Bad Apples and Buddha

Due to my insomnia amid the continuous blaring of off-key Mandarin opera and stale cigarette smoke, I found myself aimlessly staring at the walls of the sterile sleeper train cabin.  I’d already crammed a few dozen Chinese characters and finished reading The Heart of Darkness, so in terms of onboard “entertainment”, my options were sadly limited.  Yet the more I stared at the walls, the more I began thinking of possible alternatives: count yaks outside, scroll through my camera until its already low battery died, or maybe restart my blog.  The third of those seemed the most attractive at the moment, so with that in mind, I began typing.  Yes, I’ve been terribly irregular with my updates, but since I had a bit (aka 9 hours) of free time, I figured I could at least describe my journey through Yunnan, China over the course of the last week.

Last Saturday, I presented my newly minted 10-year Chinese visa to the glare of the border officer and crossed into an oddly deserted Shenzhen.  The approaching Chinese New Year holidays meant that that economic boomtown was oddly depleted of migrant workers, and so my group of five casually strolled the empty streets in search of renminbi and coffee.  Both were easy enough to find, so we ended up killing time in the city.  Eventually, we decided to catch the subway over to the airport, when we had the rude awakening that the phone we had been checking for time was an hour late.  Realizing that we only had about an hour to clear the airport, we sprinted through the terminal, and after a brief battery related interrogation, arrived at our gate.  Our rush turned out to be futile, though, as our flight ended up being delayed nearly two hours.  We eventually boarded the plane, and I ended up having a great 2 hours talking with fellow passengers in Mandarin after they realized I could kind of read the inflight magazine in Chinese.

Gotta love Chinese massive infrastructure projects

When I hopped off the flight in Yunnan’s capital of Kunming, I proceeded to the baggage claim area, grabbed my bag and sat down along with two of my friends to wait for our other two friends, who were placed on the next flight from Shenzhen.  We waited, and occasionally strolled around in the cold, dry air (a nice break from Hong Kong), and yet they didn’t arrive.  Turns out their flight was delayed even longer than ours, so at around 1:30 a.m., we managed to reunite and reach the taxi stand.

Unfortunately, our reunion didn’t even last 10 minutes.  At the taxi stand, we were forced to split into two groups, and so we threw our bags in two different vehicles, showed the drivers the same address, and hoped for the best.  Our place, the IC serviced apartments, was supposedly a 40 minute ride away, and so for a while, my friend Hannah and I made awkward Chinese conversation with the cab driver about British soccer/football, Michigan weather, and who knows what else.  After 40 minutes, he dropped us off, but at a very different IC hotel, that is, the Intercontinental.  Exhausted and frustrated, we stumbled over to concierge and tried to find our way to our actual hotel.  Turns out it was 40 minutes away, and too tired to continue, we called up Klaus, Elena, and Pyone about our diversion.  We tried to negotiate with the late shift hotel workers to reduce the room charge a bit, but as that didn’t work, I ended up losing a good portion of my summer work money in order to crash in their overly comfortable rooms. 

The site of my food coma aka the Intercontinental

After struggling a bit to leave the wallet-killing down pillows, I woke up in the morning and decided to utilize every complimentary amenity that I had unfortunately (?) paid for.  So for the following three hours before check out, I ended up swimming in my gym shorts, overheating in the hot-tub and sauna, and feasting on the endless breakfast buffet.  When my Cinderella story ended as the clock hit 12, I lugged my bags out onto the streets and with my entire group proceeded to the dingy long-distance bus terminal.

We managed to find a fairly cheap bus to Dali, an interesting backpackeresque mountain retreat four hours west of Kunming.  When we arrived, we toured the old walled city, ate adequately safe street food (a bit of an oxymoron in China), sat through odd tea ceremonies and checked into a nice guesthouse.  It may not have been the Intercontinental, but that was a bit of a given considering our increasingly remote location and our increasingly empty wallets.  The next day, we continued our exploration on bike to the stunning Tang Three Pagodas complex.  Over a hillside, dozens of giant temples and pagodas sprawled, with an incredible view of snowcapped mountains in the background.  When the time came to depart Dali, we found another bus towards another ancient city, Lijiang. 

Around Dali

Yet the modern Chinese definition of "ancient" puzzles me.  As soon as UNESCO awards a World Heritage designation to a location, for example the old city of Lijiang, thousands of identical, tacky stores spring up and endless signs in broken English materialize like “AAAA Scenic Spot” and “Auspicious Fortune, Cultural Heritage”.  Yes, the architecture is still quite nice, but the glimmering neon lights, karaoke bars, and McDonalds definitely detract.  Nonetheless, we embraced this new China and entered a deserted karaoke place, where I managed to perform a beautiful/ear-bleeding rendition of Beyoncé’s “If I Were a Boy”.

