香港 (Hong Kong), Part I

So, considering the fact that we are approaching an entire year since I first started my world travels, I should probably start writing all of these updates. Surprisingly, I have a very good memory of my first couple days in Hong Kong. I'm going to edit it so it's alarmingly positive, which is not the entire truth of the trip--I got frustrated with a lot of the people by the end of my 5-6 weeks.

So, I left for Hong Kong out of Newark to go to a Georgetown MSB program. It was coordinated by the person in charge of International Business, which ironically I am no longer majoring in. The premise of the program was that we'd take strategic management and international marketing and compliment everything with site visits throughout Hong Kong, wrapping up with 5 days in southern China seeing factories and learning how economic conditions have developed and changed. It was a very interesting program and I feel like I know much more than anyone who just read these things from a book.

There were 5 other people on my flight, so when we got into our hotel, we all decided to go to dinner at the restaurant next door. It was our first foray into ordering off of a menu written in Chinese and Engrish--luckily I knew a lot of kanji for food so I could double check everything. We had someone deathly allergic to fish in our group, and so I remember showing him the character for fish, because at that point I was the person with the most Chinese knowledge...haha. Luckily that changed quickly.

I felt very conscious that I didn't speak the language, because it was the first time I had been somewhere I had no knowledge of the language (I had only been to France and England before). So, things took a while to get used to, I learned to speak in simple English, and to try to be as nice as I could as the American. Dinner was good, if greasy, and we proceeded to collapse from tiredness afterwards (16 hour flight, 12 hour time difference=it was about 9 pm HK, 9 am EST).

Luckily, I managed to stay asleep until about 6:30, and then I forced myself back to sleep after an hour until 9. After that, it was time to go exploring. The area we were staying in was called Ma On Shan, although when you heard it pronounced in Cantonese it sounded more like Ma On San. Eventually, when I have all of my pictures which are on an external hard drive by now, I'll put up a picture of the characters, but the ones I recognized were 山, which means mountain, and 馬, which means horse. Speaking of 山, one of the first things that was completely different from what I expected was the fact that Hong Kong is a mixture of small mountains/hills and water. While I should have expected the water since it IS a port, the mountains and hills really caught me off guard. Taking the MCR and KCR (trains) and looking out the window, you'd see high rise apartment buildings that hold the 8 million or so residents mixed with mountains and gorgeous scenery. Our hotel was on a canal, and when the sun finally came out (it rained the first whole week!) it was gorgeous. Again, I have pictures. They ARE on Facebook, though.

On our first day, we went down to Central, which is about what it sounds like it would be--the middle of the financial district and the busier part of town, complete with higher rent, luxury shops, and lots and lots of malls. HK tends to be hot and humid, and apparently the way they dealt with that was to build malls that literally connect everything--you can make significant progress across the city spending minimal time outside. We also checked out the harbour, which is where the gorgeous/famous skyline is. There are also museums which we sadly didn't make it to. Regardless, we spent a nice day learning how to get around, eating good food, and getting to know each other. By that time, my two roommates weren't there.

Next installment! Marian and Zoraida, classes, and a visit to the Big Buddha.