159 DAYS IN HONG KONG

Hkied has quite many sport options to choose from. And all of it for free! Well at least mostly. Only the gym training course costs some.

indoor & outdoor swimming pool

Gym (to go to the gym you need to take a training course offered by the university unless you can show them a gym card or something to prove you know how to use the equipment. It costs 30hk$, less than 5€)

Squash

Tennis courts

Table tennis

Basketball court

Football court

Badminton

Yoga (one lesson almost every week depending on how busy the instructor is because she is also a student here)

And a lot more like fencing but I think you need to join a course for that. 

You can book the courts and equipment through the student portal.

Today, the 22th of March, we had a Cultural Showcase event in HkiEd! Cultural Showcase is an event organized by the International Office where all the different nationalities in our university can introduce their country to others. The event consists of performances and country booths.

Many countries had their own performance, most of them being a dance or music. There was even some Chinese poem recitations! South Korean girls danced to a kpop song, Myanmar also danced some kind of traditional dance. Our performance was to sing a familiar children’s song in many different languages (Czech, Dutch, Finnish, English and Mandarin Chinese). I heard many people liked it lol. I’m so gladd it went reasonably well even though we only practiced twice.

The Korean girls posing in front of the backdrop.

Each country had their own booth that they could decorate however they wanted. We served food familiar to our countries and had some related games. It was a lot of fun!

Our Finnish team was quite small, only 3 out of 6 could make it to the event. Had fun anyway tho. You can also see a bit of our booth decorations behind us. At this point we had already ran out of food.

Our Finland booth had rye bread (ja hapankorppuja) with cheese on top, different kinds of Fazer chocolates and of course salmiakki! We also had glogg (glögi) and blueberry soup. As all the Finns might guess, salmiakki wasn’t that popular among the visitors XD

I live in Hall C (Robert Black Hall, RBH in short) and there’s always some kind of event going on. The walls are always filled with info poster about upcoming events (unfortunately 90% in Cantonese...) and the halls are full of massive decorations that fit the theme. The residents here really go all out when it comes to decorations. 

Examples of the info posters:

One event, though already 2 months ago, was a circus theme party! There were some games you could play and performances. We went to check the party out with Irina but because they only spoke Cantonese we left pretty quickly. But it seemed the locals were having a lot fun time!

Here’s some decorations that cheered our days for a few weeks!

Is one of the world’s cheapest one Michelin star restaurants (the cheapest being Tim Ho Wan, also located in Hong Kong). The restaurant is quite close to the Prince Edward station, only few blocks away. 

Here’s a map! 

The queue can be quite long, depending on the time of the day, so while waiting you can fill in your order, for example. Or go to the nearest 7/11 to buy beer like we did. This is order for seven people. Some of the food will be sold out (as seen in our order, the food crossed over with red) so it’s better to go there early rather than late in the evening. 

We ordered so much food! It ended up being only 80hk$ each, which is around 10€. So a lot of good food with little money!

and a bit from the ground.

Heading to TST by bus!

Can’t remember the name of the building but we went up to the the nth floor to get a spectacular view of TST and the Hong Kong island.

The views!! So nice! Too bad it was really windy so I was really cold the whole time up there. Should have brought a sweater with me. 

Bought the egg waffle thing again. It doesn’t really taste like eggs at all. Only a bit sweeter than normal waffles, maybe. 

On Saturday 9.1 (which was quite a long time ago, forgive me) Twinkle took us to the Peak! The trip there is quite long because my univ. is in the New Territories.

If you want to leave Hkied, you have a couple of choices:

minibus 26 has a  stop right outside the campus gates and it goes to Tai Po where you have to walk a bit to get to the Tai Po Market station. 

74k is a  2 story bus that leaves from the same place as 26 but goes straight to the Tai Po Market station

our univ. offers a shuttle bus ride from campus to University station (which is the next station from Tai Po Market station). It leaves every 5-10 minutes depending on the time of the day. Last one leaves at 23.00. The bus doens’t operate on Sundays. 

All of these take about 15-20min. But I prefer the shuttle bus because it’s so easy. 

