Just another day in Paradise...

-Nathaniel-
Just so everyone doesn't forget what campus is like here is the view from my room is above. There is only one academic building and it is gigantic. Below is a picture of part of it. This building also has two banks the bookstore a convenience store two different food court type places, and that is just what I have found so far.

We made it further off campus and multiple trips to the shopping center in the last couple of days. Dora and I are now equipped with Hong Kong cell phones. We bought the cheapest used phones and SIM cards with prepaid minutes we both paid less than 60 dollars for the phones and 333 min. Below is a shot of Dora when we got off the subway in Mong Kok. This place was crazy. It is like you would see in a movie and think that it couldn't possibly be that crowded and all of the neon lights on the signs flashing, it was stressful even to just look around. It was like walking with a sea of people.

That same night we stopped for some sushi at this Japanese restaurant. It was a small place and you could easily walk by it and not know it was there but inside it was very nice, and really good sushi. It was surprisingly cheap too! Dora and I both ate for $20 US. I Took a picture of the outside so I could remember it if we ever wondered by it again we could stop in.

After sushi we went walking some more. We made it to the pier there was a nice walk way where people were looking over to downtown. It is an amazing view of the city, you can really see how big it is. I wish my pictures were better, but I don't have a tripod, so the night shots don’t turn out so well.


I guess I forgot to mention that we met up with a few other exchange students. We have met so many new people from all over the world. It has been fun to meet so many people that have all kinds of different experiences with traveling and even every day life. Dora's roommate is from France (pink shirt) and we met some other people from Canada. Below is a shot of us hanging out at the pier, and another blurry picture of the lights of the downtown buildings.



The subway system is really nice here it is fast and very clean, it doesn’t even smell bad! I was just amazed at how long the trains are, there are always a lot of people on the subway, last night it was Sunday and we rode the subway right before it closed and it was still packed. There are certain interchange stations that the whole train will either fill up completely or empty completely, it is a very effective transportation system.

After I took the picture all of the locals were laughing at me, and I am sure saying that it was stupid to take a picture of the subway. Oh well. I heard the suicide rate is high in Asia, and many times people would jump in front of the subway trains. At all of the stations the tracks are behind a full length glass wall with doors that open with the train car doors. I tried to take a picture to show the two sets of doors to get on the subway.


We went downtown and wandered around all day. I don't have a whole lot to say about all of these pictures and they might not be too exciting for many people but I like weird looking buildings so I took a few pictures of the interesting looking ones. A lot of the designs seem like they were trying to make the most difficult structure possible and still have it stand.








This one just plain ol' looks like a bad idea.

Again for dinner we stopped for sushi. This place wasn't quite as nice but it was still good. It was the first time I had been to a place where there were guys in the middle of the bar making the sushi and they would send it around a track so we could grab whatever we wanted when it came around. It was fun to see all of the different things.


A few more full days of vacation before school starts, then we are limited to our 3 day weekends and whenever we get our homework done early.

We made it!!

-Nathaniel-
We got to campus around midnight on the 24th. To avoid confusion we took a taxi from the ariport, which was on a different island. We had to take two toll bridges to get to campus. Once we got to campus we had to split up when two different security guards showed us to our rooms. The housing managers let us in our rooms, but wouldn't give us the keys until we paid for the whole semester in the morning when the office opened. The building managers don't speak much English. It is funny because they run out of the office and to grab any student sitting around to translate. The students speak pretty good English. Of course we forgot to bring sheets so we ended up sleeping on the bare mattress for the first night.

The first morning we woke up around 5am or so ready to go. We went for a walk to see if we could find our way around campus with out getting too lost. Little did we know that we would be walking around the whole rest of the day trying to get registered, food, money, and our main goal sheets. The cafeteria was a little intimidating not knowing the process, but we have almost figured that out. We have to order and pay at one counter then they give us a ticket to give to a different counter where they make our food. We have been eating noodles and assorted buns/pastries. I don't think we have spent more than 3 US dollars on a meal for the both of us. We took our first bus trip after looking all through campus to find sheets. We went to this huge shopping center area not far from campus. It took at least 2 hours of walking around and asking people to find a department store. By the time we found sheets we were both exhausted. We finished unpacking, making the beds and we crashed a little after 6pm.

Our mission for Friday (today) was to get the internet working in the rooms. There is wireless around campus which is easier to log on to. I think we have figured out how to get the internet in the rooms now. Enough talking, here are some pictures we have taken so far.

-Dora-
View from my dorm room. It's been overcast the first two days, hopefully it clears up soon. It's been pretty hot and muggy.

-Nathaniel-
Here are some other pictures from around campus.

This is the main walk way through the center of campus we walked this around 10 times the first day. The walkway goes from the big entrance all the way down to the shore. It goes down a cliff so there are 3 elevators and a set of escalators on the way. The elevators go only from floor 10-11 to the ground; there are no stops on the intermediate floors.

They are doing repairs everywhere, and the scaffolding is made out of bamboo and plastic ties. Dora did the structural analysis and she says it is safe. I don't trust it, it looks pretty rickety.

If you have seen campus from Google earth you might recognize the track. The outdoor pool has water warmer than the air temp. Today there was open swim from 7:30am-9:30pm with a break for lunch. The hours might change for school, I don't know.

Until next time...

Hong Kong - Fall 2005

Nathaniel and Dora

Exchange - Hong Kong University of Science and Technology