the germans were right.

Thank god I woke up today feeling better than last night. It would not even be an exageration to say that I could not swallow as I was lying down falling asleep because my throat was literally killing me (talk about drool-city). Apparently whatever that homepathic "Meditonsin" was that my german friend prescribed me did exactly what he promised, as it was only my stuffy nose that slowed me down today.

I never have classes on Fridays, so the fact that I slept in until 1130 is more than acceptable (in my new independent college student-minded way), I justify my newly appointed "lazy Fridays" by working hard all week; in every sense of the word. Studying hard, trying really hard to keep up with all of these exchangers that never sleep and never stop partying, and working really really hard to not break through the glass and devour every single chocolate chip muffin and ridiculously good looking brownie that stares me in the face EVERY single time that I go through the line at the western cafe. After my lazy morning I decided to be productive and go for a run, (not going to lie, one of the main reasons I decided to go about this today is because I was greasing it hard again and new I was going to have to shower before I went out this afternoon, so I decided I might as well get sweaty before having to shower and deal with this whole white-girl afro again. I ran about 4.5K on the track, but it hardly even seemed like I was out there for long at all; I figured this is probably because the track is right on the ocean, literally looking over the water... I was in total disbelief the whole time, running literally never looked this good.

We ventured down to central this afternoon to pick up our Chinese Visas, which inevitably turned into a(nother) shopping trip. We hit up the ladies market again, which is now one of my favorite places on earth lol. Elizabeth and I needed to pick up a few things for the Phillipines so we ended up getting sandals, sun glasses, mirrors, dresses, an a few other things. My clutch broke on me last night so I picked up another one (oliterally thousands upon thousands of purses/handbags/walletsat this place, soooo insane), and this little blouse shirt that I probably didn't need, but had no self control and ended up buying for like $7CDN. After Starbucks, Visas, and shopping, we headed back to campus to finalize the plans for our Chinese New Year trip to the Phillipines.

We booked flight to Cebu from Manila for like $85CDN round trip, and booked a hostel in Manila for the night we arrive. The lady from the travel agency through which we got our Visas called up one of her "friends" in the Phillipines and said she can get us a beach house for $500HK/night that can fit 5-10 people (~$70CDN), we just need to finalize things with her tomorrow and then we'll be set! Only 6 sleeps, team ya b*tch is counting them down biggggtime. After spending a couple of ours eating and planning, and eating and planning some more, we figured we were about ready to pack up our laptops, and put on our party hats... We ended up opting out of the whole party-hat thing and instead decided to hang out in Tobias's room until we could decide on something decent to do; this was until the University decided that it was time for Hall 1 to have a fire drill. Sidenote: the fire drills here are super intense as they have at least 10 security guards monitoring everything during this time, the security was actually so ridiculous that they wouldn't let us cross a line of security tape to get into MY hall (one WITHOUT a fire drill). We tried to argue our way into the hall but didn't make any progress, not that the security guard could understand our arguments anyways, language barrier is nottttt good times.

We hit up the UniBar for a litte bit after our long night of planning and fighting what we called exchange student-discrimination to get into my hall lol. Of course the guys were having some beers (they really can't help themselves since it is so cheap and ridiculously accessible here), but Liz and I opted to save our livers for next time. I just loaded up on aspertame from Diet Cokes instead... I figured I would upload some people pictures onto this bad boy since scenery has been the main focus thus far...

Camille, Charles, and Ben being classically Chinese in an all too familiar way haha.


Elizabeth and I, sober.com


Going to pass out and have a legitimately ridiculous sleep, tomorrow is a nerdy library day for me. Shopaholic over and out.

too much meat.

Today I made a discovery that is more than likely going to change the way I interact with everyone I left behind at home... Skype unlimited calling! I was trying to figure my skype out today when I came across this page that said for 5.95$ a month I could call any and all phones in Canada for up to 6 hours each day. jack POT. As soon as I found this, I felt immediately high lol... Like I had to get this set up as soon as possible. So I grabbed my credit card and furiously entered all of my information (billed it to home of course). As soon as I recieved the confirmation email I proceeded to call both of my parents, and 4 of my friends... All within less than an hour; so nerdy, I know. I was getting so frustrated waiting for people to come online for me to be able to skype them, and now I can call anybody wheneverrrrr. I MIGHT become the biggest creepster this side of Hong Kong, but for $6 a month who cares haha.

