Hey, I’m Alex, a senior majoring in Integrated Science, Math, and Biology. In about 18 hours, most of which will involve me trying to keep my knees functional while crushing myself into a plane seat, I’ll have landed in Hong Kong. In the meantime, I’ll be listening to Cantonese learning CDs in a desperate last ditch effort to pick up a few phrases before arriving. I spent the summer doing biology research at NU, and with keeping busy with that and playing a bunch of pick-up basketball at SPAC, the summer seemed to fly by. It left me just enough time to realize that I’m going to be living in a foreign country all by myself (in a sense), without knowing much of the language that is most commonly spoken there to sink in at around 2:30 AM last night, while I laid awake reading an internet forum about Hong Kong. I haven’t been out of the U.S. and Canada since middle school, and back then I was with my parents, and we were doing a structured tour. So there’s definitely a bit of trepidation, but mostly I’m excited. I chose the exchange specifically so it would be less structured and more immersive, after all.
Hong Kong is an amazing city, complete with natural beauty, huge skyscrapers, walled villages, and a unique culture, and I can’t wait to experience it. As someone who grew up Buddhist, seeing the giant Buddha on Lantau Island will be awesome, and more generally it will be interesting being in an area where Buddhism has been a part of the culture for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. I’ll be in Hong Kong for some amazing festivals as well, including the Mid-Autumn festival, where the city is lit up by beautiful lanterns and traditional moon cakes are served. HKUST is also a great school, and it has an incredibly pretty campus, based on my Google Street View sleuthing.
I’m also registered for a course at HKUST where we visit villages around Hong Kong to observe various customs, and I think that should be a really cool way to engage with the various cultures in and around Hong Kong on a bit deeper level than doing a lot of the more touristy stuff (though I’ll definitely be doing that stuff too). But I’ll talk about classes more after I’ve actually taken some. Until then, it’s back to the Cantonese CDs.