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.