Mandarin class is still pretty interesting, I know how to say a bunch of basic stuff, like introducing myself, saying where I am from, please, thank you, etc... My french friend Charles (super cool guy) did so well in class that the prof didn't believe he had never learned mandarin before and kept telling him that he needs to be in the more advanced class, which he refuted for what seemed like minutes because he really hasn't spoken any mandarin before and didn't want to get stuck with a bunch of pros.

The 4 americans and I (team "ya b*tch") spent at least 2 hours in the computer lab today, trying to book a resort in cebu during our trip to the Phillipines... No dice. Needless to say, we were fairly unimpressed that even a lot of the smaller/crappier/ghetto resorts are already booked up during the week we plan on going, for the length of time we wanted! I think we have decided to stay in Manila the first night, Cebu city the 2nd, and then go to a beachy resort for 2-3 nights, back to Cebu, then back to Manila to fly home... Or something along those lines. Ps. shoutout to Ben for supplying the digestive cookies.

Today was our friend Justin's birthday, so we made reservations at this korean restaurant where you engage in what is referred to as "Korean Barbeque", it is honestly AMAZZINNG! They have tons and tons of different meat, seafood, and veggies, and you bring what you want to your table and then grill it yourself. It was all you can eat for about $120HK, which is about $16CDN. The only problem with this all you can eat stuff is that most of us ate way too much and felt sick afterwards. After dinner (the restaurant was situated above two floors of drugstore-ish shopping), we headed to LKF for ladies night... again. I had my sugar free redbull before ordering a (free) vodka soda that was so strong I could hardly get it down. I haven't felt so sick in a long long time; too much meat in my stomach at once, the body's not used to it. We stayed most the night at this club called "Cavern", that had a live band playing covers of tons of current tunes. It was super strange to see this all asian band rocking out to lady gaga, rhianna, and kings of leon haha, the things you see in hong kong.

A bunch of the group post-Korean BBQ, pre-LKF


Other than feeling ridiculously bloated, sick, and mad at myself for over-indulging on the marinated beef, my throat started to kill me and my nose started running. All of these + not drinking in the crazy bar district = time to go hommmme. We cabbed back (again, very cheap), and when I got back to my room I found my key that I had thought was lost earlier today. So at least the night ended on a positive note =) One of my friends from germany also had some homeopathic throat medicine that he let me use since I was honestly dying everytime I tried to speak. Thank god for those Germans, don't know what I'd do without them.

For those of you who have been following this whole debocle, the fan is now on and I am about to call it a night... We'll see if it's still on in the morning.

p.s. still waiting to find something in my mailbox. over and out.

don't forget to flush.

So Elizabeth and I both went to the campus clinic today... She was feeling overall pretty sick, and I went to let the doctors know about my condition and to find out if they had extra supplies on hand in case I needed them. The doctor was this super funny energetic little asian man who kept tell me over and over that they were going to take care of me and that that was the number one concern at this point and time. He wrote me a referral letter that I can take to any of the hospitals in kowloon in order to see an endocrinoligist (diabetes specialist) who will be able to work with me to keep everything under control while I am here. I can't even imagine how relieved my mom is going to be after reading this lol. He told me that all of the doctors will speak english, but I might ask one of my cantonese-speaking friends to come along jusssst incase. In my experience here, it is never safe to assume someone can speak english, better safe than sorry.

Everyone headed to Happy Valley tonight to watch the horse races... I opted out because it was so crappy, humid, and periodically rainy out, and I have started to get a sore throat and runny nose, so I figured a night in my room taking it easy would probably be what I needed. Sidenote: if you tell the clinic you have either of these symptoms, or a fever or cough, they make you wear one of those facemasks! It's actually super super common here to see people wearing masks. I guess it's quite curteous in a way, but still a little strange to us westerners.

