Almost Halfway There

Sorry for not posting in a while. We had a week-long break where I met up with my parents and visited Taiwan, the Philippines, and Japan! Now back to the show.

The last few weeks were filled with basic school things. Go to class, study, eat, sleep, and repeat. I did, however, get to explore some more of the island with my roommate and a couple other exchange students. Whampoa is a pretty cool area with some ritzier places and great spots to hang out. The MTR (Metro) makes it so much easier to get around than driving and it’s something I am going to miss.

Regarding school, I finally had my first quiz of the semester during week 5. It was in Chinese and it went fairly well. It’s very strange to me to not have tests or quizzes, but with the final being 50% of your grade and group projects being up to 35%, what can you expect? My advice is that even though there are no test, make sure to study along with the class. This will make it much easier when the time comes.

That’s all for now! I’ll leave you with some pictures!

Sure I’ll go to Dinner (Week 2)

First let me clarify, yes this is my third week in Hong Kong, however, this is the second week of class. 🙂

This week was a long week. I basically had a sinus infection all week which made this week go that much longer. Classes were pretty good; the classes here all have a large project so we selected our groups this week. One thing to note was that most classes have little homework, so no “mylabsplus” or “connect”. The last comment on the classes for the week is to wait to buy books until this week as you may not need some.

On to daily life here at CityU.

The school has a lot of societies and resident hall events. This week we had the Resident Hall basketball competition which was fun because one of my new friends made the team. There was also a dance competition, where many of the groups had a dance style similar to K-Pop. There is a photography competition coming up so I’m figuring out how to enter that.

The weirdest situation I have been in so far has to go to the random dinner to which I got invited to. I had taken the MTR to Hong Kong island to eat and take pictures around the city. I ran into this cool park which had abstract light-up displays and thought that it would make a great photo-op. As I was taking pictures, this group of 30 something-year-old bankers noticed my camera and asked me to take a picture of them – although with their cellphone. After that, they invited me to dinner and we talked a bit about what I was doing here and how long I was going to be here. They took me to a Japanese restaurant where they bought me a drink and we ate. I got their contacts and we are going to get together after the Chinese New Year break.

Sorry for the short post, I am sick, hopefully, will be better next week.

Here are the photos of the week!

One Week Down

I wasn’t quite sure what to expect for my first week of class. I learned that there are what are called tutorials, what we call SI, separate from many of the classes. Although at CityU, they count as credit hours! My marketing class, for example, had two hours on Monday and then an hour of tutorial on Tuesday. These tutorials are just supplements or classes that review the material. The other information I can share is that you should wait to buy the books until after the first class. One teacher said the book store was out so to see if you can download it off the web from a link. The last thing I can share from this week is that most of my classes are lectures in a single session, so expect the first day to be a “real” class with material covered.

During the week I got to explore some more. I recommend that you explore as much as possible until you get busy, because when classes start it will be a little harder. I visited Victoria Pier, and a few markets. The Goldfish Market was a little underwhelming, however, the bird garden was very cool. An elderly man let me take his picture and even put some birds on my hand, although I didn’t get a picture of that. The Pier had a fantastic view at night although it is much better if you go after a sunny day when its clear due to the smog making it much less visible at night.

If you’re like me, you love breakfast food. I recommend AC2 canteen. It’s in the Li Dak Sum Yip Yio Chin Academic Building. You can buy scrambled eggs, potatoes, toast, and a cup of hot coffee or tea for $16hk. If you’re a bit hungrier for $20hk you can get three main items. This is a great price and if you like American style breakfast to start out with, this is a great option.

Move In!

I arrived the night before the first available move-in date option, which I highly recommend so that you can be well-rested the next day. I stayed at a hotel near the airport; however, no amount of rest could have prepared me for the following week. I was lucky enough to get a dorm room in the lottery this semester so this is how it was for me — your mileage may vary if you are off campus. On Monday I was picked up at the airport by a CityU shuttle and taken to the University. The bus ride wasn’t too long and honestly, it was great to talk to the other exchange students. Looking back on it, the students I met on the shuttle were many of the people I hung out with that first week. Once arriving at the University, we were checked in, and we went to our dorms where we quickly realized we had no idea what to do next. Given our “completely lost” status and the fact we were the only students on campus, we met up to try to figure out what to do. I believe it was the first or second day when there was a welcome session in the Yeung Kin Man Academic Building. At this session, we met the exchange student helpers and received the paperwork to get our student ID’s. Later that day with that same group of helpers, we went on a trek to IKEA to get things we needed for our dorms.  This was good as another night without a pillow was going to wreck my neck! Personally, I felt IKEA was a pain and I probably could have found things cheaper elsewhere, but hey, they gave me free travel to and from the store. For the rest of the week, I followed the schedule sent to me by Jasmine Wong which gave me time slots and places I needed to be that week. This schedule was significantly more structured than the first day’s schedule. One key point is that once you get your student ID you can apply for a student Octopus Card. The student card gives you half off most MTR (Metro) rides. The Octopus Card is used for payment for the metro, food, and a bunch of other places. You will need a 50mm by 40mm picture so if you can bring that from home it makes life easier than trying to find a print shop in Hong Kong. In addition, in the early days, it’s easiest if you have Hong Kong currency. I ordered some from my bank before I went which I highly recommend.

How did I spend my free time you might ask? I spent a good chunk of time running around completing this form or getting this stamp, but I did get to explore and handle some personal stuff too. Make note, the dorm rooms DO NOT HAVE WIFI. You must buy a router, I recommend going to the Sham Shui Po Markets, but if that is not possible go to Fortress in Festival Walk. Routers are not technically supported, but all students have them and they run about $200 HK. My technical how-to advice:

You set routers up by doing the router “quick set-up”, and then on the router set-up web page, you need to find the tab that allows you to clone the MAC address of your computer to the router. Then in Google type CityU Hong Kong Internet on your phone or go to the WIFI room (common room) and fill out the “Connection in Residence” form after logging in with your EID and password. You fill it out with that cloned MAC address and chose the side of the room (when you face the window) that the router is plugged in via ethernet. For the type and OS pick “other.” Give it 1-6 hours and in theory, it should work… it’s not an exact science.

Worst case try to find someone who is in the residence hall already who has it set up to help you, or get your Floor Tutor (their version of an RA) to help you. The method stated was how I got mine to work.

When I wasn’t dealing with technology issues, I was hanging out with other exchange students. Everyone uses Whatsapp here so make sure to download that and get your family and friends to as well (although if you have an unlocked phone and plan to get a sim card like I did, you may want to wait to set it up until you have that card so you can do a phone verification in case you have to restart your phone for whatever reason.) I met students from all over and it was really interesting to see how others dealt with the situation of being slightly lost. One thing we made sure to do was to travel with someone so that if you get lost, you’re at least lost together. Groups of us would go to the markets or to get food and that made things less lonely and you felt like you had a better idea about everything. Basically, the first week everyone went out every night. One place called Mr. Wong’s was very popular due to the cheap unlimited food and beer. Many of the other exchange students had a great time there; it wasn’t my kind of place, but I could see how it would be a fun bonding experience.

My advise for now is to bring Cash and and try to befriend the exchange students! Those are the best things I did this first week. See you next week!