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