I'm Going On An Adventure!

Well the journey has finally begun..

A sad start on Monday morning after having to say goodbye to my little brother (Dan) who I'm going to miss incredibly. As excited as I was I still could not shake the feeling that I had left something behind. Normally that sort of feeling comes about. when you go away for merely a few weeks, but how do you possibly explain the same feeling for six months? Turns out I had in fact left something behind which I will go into later.

Coincidentally, the girl sitting next to me on the plane is a teacher of a primary school in Hong Kong, teaching grade two. After we got talking for a I learnt that her apartment is actually situated just down the street from where my hall is. She was nice enough to give me some tips about the area and where to and where not to eat.

I managed to get a decent amount of sleep on the plane as I had stayed up the entire night packing and had not gone to sleep at all. That evening I had a few friends and the little brother over for pizza, beers and swimming in the pool as a last catchup before I left, which was good fun. However, the best thing that happened was that I was lucky enough to catchup with a good friend whom I had lost touch and become quite distant with. It was not until we got to spend the night simply just talking like old times that I realised how much I had missed this person and relationship in general, it made not sleeping that night well worth it just to be able to rekindle our long lost friendship. I hope when I return we can continue to be good friends again, it would mean the world to me.
Its unfortunate that sometimes it takes something as big as leaving the country for six months for you both to act on doing the right thing, almost as if we may never see that person again. I guess it makes you wonder deeper as to why we do not always live and act like this as if we may not be here tomorrow and if that truly was the case what would we do in such a moment or say to the people we most care about? It sort of mildly changes your perspective on the relationships in your life. (By the way, this is not supposed to be a deep or reflective blog of my feelings but I guess this was relatively important to me).

Moving on..So I arrived in Hong Kong airport only to discover that I had left my iPad at Brisbane airport, as well as my cheap pair of Ray-Bay Wayfarer copies..me being the genius that I am. Suddenly not getting any sleep the night before no longer seemed like such a bright idea. Luckily (with the help of my little brother Dan and the 'Find My iPhone/iPad' app) I was able to track down my iPad and discover that it had been handed in to the 'Lost & Found'.

I was pretty excited walking out of that airport, not knowing what lied ahead or what scenes I was to be exposed to. I caught a taxi to my hall and was greeted by a small room that smelt like cigarettes but soon adjusted to the small space that I was to share with two other roommates and basic kitchen  bathroom/amenities. At the end of the day as long as there is a warm bed and hot shower I am all set, especially for this freezing cold weather. My roommate's name is Albert and he is from Armenia. Albert is studying chemistry at The University of Hong Kong (HKU) as a postgraduate student. He's a good guy with a pretty good sense of humour and surprisingly knows the local nightlife and people quite well.

My other roommate arrived a few days later. Jeremy is twenty studying business as well from Perth at The University of Western Australia. Albert found it quite funny that he has two young Australian undergraduates as his roommates and I quote from the other night out at the clubs, we are the "best roommates he has ever had".

I had a great dinner experience with Thomas (fellow student from Griffith University) and his French roommate, Tom when we went to a Korean BBQ buffet in Kennedy Town. After a few days I also managed to finally find a good deal for getting a mobile number in Hong Kong, now its just a matter of remembering and being able to regurgitate that eight digit number when people ask for it, lets be honest..Facebook these days is much easier. At least with Facebook if you forget the persons name you can remember it by looking at their profile picture. This has been happening so much since I arrived as I have been meeting so many other exchange students from the United States, Canada, Australia, Sweden, Norway..the list goes on. We have all been bonding together really well and it is quite overwhelming but great as you get to meet and go out with so many different and interesting students. Its evident that the Canadians dominate the exchange students here, there are so many and a lot of them are actually asian decent which is surprising as I have been mistaking many of them for locals of Hong Kong (at least until you here the that strong Canadian accent). Such nice people though!

The University itself is quite big and very disjointed. Being on a hill it is split-levelled and can be very confusing to get around. I have been Skyping quite a few friends back home and using FaceTime with the little brother and Dad to chat. There a lot of people I definitely miss but just being able to chat with them has kept me grounded.


One of the funniest people I have had the pleasure of meeting has been Owen. Owen is from England and is studying economics (like me), also not enjoying it terribly (like me). We have got along quite well from the start and I can tell that he is no doubt going to be a good friend in the months ahead. The two of us got stuck in a lift today in the new building at uni. The lift would not go up and down but the door decided to keep opening on the floor we were currently on which looked like a library for postgraduate students as it was dead silent. In the silence the lift we were in decided to beep and speak quite loudly which floor we were on continuously. However, we could not get out as there was a metre perimeter glass gate around the lift doors, secured by student card access (which we have not received yet). So we ended up having everyone starring at us making all this commotion until finally the receptionist came over and let us proceed down the stairs, only to have the lift still opening and closing and making its floor announcements as it did so.


Last night about 20-30 of us exchange students all had pre-drinks at Sara and Sandra's hall (Canadian girls), before heading out to Lan Kwai Fong (Hong Kong's famous strip of nightclubs and bars). We had a great night going from club to club and amazingly being able to purchase drinks from 7-Eleven (now termed 'Club 7-Eleven') and drink them right outside the nightclub we were about to head into. Doing this 
in Australia would result in a hefty fine. The night got even better when our roommate Albert came out and took us to at least four or five different nightclubs, somehow getting us through without being a single entry fee or having to stand in line. I'm not sure what was funnier, finding out that Jack (another exchange student) had tripped and rolled down the concrete hilled road or getting to orientation this morning to find all of us exchange students either just hitting the hungover stage or still drunk from the night/morning before.


I am pretty excited for tomorrow as I am going on a hike in the morning to The Peak, which is the mountain overlooking Hong Kong Island and Kowloon. I will be taking my SLR camera with me and hope that there is minimal smog so I can get some nice shots from what I truly imagine will be a bird's eye view of this amazing city.