???

That night, our new guesthouse managed to defy the trend of the overly gaudy, non-historic historic district.  Located in a quiet alley, our inn was a traditional courtyard style building overlooking the 15,000+ ft. Jade Dragon Snow Mountain.  But before we could even relax, a minor disaster unfolded: our sink exploded.  The hot water pipe turned into a minor geyser, until I played plumber for a bit and cut off the water supply.  Nonetheless, the really nice hotel owners felt sympathy for us and in apology gave us a complimentary room.  Just as in the Intercontinental case, our brief misfortune quickly reversed.  The next morning, we visited another temple complex, before meeting up with our driver for the next four days for our expedition of the mountains and valleys of northwestern Yunnan.

The view from one of our rooms

"Archaeology"

We spent that day along the banks of the upper Yangtze River, where we visited an archaeology site at the first major bend of the river and drove through and hiked the incredibly deep Tiger Leaping Gorge.  I would post the video of what may have been the most terrifying drive of my life, but one, I don’t know how to do that, and two, I’d rather not frighten some of my family members.  Parts of the road were destroyed (but hey, we’re used to that in Michigan), and no safety rails existed to stop cars from tumbling down hundreds of feet to the turquoise waters of the Yangtze.  Regardless, we arrived at the trailhead alive, and then hiked the three hour circuit to the base of the valley and back.  After sitting in the spray of the not-yet polluted river and relaxing, we returned and drove over to our next destination: Shangri-La.

A house near the Yangtze

Songzanlin Monastery

The city of Shangri-La has really only been the city of Shangri-La for a few years now.  Supposed historians and Chinese tourist officials “officially” declared the city of Zhongdian to be the inspiration of James Hilton’s novel “Lost Horizon”, and as a result renamed the city to spur tourism in the mainly Tibetan city.  This blaze of tourism led to a literal inferno, as most of the old town eventually burnt down due to faulty electric wiring among the proliferation of hotels.  Nonetheless, the remainder of the city and its monasteries were totally worthy of their hyped-up name.  We were lucky enough to visit the largest monastery in Yunnan, Songzanlin monastery, an enormous hillside compound, on the first day of Chinese New Year, and so we managed to explore the place in relative peace, as most Chinese families were celebrating the holiday at home with family.

Shangri-La

We were also lucky enough to celebrate Chinese New Year at the home of a local Tibetan family.  Our driver had close friends in the town, and they kindly invited us for a feast of yak, pork, and who knows what else at their cozy place.  When we finally left and our stomachs nearly popped like the Lijiang sink, we stopped by a local store and purchased some sparklers to celebrate in traditional Chinese New Year style.  The sparklers were far brighter than anticipated, and after a while we went to our hotel and sipped on ginger tea, played cards, and chatted until midnight.  The city rang with mortar-like explosions until I was concerned that Shangri-La would burn down again, but eventually the surroundings quieted down and we went to sleep.

Chinese-style sparklers, also I'm pretty much a wizard

Beyond Shangri-La

Hiking China

The next day, we planned to continue our adventure to the border of Yunnan, Tibet, and Myanmar, aka the 22,000 ft. Mt. Kawagerbo.  However, our driver informed us about the potential dangers of the high road between Shangri-La and the mountain, so we re-planned a bit.  We called the boss of our driver’s agency, a bitter woman with an overly sweetened name, Apple, to explain our change of plans.  She gave us around five obscure plans, and then repeatedly expressed how “disappointed” she was that we had arrived a little late to breakfast and how we made her rebook our itinerary.  Eventually, the conversation was going nowhere, so we decided to head out to the subtropical valley of Liming, where we hiked a bit and tried to find the critically endangered Yunnan golden monkeys.  We didn’t end up encountering the monkeys, but like everywhere else in the trip, the natural surroundings were excellent.  Klaus and I took a 3-hour hike on top of the sandstone peaks of the park while the others slept, and we reluctantly left the park to return to the city of Lijiang, where our sleeper train would depart.

Random Chinglish signpost from the park

Lijiang devolved into a slight logistical nightmare when our favorite tour advice giver, Apple, decided to call us back.  She spewed complaints about our reluctance to pay her online without any physical evidence of a company, our uneasiness to book hotels without TripAdvisor ratings, and our decision to pay our driver at the end of the week instead of the beginning.  At that point, she told her driver to stop driving us in Lijiang, even though we were 30 minutes from the train station.  But again, everything worked out.  We found ourselves in a very nice park, returned to the old town for a nice walk, and managed to affordably split the bill on a minibus towards the train station with some tourists from Xinjiang province. 

Adam in the garden post-Apple

Random unlucky events happened all throughout the trip, and yet they always ended for the better. I had an excellent week through Yunnan province, and I was thoroughly surprised by the mix of climates, cultures, and people I met along the way. 

