The Peak and Buddha

Hey, everyone! I'm officially in China now. We moved into our dorms and are getting settled in. I had a little trouble setting up my internet, but now it's working great! (it's in my room too! so I don't have to go anywhere!) So back to where I left off, before we left Hong Kong...

So we went to an international church on Sunday. They had services in English, so it wasn't hard to understand.

It was really nice, the pastor was from Canada. After church was over we went to dinner, but before we left the church it started raining like a flash flood. It was awesome! The workers at the hotel (where the church was held) had to put up blocks to keep the rain from flooding it, cause it was coming up several inches already. :)

We went to dinner, even though it was raining off and on. It was funny though because it was raining so hard and thickly that even if we did have an umbrella it would soak through. So we were all getting wet anyway. We went to dinner and I ordered this soup that turned out tasting really gross, so everyone shared with me a little of theirs. After dinner we went to a history museum. It was pretty cool, they started out talking about how the land was formed and went all the way to where they are today. It wasn't that exciting to me, but I know some of you would have enjoyed it. Those pictures are on my Face-book.

On Monday, we had a morning class but the afternoon was free. So the whole group decided to go to Victoria's Peak. We took the tram to the metropolis, which was awesome in itself. We saw several really famous buildings, like the one that was used in Mission Impossible 3 and another one that was supposedly in The Dark Knight (not so sure about that one...). Those pictures are on Facebook also. After that we had to take a bus up to the peak. We had tried to plan it so that we got there at sunset, and it actually turned out really well. We got up to the peak, which had the most English we had seen in a while, since it was very much a tourist site. After we got up to the top it was really awesome.

We stayed up there until after dark, and they have a light show every night at 8. It was pretty cool, but I didn't manage to catch it on camera. Here is a night view...

It was really pretty.

On Tuesday, we all decided to go up and see another tourist attraction, the big Buddha. That was another tram and bus ride up a windy road. It was another touristy site, but there were a lot more Chinese than there were tourist. It was pretty cool, there were a lot of really interesting things that we got to see about the Buddhist religion.

It was really beautiful, but it was a lot of stairs. I'll try and post more pictures of that on Facebook.

On Wednesday we are going to Xiamen to move into our University dorms. I'll post again later. Talk to you later!

Hong Kong

We went downtown for dinner yesterday and ate at a little street restaurant. It was really good. I got fried noodles. It was funny because they didn’t speak English and we had to figure out what they were asking. Luckily they had an English menu before. We had to ask for chopsticks because they gave us forks first. I’m used to chopsticks now, though I’m still not very good at eating with them, but using a fork would be weird to me.

After that we went to the street market and walked around and some of us shopped. I don’t know if I’m ready to buy anything yet because I heard that they jack up the prices because it’s a tourist city. So we’ve been told that in Xiamen it will be cheaper. 

There is a common thing that a lot of the locals do is to buy umbrellas that are UV protectors. I’m thinking about getting one. Kind of like parasols. It’s really interesting how tall and thin their building are. It makes me feel like I come from a small town. This is a view from the field in the camp that we are staying at.

The white buildings in between are public housing and the pinkish ones are private. It’s really humid here, and almost constantly foggy or smoggy, probably both.

Here are some pictures that I haven’t shown you yet…

This is the classroom that we get while we are at the camp in Hong Kong. The classes that we are taking is just survival Chinese and some history about religions in China.

We ride the trains to get to downtown Kowloon and we go to the “Ladies Market” (which is that market that I showed you above) and the bigger section of the city.

There are lots of mountains around the city and TONS of greenery! I’m lovin’ it! It’s so beautiful, though it is rather wet outside all the time. It feels like we are in a sauna whenever we go outside.

So far...

After we left from the airport, we got to our housing situation while we are in Hong Kong. We are staying at the YMCA camp in little houses they call bungalows. There are about 14 of us in the CSP group, I think about 9 girls and 8 guys. They tried to keep us awake by keeping us busy for the rest of the day, so they had a few things planned. We had lunch at the camp that was really good. We all had to use chopsticks, and learn their table manners. One of which is that if you don't like something in your food, you spit it on the table. And from there it and anything else will be cleaned up by the cleaning crew. If you clean up after yourself you are considered rude because you are taking their job. After lunch we had a get together meeting that explained what we were going to do afterwards and gave us a kind of general overview schedule for the week that we are here. Saturday gets to be a free day that we get to do anything we want to do. I'm thinking about going up to this place where you can look out onto the city and ride gondela's all the way up there. So anyways, after the meeting we took the train to downtown to the shopping district to look around. By then it was about 3 or 4 am to my inner clock and I wasn't all that excited to be walking around. We all split up into our separate groups and walked around the city. My group went to the botanical gardens and walked around. We all met up at a Starbucks (and yes, as a matter of fact they do have them on every street corner. not as bad as Seattle though) and went to the wet market that is in Ma On Shan (where the camp is) and got dinner. I only had a croissont from a bakery in the market because I wasn't feeling very hungry. I actually got the croissont for breakfast, and got some soup for lunch but I ended up switching them. Hong Kong uses their own currency that is different from China because they used to be separate. They call them Hong Kong dollars and it's about 1-7 ratio to American dollars. It makes it a little weird when you are buying a can of soda for 7 dollars. When we got back we were supposed to eat dinner and then we could either go to sleep or try and stay awake. After eating my dinner, I decided I was going to read for a little bit but in the end my sleep ran out and I was unable to stay awake. It was around 7 pm. It was actually kind of funny cause I fell asleep almost instantly after just laying my head down for a second. I wasn't expecting to go to bed either and I think I was still in my clothes. I woke up about 2 hours later and realized enough to clear off my bed and get ready like normal.

This morning was weird in the fact that I woke up at 8 am (highly unusual for me). In the morning we had a class that taught us a little about the history of the language, and we ate lunch and then we had a little meeting that let us introduce ourselves and learn about the other people of the group. We talked more about what was in store for us and went over the rules one more time before we make any mistakes. Jet lag is still here. It's strange getting tired at three in the afternoon. But then I remember that it's actually after midnight for me at home. Later we are going to the wet market again to get dinner and breakfast since the camp only provides lunch. Hopefully tonight I can stay awake a little later than 7. I miss home but I'm having lots of fun here! Love you guys!

I'm here!

I finally left yesterday from Seattle, and after a long stop in LAX I made my way to China. I'm here, I'm tired. We're sitting in the airport and I keep thinking that it's evening, but it's actually really early in the morning. Tuesday just vanished. We left on Monday, or really Tuesday at 1am, and we arrive really early on Wednesday. It was a long flight, but it didn't seem that bad because I slept for most of the first half of the 13.5 hour flight. Also because they had a personal TV that you could play a selection of movies on. I watched Remember Me, Prince of Persia, and Star Trek. Nothing really eventful happened on the flight. We got here, went through immigration, and we are now sitting in the terminal waiting area. We met the director of the program and we are going to try and stay awake for the rest of the day till evening. The airport still looks pretty home-like, or rather anywhere-like so I don't really feel like I'm that far from home yet. I'll probably put another post on as I get to know what I'm doing more. Talk to you later!