Tuesday started our New Student Orientation where we were seperated into groups with both local and nonlocal (only three of us in my group) students. On the first day, we took a tour of the library, which is really nice, and attended some other extremely boring talks! The local students in my group were super, super friendly, and a few spoke English very well. I think some locals aren't very confident with their English speaking skills, so many shy away from doing so. One of the big things at Lingnan is a cheering competition between all of the hostels. Each hostel has a few of their own unique cheers & everyone would scream them at all of the orientation activities. I tried to join in, but since I don't speak Cantonese, I basically just clapped along!
*Here is a video of the local students cheering! It was much louder in person!
One night during orientation, my group went to get dessert at some restaurant in the middle of nowhere. I had no idea what to get, so I just told one of the locals to order for me. I ended up sharing this fruit dish with white aloe chunks with some group mates. The aloe chunks look weird, but they actually taste very good with the fruit. The fruit here is much more fresh than the fruit in the US.
I'm very glad that orientation is over as the days were very long & we basically had no free time to ourselves! Thursday night, about 30 exchange students went to Lan Kwai Fong in Central Hong Kong for Ladies Night. It was a really fun time & nice that us ladies didn't have to pay for any drinks :) One of the bars we went to was a Russian ice bar - it was quite chilly, but they had big furry coats you could put on to ease the coldness.
Today, I went to Ocean Park with my friends Iris and Anna from the United States. The park is located right in the middle of a mountain & there's a few rollercoasters & animal exhibits. The animals weren't out in their exhibits, which was kind of depressing, but I got to see some huge stringrays, turtles, goldfish with HUGE eyes, and a red panda :) You could also take a cable car to get from one side of the park to the other, which provided us with a great view of the harbor & a nice sit from walking around everywhere.
I'm looking forward to starting classes on Wednesday as I'm interested in seeing how they work here. I assume that my classes will have the same structure as Butler, but I really don't know what to expect! Another thing I've noticed here is how sanitary people are. If they feel a little sick, they will wear a face mask to avoid passing along germs to others. During the exchange orientation, we were told that if you cough & are not wearing a face mask, people will look at you weird thinking about why you don't have a face mask on! I better remember to not cough in public!
I think I'm adapting to the food a little bit better. There is a really cool sushi bar in the town center, Tuen Mun, and all of the sushi comes out on a revolving line & you just choose what you want! The other day I tried the root of lotus vegetable, which was actually quite good. It's a little tough being a vegetarian here because even if you think something won't have meat in it, it will. It's best to have a waitress/waitor that can speak English, which most do. I also can't believe that I've been here for a week and two days already - time has really flown by & I expect the days to go by even faster as time goes on!
Love you all & once again, if you don't have Facebook, I have added more photos then the ones on here at: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2075815&id=1490346167&l=f6f64036b8
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