We took the shuttle bus and continued with subway all the way to the central where we met Twinkle. We took a minibus to the Peak because we heard that the tram that goes up to the Peak is always really crowded and you have to line up for a long time. The bus route went through an area where a lot of rich people live so it was filled with really nice houses and nice views of Hong Kong!

Left to right: Bolette (Denmark), me, Eunseong (South Korea), Lisa (Denmark)

After the Peak we went to walk around the Central  area. We went to eat to a famous street restaurant that specialiced in tomato noodle soups. The food was really great and awfully cheap! It was worth the queueing.

We visited PMQ which is an art complex where all kinds of little brands sell mostly handmade products. The atmosphere was really great and I definitely recommed going there!

Pictures from the central, quite near to the restaurant. 

PMQ 

Then we took a bus to Twinkle’s home and had a traditional Hong Kong style hot pot! We played some card games and had a lot of fun.

Some kind of fair in the campus where people ( I think they were students) were selling handmade stuff.

Monday and Tuesday were pretty boring because I didn’t have lessons. On Tuesday evening we  went to Tai Po Market to eat. The place looked horrible but the food was really good and cheap.

We went to the grocery store near by and bought food. I cooked for the first time in HK!

On Wednesday, 2 of my lessons were cancelled because they were tutorials and you can’t have tutorials before the actual lectures. I had one course called something along the lines ”Exploring the rural heritage and nature of Hong Kong”. For the course we have to do 3-5min documentary, a website and an essay about our groups chosen rural village. Many of us exchange students are taking the course and we were worried that none of the locals would want to group with us (we need to interview the villagers etc. which is impossible if you don’t speak Cantonese). Fortunately, the professor made some rules about the groups: every gourp had to include  at least 1 girl and 1 boy, non-cantonese speaker/ non-asian. Suddenly, all of us exchange students became really popular XDD 

On Thursday I had two lessons: ”Sociolinguistics” and ”Words and their meanings”. They seem really interesting. In the evening we went to eat near the Tai Po Mega Mall. We ate curry and I thought it was going to be horrible because I hate curry but it was actually really good!

2016年1月3日

Sunday was a movie day!

The new BBC Sherlock Holmes movie came out so of course we wanted to go and see it. Me and Eunseong googled cinemas in HK and found UA Cinemas. We went  to see the movie in UA Cine Moko which is in Moko mall right next to the Mong Kok East station. 

Because the 5.30 showing we wanted to go to was really full we ended up buying tickets for the 7.15. We had 2.5h until the movie started so the only logical thing to do was to find a restaurant and eat.

Meal with mushroom soup as a starter, Coca Cola Zero, salad, french fries and sandwhiches... We obviously couldn’t eat everything because the meal was so big but fortunately we got to take the rest home. This was 91hk$ = 10.7€

Sneak shot by Eungseong. Me, probably taking a picture of the food, being totally unaware lol

2016年1月2日

We met in front of the IO at 9am on Saturday and went to Shin Mun reservoir to hike for the day. The instructions said to be there 9am SHARP! Because the bus would leave at 9.15 but in the end we ended up leaving at 10am... What is punctuality...

The route we hiked was around 7km and wasn’t that hard. Except for the up hills that made everybody’s legs tremble. The day was really humid and sun was hot but somehow it was still quite chilly? Not the ideal weather in my opinion. But we survived!

I made collages because otherwise there would have been way too many pictures. The lake, I think, was man made because of the need for more fresh water when Kowloon was built. There were some turtles!! They were so cute, just swimming around in the lake and sun bathing. 

After the hike we went to eat Hong Kong style barbeque. Which is exactly the same as the Finnish one... There was a lot of fish so I just ate some pork, marshmallows and toast.

As I mentioned before, 1.1 Friday was a day off. I think I woke up around 1pm and then proceeded to spent the next 2 hours in bed.

Me and Eunseong had planned to go shopping to Sha Tin. Others heard about it and wanted to tag along. In Sha Tin we split up into 2 groups: shopping and IKEA. I needed new shoes because we were going to go hiking on Saturday and I only had leather boots and high heels with me.