So since I had made the executive decision not to go out on the town with everyone else, I opted for a little adventure of my own... Laundry, dorm style. So down to the hall II laundry room I ventured, laundry bag and random asian brand stain remover in hand, hoping for the best. I had actually tried to do laundry yesterday but my stupid student card was "invalid", whatever THAT means. Annnyways, you stick your student card (once you have loaded money onto it) into this little slot, choose your machine, enter your code, and thats how you get either the washer or the drying up and running. It costs about 1$CDN to do a load in the washer, and 1$HK (.12CDN) for every 6 minutes you want the dryer to run for. So figuring I'm a laundry-master like my mom, I ran the dryer for 24 minutes, grabbed my stuff out and marched back on upstairs, fairly pleased with myself. Until I dump my laundry onto my bed and realize about half of it is still damp. A normal laundry master wouldve gone back and started the dryer again, but what can I say, I'm an amateur... And a lazy one at that, so everyone keep your fingers crossed that my bottom drawer half full of slightly damp socks doesn't turn into a mould-fest.

Me being super classy in hanging my non-dryer clothes from every hook and hanger possible. lol you gotta do what you gotta do.


I decided to be bigtime canadian creepster and take some comical pictures of our Hall II, Floor 10 bathroom... Aka my next door neighbor. Let me begin by saying that apparently HKUST is trying to cut back on paper consumption, because what looks like a regular bathroom toilet paper dispenser at first glance, is actually our "paper towel dispenser".

But as far as I'm concerned, "paper towel" doesn't come off in teeny tiny little bits that stick to your wet hands after washing. The best is when you try to pull off a piece and you rip off about a quarter of the square of tp because its the crappiest 2-ply garb on the market.

Another addition to the HKUST anti-paper wasting "campaign" as I call it, is a dainty little sign in the bathroom that reminds you not to use too much paper. Soooo you don't want us to use paper to dry our hands... Semi understandable (even though there is no dryer either), but not wanting us to use paper to wipe our butts, I'm not really sure where theyre going with this one.

Last, but most definately not least, is the sign I have looked at every time I've gone to the washroom since I got here and every single time thought "I need to get a picture of this"... Today turned out to be that day. Enjoy.

So I was sitting writing this blog about 20 minutes ago when I thought, man it would suck bigtime if the fire alarm went off.... Just a random thought. Until it went off about a minute later! It's actually probably a good thing, because I legitimately have zero idea where I was supposed to go, but still, fire alarms at midnight... NOT good times. Ah well, could've been worse. My roomate was in the shower when it went off and had to march down all of the stairs, down the hill, and onto the tennis court in her towel. Truth is, I had been planning on taking a shower then too, but then my inner greaser got the best of me and told me to screw it and just head to bed. Thank YOU haha. Time for bed, 9am class tomorrow, booooo.

Ps. save paper and don't forget to flush.

nĭ hăo

Today was interesting to say the least. Not only did I decide to trust a total stranger to lead me to my class, which backfired... But I learned to speak some extremely basic mandarin ie: "ni hao" (hello), and some other harder than they should be basic terms. I actually got accepted into the class even though I was 3rd on the waitlist, I guess after an hour and a half of being tossed into the middle of chinese-speaking madness some people decided to drop out (ie: me in the crazy economics class yesterday).

I sent off a million postcards today too (okay, maybe more like ten... I felt like I was running out of things to say-not usually a problem for me), and then re-visited the extremely crowded campus gym where I decided to be a little adventurous and try out the rowing machine... I have a strange feeling I'll be paying the price for that tomorrow. The workout was followed by the blandest food I have yet to have on campus; grilled chicken and cheddar panini (had to be forced down with ketchup and mustard, weird).

Following the worst meal in HK, came the best part of the day; a bunch of us booked our flight to Phillipines for the Chinese New Year break! We got a round trip flight to Manila for 200$US, soooo excited! We fly out on the evening of Thursday Feb 11th, and come back the morning of Wednesday Feb 17th. I miss zero classes, and we get 5 days and 6 nights in the phillipines, so sick. We're trying to figure out where we can get to a nice beach to spend a few days and nights, so if anyone has any good info, do tell.

Of course everyone headed to unibar tonight, where I was pretty bad-ass and drank diet cokes all night. I also had my first ever game of darts, where I won for our team and was actually the dart master lol. Needless to say, I will now be spending most of my time and money on that stupid automated dart machine... Ah well, better than drugs and booze I guess. My partner Charles (from Paris) was very impressed with my performance. He signed me for a 5 year contract as his partner. nbd.

