Victoria Peak

Long time no blog! I've been pretty busy the last few days. We went to Kowloon on Saturday, and checked out the markets there. We went to the Jade market, and I got a bracelet that may or may not be real jade (probably not...). Then we tried to find Sneaker Street, which is apparently a huge market with running shoes. We got lost, and it was so incredibly hot that we found a McDonalds to sit in and rehydrate. It started to pour when we were outside at one point, and we ran into a Pricerite, which is like Sears. We pretended to want to buy a couch just so we could have a place to sit for 15 minutes, and debated couch fabrics with the sales ladies. One of the guys here has a shirt that looks like a watermelon (and apparently smelled like one when he bought it), and the sales ladies loved that too. Although apparently mango is their favorite fruit.

We met up with some people who are studying at another school in HK, and after hanging out in their apartment, we went to the night market. It was really cool, lots of chotchkies (spelling? meh) and Hong Kong related things. I didn't buy anything, but we ate dinner at a place that had Mantis shrimp and everything was doused in garlic (yummm).

I finally met my roommate, who is the nicest girl. She's a local, but she lives 1.5 hours away so res is a cheap option to be close to school. She's really great, and told me that basically all the Cantonese I've learned is actually Mandarin, so that's a good start. I told her that her English was amazing and she was SO happy. We stayed up all night talking about music, movies, Canada... she asked me for some Canadian slang, and I had no idea, so I told her "toque" and "hipster". I couldn't explain hipster very well, but she looooved that word for some reason. I think she thinks its just a cool person... whoops. She's at home today for the Mid-Autumn Festival, and promised to bring me a moon cake. She also introduced me to egg tarts, which are AWESOME, and told me to try Chinese waffles which I will absolutely be doing.

Yesterday I explored more of the Kennedy Town area, and checked out a mall and big grocery store here. In the afternoon, we went to Victoria Peak, which is a really cool mountain thing with an awesome lookout. The view was so cool, and at night all the lights come on. The pictures really don't do it justice. On the way down the mountain, the bus made me feel really sick, so dinner didn't go down as easily as I would have liked, but we found a place in Causeway bay that was full of locals and there was no English on any of the signs. We had some BBQ pork, chinese greens, smoked duck, and some sort of chicken. Delish.

After meeting up with some Israeli exchange students, we went to Pizza Hut (yes, Pizza Hut), and it was really bizarre. It was like an upscale Kelsey's, and one of the pizzas had meatballs, pineapple, and pickles on it. Another one had like feta and apple and stuff... Very interesting. Hard to describe but a hilarious experience.

Went to campus today to get our student Octopus cards (bus cards that you can use at 7-11 too), which was a waste because they weren't giving them out yet. So we had some breakfast on campus and I was impressed! I had a green tea red bean muffin from Starbucks, and an egg and cheese and bacon sandwich from the cafeteria. They do western food pretty well on campus, and everyone speaks English! Honestly, its a good thing, because sometimes all I need is like a muffin or a bagel, and I am absolutely CRAVING What A Bagel right now.

Going to class tonight, then the beach tomorrow!

The jade market

THE PUNGENCY!

Rob being dragged into a custom suit shop

Mantis shramps

The roomies

Bad translation maybe?

One of the awesome views from campus

Victoria peak - that's the Aberdeen Resevoir

Dem clouds

That time we were in a cloud

That happened...

For all of you that know me well, you will understand my ire at seeing this. This, my friends, is a McFlurry machine. In the McFlurry machine is a container that contains SMARTIES. Yes, Smarties. I am equal parts angry and super excited to catch up on eating Smartie McFlurries. 

Gundam exhibit in Times Square at Causeway Bay