Arrival
After 6 hours across the USA and 14 hours across the Pacific, I finally arrived in Hong Kong!
This entry is going to be rather short as I am in desperate need of a jet lag-induced nap right now.
In no particular order, these are some random things I have notice since arriving here on Monday night:
There's more but I'm tired and want to get to photos. Here is the view from the first floor of the dorm building I'm temporarily lodged at:
Close up of the harbor view:
I'm so glad this dorm is high up and not in the Central area. I spent 2 hours running around the downtown Central/Admiralty areas and was gasping for breath by the end as my lungs were overpowered by the smog.
This didn't come out as well as I wanted it to, but:
It's a terraced cemetery which I thought looked really cool. When I first saw it (the morning after I arrived), it took me a second to figure out what it was. It didn't show up in any of the photos, but there is a hospital to one side of it. I am sure that the patients enjoy the view of the cemetery every bit as much as I do. [Sidenote...cemetAry or cemetEry? Too lazy to spellcheck.] Supposedly this dorm and the surrounding campus buildings were built here because land was cheap. No one wanted to be near the cemetery. There are other burial places on these hills, or at least that's what I think they are. As I was taking the bus back here today, I saw these wonderful stone shrines set into the steep hills. It's amazing because you'd never see such beautiful and culturally rich things as these in a mainland China city.
I LOVE these:
I got addicted to them when I was in China 2 years ago. A kid came into Chinese class at Tsinghua with one and asked if I'd tried them because they were the tastiest thing ever. He was pretty much right. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mangosteen They open if you just squeeze them, and look like cloves of garlic inside except without skins and they're squishy and sweet and basically delicious! I had no idea they were called mangosteens until today.
We need more cute, fortified, sugar - not high fructose corn syrup - sweetened fruit drinks in the US. Yes...more cute...we definitely need more cute...
Fingers crossed that I'll find a good apartment in the next few days!
This entry is going to be rather short as I am in desperate need of a jet lag-induced nap right now.
In no particular order, these are some random things I have notice since arriving here on Monday night:
- The cars drive on the left - This makes crossing the street very tricky as I am constantly confused as to which way to look for cars. Luckily, many busy intersections have "Look Left" or "Look Right" signs.
- Everything is in English - Well, at least all the signs are. The people, on the other hand, do not all speak English. And I don't speak Cantonese, although everyone assumes I do because I look Asian.
- People don't like the ground level - There are way too many above ground pedestrian bridges and underground passages, at least in the city centre areas. I spent a wonderfully humid and sweaty 40 minutes today trying to navigate the numerous bridges to an office building that would've taken me a 5 minute on ground walk to get to, but instead took me 8x as long as I tried to figure out the maze of bridges and passages.
- Escalators are safer - My friend Jayson pointed this out to me. Escalators in Hong Kong always level out at the end, so you end up travelling flat before you step off, much better than having to jump off the last step.
- Ah, to be back in Ol' Blighty! - I'm so nostalgic and overwhelmed by the concentration of British things here. My favorite so far has been Ribena on sale in grocery stores, a Marks and Spencers store, and double decker buses.
There's more but I'm tired and want to get to photos. Here is the view from the first floor of the dorm building I'm temporarily lodged at:
Close up of the harbor view:
I'm so glad this dorm is high up and not in the Central area. I spent 2 hours running around the downtown Central/Admiralty areas and was gasping for breath by the end as my lungs were overpowered by the smog.
This didn't come out as well as I wanted it to, but:
It's a terraced cemetery which I thought looked really cool. When I first saw it (the morning after I arrived), it took me a second to figure out what it was. It didn't show up in any of the photos, but there is a hospital to one side of it. I am sure that the patients enjoy the view of the cemetery every bit as much as I do. [Sidenote...cemetAry or cemetEry? Too lazy to spellcheck.] Supposedly this dorm and the surrounding campus buildings were built here because land was cheap. No one wanted to be near the cemetery. There are other burial places on these hills, or at least that's what I think they are. As I was taking the bus back here today, I saw these wonderful stone shrines set into the steep hills. It's amazing because you'd never see such beautiful and culturally rich things as these in a mainland China city.
I LOVE these:
I got addicted to them when I was in China 2 years ago. A kid came into Chinese class at Tsinghua with one and asked if I'd tried them because they were the tastiest thing ever. He was pretty much right. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mangosteen They open if you just squeeze them, and look like cloves of garlic inside except without skins and they're squishy and sweet and basically delicious! I had no idea they were called mangosteens until today.
We need more cute, fortified, sugar - not high fructose corn syrup - sweetened fruit drinks in the US. Yes...more cute...we definitely need more cute...
Fingers crossed that I'll find a good apartment in the next few days!