Orientation: Day 1

9:00 a.m.-9:30 a.m. Registration and Admission. (Light refreshment will be served). 200 exchange students crowded outside of the auditorium and munched on dumplings filled with meat and nuts, some sort of folded up fried thing, mini sausages with pineapples, and bite-sized cookies with a raisin on top.

9:30 a.m. - 11:00 a.m. Orientation by Office of Mainland & International Programmes (OMIP) Sat in auditorium. Went over orientation schedule and general stuff along those lines. Retained the following facts: a) Hong Kong people go to sleep very late, midnight at the earliest. Actually, I'd learned this last night. b) In the apartments across from us, a family of four will live in an apartment the size of my room. c) Avoid the red minibuses. They have no assigned route and people must call out their stop in Cantonese.

Break No break because previous presentation went over time.

11:10 a.m. - 12:50 p.m. Briefing by Registry Person from registry talked about registration.

Break Collected the T-shirt I must wear for High Table lunch tomorrow, returned to hostel.

1:00 p.m. - 2:30 p.m. Welcome Lunch. Venue: Student Canteen While waiting outside the canteen for someone in a green shirt to come along and direct us I met girls from California and Canada who frequently visit family in Hong Kong. They've been speaking Cantonese since birth. We sat at a table with students from two different universities in Beijing. I noticed one of them wearing a t-shirt with a fencer-type figure in one corner. And yes! She's been fencing for a year! She asked which weapon I fence, but since fencing vocabulary isn't taught in English lessons, "foil" meant nothing. I tried describing the target area. Maybe it worked.

Then we ate food. It just kept coming, but the only items I recognized with absolute certainty were broccoli and strawberries. The strawberries were on top of this one dish of ribs with what I learned was mayonnaise (but it tasted much sweeter) and nuts. I either liked or had neutral feelings towards everything: with the exception of a relatively large, clearish-white blob with the texture of something for scrubbing dishes with. But even that I had to sort of like simply because it was so bizarre. And of course, we drank tea.

Break I wandered around campus with the Canadian and I showed her my hostel. She hasn't moved in yet because her belongings are scattered with relatives around Hong Kong. We met a boy from, oh, I forget where he's studying, but he lives in Poland. He told us his last name means "donut." I tell him my last name is Slovak (although he knows someone in Poland with the same name) and he replied that even though he has met a good number of the exchange students he has not run into anyone from Slovakia; he has begun questioning their existence. I privately decide to enter into a quest for the Slovaks.

The Canadian and I wander around some more. We become sweaty and gross. Hong Kong is HUMID.

4:00-5:30 p.m. Group B: HK Culture & Survival Cantonese Class I (English Speaker) Nay ho, nor hai Ling nam daai hock ge gau woon saang.

5:30 p.m. - Visit the Tuen Mun Town Centre & Dinner Actually, at this point the timetable (might as well get used to the English word for "schedule". and elevators are now lifts) deviates from reality. We didn't leave for the town center until 6:30, before then we signed up for the optional tours this weekend. I decided to go with Wetland Park, a nature hike, because it seemed like the one with the most opportunities for actually meeting new people. The other options were a tour through Central, Ocean Park and Disneyland (no way I was going to the smallest of the Disneylands after Christmas in Disney World).

At 6:30 I left with group E for the Fu Tai shopping center (where I went yesterday) and from there we take an autobus--a green one--to the Town Centre. I meet two Korean girls on the bus, and inside I hang out mostly with them as we wait for nearly everyone else to buy a cell phone. I'm told I slouch too much. We also chat with our group leaders (group D and E merged so there are now two leaders).

We ate at a Vietnamese restaurant on the third floor, with a view down to the first floor where some sort of Disney Olympic playground is set up for the kids with a racetrack and a lady with a stop watch. I go with what the group leaders recommend, the noodle soup (well, all the options were noodle soup) with raw beef. Obviously I waited for the hot broth to cook the beef before eating it. Yum! Bonus: I learned how not to make a slurping mess of myself while eating it. 1) Pick up some noodles or beef with chopsticks and place in spoon. 2) Raise spoon closer to mouth while moving mouth closer to spoon. 3) Use chopsticks to put food in mouth. I realized I have not seen a fork since the airplane.

I sat with the people I'd been talking with earlier, and also a girl who turned out to be from Carroll County. Amazing. She's already set up a bank account on campus and she told me it was super easy, the bank took care of everything except signing her name.

Cultural differences while dining: In Hong Kong, people bring along their own napkins (a tad thicker than tissue paper) for wiping their hands and mouths since the restaurants don't provide them. People also frequently use toothpicks after eating.

We returned to a campus bustling with orientation activities for the freshmen. Rachel said she would be there, and by some miraculous miracle (sorry, I'm tired and can't think of a better adjective) I found her! Yay!!! She helped me find the way to the table the fencing club had set up, and I join, naturally. I see the name of one other non-Mainland exchange student (the only other person without a Chinese name or a telephone number) but I don't recognize the name. But yay! Fencing! Tuesdays and Thursdays from 7:30-10:30 p.m. in the Jackie Chan Gym (oh, and I listened to gossip about Jackie Chan at dinner) with the first meeting September 10.

Then I returned to my room and wrote this long post.