Tomorrow we are leaving for the mainland. 12 hour bus ride through the night, here we come. Dr. Jay was telling us what to expect today in class. It all sounds rather similar to the plethora of bus rides I had while on MESP, complete with the unloading of luggage on one side of the border only to load it all back up again on the other. Old hat. The only difference is that we are taking a public bus. So I could potentially be sharing my row with a legit Chinese person. It'll be interesting.

Today in class we discussed sentence formatting. Structurally, Chinese is very simple. There are no conjugations, no plurals. It's what you call a high context language--based on the whole phrase you figure out whether a word is supposed to be singular or plural, past or present. So basically I just have to get down the characters and the tones and I am golden. Haha, that'll never happen.

I did laundry yesterday and used a dryer for the last time till I get home. Bummer. It'll be like MESP all over again. The only difference is that in Xiamen it can take up to 3 days for your clothes to dry because of the humidity as opposed to the 3 hours it took in Egypt.

Sunday

Today was a beautiful day. I don't take such things lightly any more. Apparently in China, buildings that are south of the Yangtze River don't own heaters. The weather in Hong Kong is usually rather mild; the last couple of days have been in the 50's. However, when you never really warm up because there is no heat anywhere, it starts to get pretty cold, pretty fast. My shoulders have been aching and I realized it was because my muscles were tense all the time because I was so cold. Not the greatest experience.

This morning we went to an international church in down town Hong Kong. It was a nice idea, but a little too sermon light for my tastes. We met a very nice Chinese man, Alfred who directed us to a wonderful Vietnamese resturant. Great pho.

This afternoon we walked around one of the numerous parks Hong Kong has. Not only is Hong Kong big on public parks, but Hong Kong is also big on exotic birds in said public parks. The one today had flamingos and peacocks.

There were a plethora of Indonesian muslim women out and about today. According to Alfred, Hong Kong has a huge Indonesian population. Women come here as hired domestic help. Sunday is their day off so they all congrigate in public parks, thousands of them. Seeing all the hegebs made me strangely nostaligic for Egypt.

Because it's all about the stamp in the passport

Today our group made our way over to Macau, an island about an hour off the coast of Hong Kong. The island used to be owned by the Portuguese so everything is in Portuguese and Cantonese as opposed to English and Cantonese. It was quite interesting--very European feeling, but distintly Asia. A little disconcerting.

Tomorrow we are headed to church in the downtown area (Kowloon Park if anyone is familiar wiht Hong Kong) and then maybe the goldfish market.

We have been on the move all week, from sun up to sun down. It will be nice to get settled in to Xiamen, where I think we will have a bit more free time. Not that I am complaining or anything. Hong Kong is one of the coolest cities I have ever been to. Most def in the top 5...

Toto, we're not in Kansas anymore.

First day in Hong Kong!

This has been the longest day of my life. Literally. Flew all night and arrived here early this morning. Already I think this group is not as fun as MESP.

My whole travel adventure got off to a wonderful start when I was able to go out to coffee with Noelle in LA. I loved being able to see her and catch up. Best three hours of my life. Fantastic. She dropped me off at the airport in time to meet the rest of the group. No problem. When I got to the gate, I did a last check of all important things to find that, low and behold, I had no wallet. I called Noelle in a panic. I mean back sweat, upper lip sweat, I had it all. Thankfully, my passport was not in my wallet so that was safe. Noelle didn't see it in her car, but she said she would check more thoroughly when she arrived home. She called my back 5 minutes later and started with "Grace, I know this is probably not what you want to hear, but in 5 years you'll look back and laugh..." Apparently my wallet was hanging by its strap outside of her car during the whole hour drive from the airport to her apartment. Ridiculous. At least I knew where is was. So she is going to send it to me here in Hong Kong. Fab. At the moment I am minus a debit card and a student id card, both things that I can live without for a couple of days. They give us money for food here and I have American dollars I brought with me...

Get on the plane. They had personalized tv screens for everybody. Lifesaver. I sat next to this kid David, a fellow CSPer, and we played hours of "Who Wants to be a Millionaire?" Litterally.

It was definately very clear that we where on our way to Asia. The salad they served us for dinner was called a seafood something or other. In the States that would mean there are shrimp scattered sparsly overtop. On Cathay Pacific it meant that the salad included things that looked like miniature squid and osysters. Yum.

I arrived in Hong King only to find that my bag was missing. I then realized I am the smartest person I know by making the clever choice to pack my hairdrying in my hand luggate. I might not have clean clothes, but I will have good hair! At first it looked like I wasn't going to get by bag till tomorrow morning at the earliest. But as it turns out, by suitcase was only sent to Bangkok as opposed to being left in LAX, so it was delievered to my doorstep this afternoon. Good news. No luggage would be a bad start.

We spent the rest of the morning and afternoon getting settled into the YMCA camp we will be staying in while in Hong Kong and getting semoi-acclimated to everything (aka moving around to stay awake). Hong King is beautiful in a very different way. I have never seen anything like it. The biggest skyscrapers everywhere you look. Mountains and water everywhere you look. Interesting juxtaposition...I am in this bungalow thing with the 10 other girls on the program and our intern. I am sharing a room with the two most promising girls on the program. Good thing. Pickings are slim.

Almost There

Almost all packed. It's been a painful process. I hate packing. I still just have to find my mysteriously missing favorite black tank top...

But somehow, miraculously, I've been able to fit everything into my ONE allowed suitcase and my piece of hand luggage. What did I even take to Cairo that filled up two bags entirely?

Tomorrow on the 11th, my flight leave at 12:30 out of Dulles and I don't get into Hong Kong till 7:45 am on the 13th China time (Keep in mind that China is 13 hours ahead of the East coast so that's really 6:45 pm on the 12th--any way you slice it, it's still an extremely long day). Jet lag is going to be a killer.