My new shoes. Black, no surprise there. They were 699hk$ which is 82.5€. I think Nike shoes are  a bit cheaper in here than in Finland? I’m not sure??

We went to eat at Triple-O’s. It was so good and didn’t really taste like fast food. Nam nam.

New Year’s Eve!!!! I was so excited for Thursday night!

The third orientation day started with instructions on how to use moodle. Me and Irina had some trouble trying to find the right classroom and ended up being a bit late. What the hell is L/P?? Lower podium, it seems. After that, some more Cantonese. Then came the lunch time and we got to taste some dim sum! Nam nam.

Originally me and Eunseong planned to go by ourselves to watch the fireworks somewhere in Tsim Sha Tsui or Hong Kong island but we ended up going with the other exchange students and the buddies. We left at 3pm and no one told us what we were going to do or that the fireworks actually didn’t start until 12am. We took a ferry across the whatever-it’s-called to the Hong Kong island which was nice. But otherwise? No, just no. My feet were tired, my back hurt and we really did nothing except walk from one place to another for nine hours. If I knew what is was going to be like I would have joined them later, maybe around 8pm instead of 3pm...

1881 Heritage. There were a lot of shops and a hotel(?). It was decorated with a Christmas theme and there were a lot of people. I felt a bit bad for one couple trying to take wedding pictures there. 

A huge Christmas tree decorated with Disney characters in the Harbour City mall. The picture’s quality kind of sucks, sorry for that. 

Me, Irina and Eunseong with funny New Year glasses we got from HK Times Square.

Star Wars in the Times Square!!!

HK during the day and night! So many pretty lights! The day was a bit gray and foggy so I couldn’t get that many good pictures.

We spent the last hour of 2015 on the rooftop of IFC (international finance centre). There were a lot of people so it was really crowded but the atmosphere was nice and that was the best thing about the whole evening. Sad thing was that in the end we couldn’t see the fireworks that well because we were on the wrong side of the building... I quickly ran to the other side but then there were some trees in front of me... But at least I saw something!! 

I wanted to post a few videos of the countdown and fireworks but it seems I have to first download them into youtube. Too much trouble. But have this video from instagram (by @sherry_xrou)!!

A video posted by International Luxury Concierge (@luxuryworldtraveler) on Dec 31, 2015 at 2:09pm PST

On the Tue-Wed night I think I slept for like 11 hours. I woke up feeling really tired anyway. Good thing was that orientation started 11am so I didn’t have to wake up so early.

The second orientation day started with a quick recap of Tuesday’s trip to Tai Po. So nothing special in the morning. Then we learned some more Cantonese, now I can count 1 to 10 in Cantonese wow.

After lunch (which was questionable. The buddies really didn’t lie when they said school canteen sucks) we did some calligraphy! And there has been no improvement in my calligraphy skills so the end result was quite ugly. Anyway it was fun. After that we had some infos about New Year activities and PE possibilities.

We practiced writing our Chinese horoscope symbols. I was born in the year of dog 1994. The other texts are something about loving Hong Kong (actually I have no idea??) and my name in Chinese characters. We could also draw on fans which was nice. I can’t take all the credit for my awesome boat scenery because I used a picture to draw through the fan’s fabric lol. 

After orientation me, Irina, two Korean guys and Yuki (she’s Chinese) went to Tai Po to eat and return our Octobus card forms to the MTR desk in the Tai Po Market station. We get our own personal Octobus cards next month and got temporary cards for the time being. You can recharge your Octobus card in 7/11 but only with cash. Why not card??? Good thing is we have 7/11 on Campus. So convenient. I need to hold myself back or I’ll empty the store.

Today was a lot of fun and I got a lot of new friends! It kinda feels like I’ve been here for a long time already even tho this is my first full day here.

Today was the first orientation day and the schedule started 10am. We played some games with our student buddies and got to know other exchange students. There’s only 34 of us which is kinda weird because I’m used to the amount of exchange students we have in Jyväskylä which is hundreds(?). But they are all very nice! I mainly hanged out with Irina (my roommate) and Eungsung from South Korea who lives in the same dormitory as us.

