Studying Abroad at the Chinese University of Hong Kong

It has been five days since I arrived inHong Kong. Each day has been exciting and unique in its own ways. It’s incredibly exhilarating to be able to meet people from every corner of the world and explore this great city with them. Over the past five days, I have made friends with people fromCanada, Singapore,Switzerland, South Africa, Lithuania,China, Korea, Britain, Sweden,Norway, and the U.S. From talking with my fellow students, I’m learning a great deal about their countries and cultures. For the most part, people are here to meet others, travel, and enjoy life in general. I am spending every single day to the fullest with my new friends and we are brought closer each day by our shared passion for traveling and experiencing new things.

The school is literally built on a top of a mountain, which can be difficult when you are navigating on campus. It can be exhausting task just to go from our dorms to the train station to go to the city. The easiest way is usually the bus, which comes fairly consistently. I have not been particularly satisfied with the canteens since the food they serve isn’t great and the prices don’t exactly justify for its lack of quality. It does have a decent outdoors pool with an amazing view of the mountain, which I have not yet tried. This is surprising considering the weather is unbearably hot most of the time and the pool is the perfect way of escaping the heat.

Each day seems to go in a blur as we are constantly moving from one spot to another trying to make our ways through the dense crowd in the city. The weather has been incredibly kind to us, giving us no rains whatsoever for the past few days. We visited a few of the famous spots in Hong Kong including the Avenue of Stars and the racecourse. My group had an incredibly lucky day at the racecourse for at least one person won money for each of the three rounds of races we were there for. I had the fortune of winning $110 HK from the $10 I initially invested. Not knowing too much about what the stats and rankings all meant, we all basically placed our bet based on the horses' names. I always tried the pick the horse with the funniest name, and it worked out surprisingly well. The winning horse I picked in the second round was named “Amigo” and the horse I picked in the third round was named “Always Giggling”.

The population is incredibly dense here. Everywhere we visited seemed to be packed with people shopping, eating, and hanging out. The whole city feels like a giant mall to me with streets that are filled with shops, restaurants, and movie theaters. Everyday we go through at least 3-4 malls just to get to where we want to go.

So far our plan is to travel to Thailand for 4-5 days during our weekend here. More updates and pictures will come soon.