Its been a long time since I've posted anything here, over a week, so here's a post updating the week that was. Friday class got cancelled, which was really nice, so Thursday night of last week was good, we went out to Lan Kwai Fong before Raphael decided to propose that we hike Victoria Peak to watch the sunrise. So we did. Hiked up around 5:00am, got there about 6:00am, and watched the sun come up over HK. It was a bit foggy, but still very cool. We ended up finding a chair earlier in the night at LKF, and decided to take it with us up the 2,000ft. peak. We trammed it down at about 7:15, got to Central and went to McDonald's for breakfast. I got back around 8:00am, woke up around 11:00am and went to get my mainland visa. Friday afternoon/evening we hung out at Uniersity Hall, and ended up playing Monopoly Friday night before calling it a fairly early one. Saturday during the day Elliott and I went with Riley, an American from Vermont (goes to Tufts in Boston) to the eastern part of Kowloon, and did a roughly 8km hike through some mountains in Kowloon, including Devil's Peak. The hike was all along the Wilson Trail, and we got some awesome views of Hong Kong. Saturday night we got a good group together and headed to LFK, before going to the Kennedy Town docks to hang out and look out at the bay. Sunday I got some laundry done and sort of mulled around before heading to University Hall for the Manchester United-Arsenal match, starting at midnight local time. United won 3-1, good times. Monday I woke up pretty early, went to class in the afternoon, then went to my first "tutorials" as a HKU student. Essentially a tutorial is when you go to a classroom with a relatively small group of students and the TA and review class materials. It was pretty intense, as the local students were really, really, involved in the conversation, and were more or less fighting over the right to answer questions. I provided a few answers that I felt were more insightful than theirs, and the TA seemed to agree, as she gave them a good bit of attention, so I wasn't too far behind. Monday night Elliott and I decided to hang out in the cul-de-sac in front of our building and do homework. Essentially, we live in a cul-de-sac with 3 residence halls around it, so we just sat there with our desk chairs and laptops doing homework and chatting with all the people that we know who were coming/going from Lee Hysan/RC Lee/Wei Lun halls. We got a good deal of work done, and called it an early night. Tuesday was a rough day of classes, as it always is, with 9:30-11:30, then 3:00-6:00, including the last 2 hours being Putonghua, which is incredibly taxing mentally. After class we headed back to Hysan and had some dinner, then sat out in the cul-de-sac and finished the hw from Monday night. Again, got to see a good number of friends and just sort of hung out. People generally thought it was pretty funny that we were just hanging out in the street, but we've sort of embraced the image of eccentricity so its alright. Wednesday was a pretty good time. Ben, Henry, Cindy, Raphael, and I decided to go to Cheung Chau Island (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheung_Chau), as none of us have classes. We ended up doing a lot of hiking, including going quite literally off the beaten path when we walked along a really rocky area out to a cliff, which was pretty cool. We headed back to Hong Kong Island in the evening. After a shower and change of clothes (hiking causes people to sweat, as it turns out), we all headed out to Wan Chai for dinner. We were supposed to meet some people there around 8:00, but we didn't get there until about 8:30. Upon arrival we called the people we were meeting, only to find out they hadn't left their hall yet. We ended up just eating by ourselves then meeting them later at the place they were eating, and sort of hung out with them for a bit. It should also be noted that I'll likely never return to Wan Chai. It was undoubtedly the seediest place I've ever seen. We left there around 10:00 and headed back to Lee Hysan. Thursday was a rough day of classes, with class from 9:30-10:30 then 2:00-7:00. After class we had a magnificent dinner with Marije from Amsterdam. We went to the Wellcome market (grocery store) and bought a bunch of vegetables and a bit of ground beef and some pasta sauce, and made some excellent pasta on her floor of Lee Hysan. After that we went up to the roof to hang out with a few people. It was a relatively early night, without a whole lot of highlights for the most part. Friday I went to lunch with Cindy, then she came to mine and Elliott's class. Note on Cindy: She's a New Zealander who's boyfriend Oliver (also from NZ) is going to school at HKU for a semester. She's still on their "summer break" so she's living here with Ollie for 3 months or so. Consequently, she doesn't have class or any other real obligations during the day, so while Oliver is at class she's bored enough to come to mine and Elliott's Theory of International Trade class. Afterwards we headed into Central so Cindy could get a pair of pants I think, and so that I could pick up my China visa and Elliott could get his phone fixed. Friday night I ended up up going to Macau with Madlien, Rachael, and a group of Austrians. It was a good night, made about $700HK at the poker tables. The next day I was more or less the tour guide of Macau, though the weather was awful so we couldn't see much. We headed back to HK around 5:00pm. After that I headed to UHall for a bit, then went back to Lee Hysan to have some dumplings with Madlien, Rachael, and Dominick. After that I met up with the UHall boys to go to Chunking Mansions (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chungking_Mansions) to have some Indian food. It was a pretty seedy place over in Kowloon, but it was definitely an experience. After that I was planning on meeting with with Madlien, Rachael, and the Austrians to go to the "night market" on Kowloon, but it was too close to the United match, so I just headed back to UHall with Ben and Elliott to watch the match with some people there. 5-0 win over Portsmouth, excellent result. That brings us to this morning. It's raining out quite a bit, is very windy, and is just generally unpleasant. I'm doing laundry and writing this, while preparing to finally start reading up on the Philippines (we'll be leaving Thursday night/Friday morning at about 1:00am). Should be a fairly uneventful week for the next few days. More to come later in the week.
Internship Update: Still no word from either, completed my app for The Hague last week (with some help from Madlien to "Europeanize" it), and should be hearing about South Africa sometime relatively soon. Updates will be posted as they're heard
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