My room is humid as hell again, and my roomate is really not a fan of the fan (literally), and one of my friends here offered to let me use his spare sheet so that I don't have to sleep under the camel wool anymore. sooo good. Time to test this baby out, bonsoir =)

don't make friends in the elevator

So in the elevator on the way to my first class today I run into a guy who refers to himself as "Norm"... We start kind of chatting and he says theres a faster way to get to the classrooms than the way I usually take; based upon the fact that he is a full time student here, I make the idiot decision to follow him. NOT a god idea. The guy gets us lost as we're walking through halways, down staircases, and up elevators. I was actually fairly rude to him once he kept insisting that it was "just over there". Umm how about you LEAVE ME ALONE and let me get to class on my own from now on geeeez. That's all for now, just needed a little rant. Time for ad and promotion, white teacher = good sign.

fan nazi

So today was my first official day of classes at HKUST... Not quite as leisurely as the past week, but refreshing in a way. I woke up with a purpose; to show these chinese students who's boss in the classroom. I didn't really have any trouble finding my classes, which came as a complete surprise for me; i had budgeted half an hour to find my way there, but didn't really need much more than 10 minutes. My first class of the day was consumer behavior, in which I was the only blonde (also the only caucasian, nbd). The class itself was fine until it came time for everyone to form groups that will work together on various projects and assignments. I was totally THAT kid that nobody really wants in their group, as I was left standing alone near the front of the class, looking for a group that might accept the lonely student who can't speak a lick of cantonese. After waiting for what seemed like hours, but was probably only a minute or two I realized I was going to have to take things into my own hands... I found my backbone and approached a group of 3 chinese girls, and asked if their group was full; to which they replied that they had only 3 group members; I asked if I could join them, and that was the end of that. Turns out one of the girls used to live in canada and speaks perfect english, relief much?!

My second class was "International Trade and Finance"; if you were wondering how it went, let me just say that as soon as it was over I walked straight out the door, down to the computer lab, and dropped it lol. Notttt exactly what I was expecting; but I didn't have the necessary economic prereq anyways so it was probably for the best. I decided to replace this newly dropped course with LANG113, which is intro mandarin for non-chinese speaking students, it seems like about half of the exchange students are taking the course, so it should be a good time.

Elizabeth and I went for a walk today and definately did NOT find the 7 11 we were looking for. We also didn't realize how far downhill we had ventured until it was time to come back up and we were bigtime out of breath (we're working on our stamina lol). We then found out that everyone was heading down to the field to play soccer; what we thought was going to bea small game turned into about 40 people, and we played a full field 11 vs 11 game for about an hour and a half (much needed workout after all of the greasy, friend, carb-loaded food here). After a while we got booted from the field because there was a rugby practise. During the practise, the team was only using half of the field, so we went on to play on the remaining side... Apparently this is against the rules, and if there is one sport being played on any part of the field surface, no other sport is allowed. Too weird, but true around here. So instead, we decided on taking a team trip to the cafe for dinner. A bunch of us decided on the sirloin steak dinner for $35HK, about $5CAD... Not the best steak I ever had, actually possibly the worst. But something about being here makes you appreciate any semblence to regular canadian food that you can get. My personal fave is the baked potato, sounds so basic, but its one of the only things that I've had that tastes the same as, if not better than back home. Its not that the food on campus is bad at all, it'll just take some getting used to.

sidenote: Ive just become a postcard junkie, so if anybody is interested in recieving a little (and f course extremely thoughtful) personal message from me on the back of a touristy photo of hk, just send me your address and I will send one your way.

Miss everyone and a gangster shout out to everyone holding it down at earls. Have a poutine for me

Time for some pictures

Some of you may be wondering "what is she eating out there?", or for the few of you that know this "why did she resort to eating cheesy poofs for breakfast yesterday?"... Well I decided to take some pictures of our "fresh seafood dinner" from last thursday, I'll let the pictures speak for themselves =)





I didn't get to taste any of this next extremely appealing dish... everyone else gobbled it up before it got to me, not even kidding

LKF might be the only place in the world where you can get your hands on a purely chinese elvis... I would like to point out the very chinese act of someone throwing a peace sign into the back of the picture.... typical.