do our homework in the evening since it's all in Chinese, even the instructions. The first night everyone was working on the homework together and we had no idea what to do.

My afternoon class doesn't have as much new vocabulary, but it's more focused on speaking. The teachers only speak Chinese during class, so it's definitely hard to understand them sometimes. But in the long run it will benefit me since the best way to learn a language is to immerse yourself in it.

Again I want to apologize for not posting in a while, and sorry for not having any pictures of Shatin. I never have my camera when I really need it. But next time I go I'll be sure to bring my camera for pictures.

And if you read what I posted on Facebook, I had a very interesting experience at breakfast today. They had French Toast on the menu, so I ordered it wondering how different it would be from the French Toast back at home. It turns out in Hong Kong French Toast is a deep-fried Peanut Butter sandwich. I think I'll stick to regular toast and butter from now on.

Chinese calligraphy

Today we met some of the Chinese IBCE students and had lunch together at the Orchid lounge. The food was delicious, especially the eggplant and their mango dessert.

Then they taught us a bit about Chinese calligraphy and we practiced writing our names in Chinese (picture in the middle). We also learned how to write the schools name in Chinese characters as well (pictured on left). As a souvenir they let us keep our writing brushes (or as they are called in Mandarin, maobi) as well as the ink cartridge.

As for my Chinese name, it's pronounced Ka-mei-rou and you read it from

My dorm

I realized that I haven't posted any pictures of my dorm, so I figured that I would. As you can see, the mattress is rather thin. It's about as wide as three fingers. Also you can see there's a fan on the roof. Here you have to pay to use the AC, but luckily we're getting free AC for now. The backup plan is the fan on the roof.

Other than that the room is pretty much identical to any dorm you'd see in the States. I know my desk is messy, but I haven't really gotten it organized yet. At least I unpacked my suitcases so that they aren't in the middle of the room anymore.

My first day

After 20 hours in the air and 9 hours waiting in airports, I finally made it to Hong Kong. Unfortunately, it's very foggy and humid so I wasn't able to take any good photos. Today we took a tour of the campus, met with the people at the language center, and were rewarded with a surprise test to see how much Mandarin we knew.

Hopefully the weather improves tomorrow so I can take some decent photos.

Leave tomorrow

I head out tomorrow for Hong Kong. I will use this to blog about everything that happens.