From left to right: Chloe (South Korea), Eungsung (South Korea) & Irina (Finland). Irina is holding the leftover pizza that we got to take home with us. Gonna have some pizza for breakfast lol. 

Today started with a quick introduction to the school etc. and welcoming session. Then we had some slides about living in HK. We heard about the miracle of Octopus card. You can do almost anything with it: pay in stores/restaurants, pay the bus fee, use the washing machine... I want it! Then we had an awesome lunch that included different kind of pizzas and some more traditional HK foods. Nam nam. After luch we had a brief introduction to the student activities held this Spring semester and Let’s Speak Cantonese 1. Cantonese is really hard and I can never get the tones right. Ah, really, Mandarin feels so easy after this.

After all this, around 4pm, we had a trip to Tai Po with our student buddies! We went to shop some necessities such as adaptors for phone charger and slippers to wear inside. The floor are really cold and I’m too lazy to wear my shoes when I go to the bathroom. We were shown a few bus stops that we need to know and walked around. We went to eat noodle soup and drank bubble tea and now I feel like I’m gonna explode. Too much food.

The noodle soup. So much food. I felt like it would just keep coming and never end... Noodles with beef and Japanese mushrooms. 

Really cheap pastries. As you can see, the prices are 2hk$ (0,20€) and 3hk$ (0,30€). We bought some pineapple buns(?) that didn’t actually have any pineapple in them. Tasted good tho.

Tai Po street view. Even tho I’ve been in Asia many times I still haven’t gotten used to this tall apartment buildings. So tall... Imagine the elevator got broken. 

Suspiciously familiar looking flower pattern in a local shoe store... 

The Hong Kong Institute of Education’s campus is right next to a mountain (on a mountain??) and really nice! The view is awesome! The dorms are right next to the campus which is also great. I don’t have to wake up so early because I can just walk to the other side of the street where the classes are held.

A sad looking snowman in front of my dorm. Kind of nightmare inducing.

My side of the dorm room! I took the pictures yesterday and have unpacked a bit since then so it’s a bit homier in here now. The room is quite cold and I need to wear woollen socks and long sleeve sweaters all the time so I won’t freeze to death. I live with another Finnish girl Irina who’s also from my university. Talk about good luck! Though I think they made us roommates on purpose. I’m really happy because it is actually really depressing to hear a language you can’t understand everywhere. It can get a little lonely so I was getting a bit sad because of it. But now I’m totally fine! 

I was planning on writing my first post about the last minute packing panic I had two days ago (already?? I feel like it’s still Sunday) but things never really go according to the plan. So here I am, in Hong Kong, writing my first post from the comfort of my bed. The bed was not that comfortable at first but I guess I got used to it. Or then anything feels like heaven after sitting 14h in cramped spaces.

I arrived to Hong Kong today! I flew from Helsinki to Chong Qing from where I had a connecting flight to Hong Kong. I was a bit worried because I don’t really have experiences about transfer flights. However,  the trip went quite well if you ignore all the bureaucracy and waiting I had to endure in Chong Qing. We had to go through at least four different check points just to transfer. With ”we” I mean me and two other girls from Finland. We sent each other desperate and confused glances in Chong Qing and found out we all had the same connecting flight to Hong Kong. We decided to stick together because it’s always nicer to be confused together than alone. I was really lucky and one of them had a seat next to me on our next flight. Talking made the 2±h trip go a lot faster.

Some mountains in China. Maybe. I think they are in China?

Airplane food. Two from Finnair and one from Dragonair.

My assigned student buddy came to pick me up from the airport and the bus ride to campus took about 2h. We  took two buses and the tickets were really cheap! Alltogether the trip costed 20 HK$ which is about 2.3€.

I never really realized Hong Kong has palm trees. This is the first one I saw. What a beauty XD

I’m really tired because I slept maybe 1.5h during the flight and less than 5h Sat.-Sun- night -.- I have to be somewhere at 10am so I’ll probably go to sleep soon.