Caving in to blogging

I can't believe that I have been in Hong Kong for almost 2 months now.  Every day goes by so fast, and I am busy almost all the time, either studying, going to Quan Cais (the name for extracurriculars here), spending time with friends, or talking with people back home.  However, this weekend happened to be mid-term break, a 4 day weekend following a week full of presentations and tests, so I decided to finally catch up and start blogging (credit to Karyn for making this one).  While there's no way I can describe everything that has happened so far, I'm going to try to do a quick recap.

In August, I arrived in Hong Kong after the miserable 16 hour/4 movie flight.  At the end of the flight, I bumped into a Northwestern student who happened to have studied at Li Po Chun, my soon to be school.  He offered to tell me more about the school and show me around over lunch one day.  What a coincidence that someone from my future high school and also from one of my top university choices happened to be sitting behind me the entire flight.

Anyways, my dad and I spent the next week traveling around Hong Kong, visiting Lantau Island, Disneyland, TST, Victoria peak, and many of the other tourist destinations around the city.  It really is an incredible place, with so many skyscrapers, people, parks, and mountains.  When my tourist introduction to Hong Kong was over, I headed out to the New Territories, dropped my luggage off at school, and said goodbye to my dad (and vicariously my mom), and prepared for a completely new experience.




Over the next week, I was introduced to Li Po Chun and all its great people.  Trying to remember 250 different names from around 80 countries was initially a challenge, and I probably asked some people for there name and nationality three times.  Anyways, the campus is really nice, looking down on the ocean and the surrounding mountains, and the people are even better.  Highly motivated and social people from all around the world in one boarding school makes for an incredible school atmosphere.  Sitting through orientation lectures and activities, I started feeling more at home and making friendships that will last for these next 2 years and far beyond.

After the fun of orientation week ended, it was time for school to actually start.  I'm taking higher level Math, English, and Chem, and standard level Geography, Spanish B, and Chinese ab initio.  While all the classes are rigorous, the school runs on a policy of 70% contact time, meaning that only 70% of the instruction occurs in class so as to keep school days at a maximum of 5 hours, allowing for more involvement in Quan Cais.  On an average day, I go to class for an hour, eat breakfast, go to two more hour classes, have a 20 minute snack break, go to another class, then eat lunch and be done.

Study break at the nearby lake

 A few weeks ago, we celebrated mid-Autumn festival (but I have plenty of pictures of this on Facebook so I won't go into much detail), where we stayed at my friend Jeremy's house, eating traditional food and then visiting the fire dragon street parades.  It was a nice change of pace from school, and I really enjoyed it, even if I was not a huge fan of mooncakes, a celebratory "delicacy".

Mid-autumn festival dinner

So, this schedule has been going on for several weeks now, and I'm doing well in my classes, becoming more involved in my Quan Cais, and having an excellent time. I'll try to keep this blog updated every week or so now, so I don't have to make any more 2 month summaries.  For all of you back in the US, I hope you're having a great fall (it doesn't feel like fall here in the slightest), and see you in December!