And with that, I’ll end my too long, train time-killing blog.

The Shortest Longest Summer

As my family’s car sped through the countryside towards Chicago, I continued my chicken-scratch of Chinese character practice on my dollar store whiteboard.  Taking a break from the endless lines, curves, and boxes of a language that had consumed a large portion of my summer; I looked out the window for a vista of my state, which I would soon be exiting for over 10 months. Finally, my departure prompted me to pick up blog writing again, which I had abandoned around finals.  I figured that I might as well be semi-productive on the car ride and attempt to summarize some of my life in the past months.  As much as I would like to start my narrative with the last weeks of LPC year one, describing finals and losing my second year friends to the corners of the world would not be a story that I would enjoy writing or reading. Also, many of the highlights are already summarized in my friend Arzu’s blog, arzucanaskin.com, in case you want to read about those busy weeks.  So I instead decided to start my story with my re-entry to the US, for what would both be my longest and shortest summer ever.

When the wheels of the plane touched down in Detroit, I was quite jetlagged, but the excitement of return gave me enough energy to surprise some of my friends, get ice cream, answer a barrage of my parent’s questions, before inevitably passing out with “natural sleep supplements” aka sleeping pills.  The next day, I did some planning for the upcoming months ahead.  For the first time ever, my summer started in May, meaning I would technically have my longest summer ever, a fact that I debate now that those three months have passed in a blink of an eye.   Anyways, in my summer plan, I realized I would have to balance schoolwork (thanks LPC for assigning 4 major assignments during this time), college apps, friends, family, graduation at Northville High, a job, travel, and other unforeseen plans. I’m not sure if balance would be the right word, considering the issues I’ve faced in the first two items on the list. 

As I readjusted to life without three other roommates and 90% humidity, my first two concerns were finding a job and graduation at Northville.  Regarding graduation at a school that I hadn’t attended for a year, I had completed enough credits in my three years plus some previous summer work and a transferred English credit from LPC to give me the same graduation status as my peers in the Northville Class of 2014.  I was really glad that I could walk the stage with my friends that I had known for the past 12 years and receive a diploma from the school that had taught me so much and had given me the opportunities that led me on my path to Hong Kong and beyond. 

My family at Northville's graduation

Senior All Night Party Hypnotism

When the actual ceremony came, my twin, a class officer, read my name (incorrectly of course), and I picked up my diploma, shook the hand of my principal, and later nearly lost my cap in the sea of thrown hats.  After that ended, I was pleasantly surprised that I only had to take a handful of quality pictures, instead of the repetitive mess of selfies and flashes that characterized the semi-formal school events I attended in Hong Kong.  Leaving the parking lot was not nearly as pleasant; instead, I was gridlocked in my parking spot until a middle age man gave us an opening in traffic after 20 minutes in order to make a pervy pass at my sister.  We sped away from him, ate with one of my closest friend’s family, and then attended the Senior All Night Party, a lock-in extravaganza allowing the Class of 2014 to be together one last time.  For the next night, the school was transformed, with a makeshift casino, endless food, odd games like Boxer Bingo (you win a pair of boxers if you win bingo), and performances like a hypnotist show.  The hypnotism show was quite bizarre and ended with 20 grads zombie-walking around the auditorium, caressing random people.  I was lucky enough to end my Senior All Night Party experience by being death-stared at by one of them while my elbow was touched, how fun! 

My grandma looking at the senior collages before the party

Back to the topic of job-hunting, I decided that I needed a source of income if I wanted to be able to afford traveling and to continue saving for college.  Within a week or two, I was lucky enough to find a job at a nearby lighting store, Ray’s Electric.  For the rest of the summer, I spent 25 hours a week assembling and disassembling fixtures, swinging from chandeliers, cutting wire and stocking boxes.  Minus the swinging from chandelier part, because that probably would have gotten me fired.  Even without that entertainment, I still enjoyed the job, because the coworkers were great and the work was much less repetitive than other alternatives like flipping burgers and accidentally getting fried by flying oil at 麦当劳 (McDonald’s). 

During my non-work days, I tried to hang out with friends and get a little homework done.  In general, the first took priority, but I figured out an effective new way of studying: basic white girl Chinese.  In order to do that, I would take my Chinese vocab list, sit out in the sun in my family’s chaise lounges or the local pool, and repeatedly scribble words.  To others, it might appear like I was tanning, but at least I learned a few more words of Chinese.

Driving selfie at the grocery store race

Outside school and actual work, I spent some quality time with friends before many of them left Northville for trips to South Korea, Germany, camps, and even Hong Kong.  In the weeks I had with my friends here, I managed to fill the time with a mix of activities: visiting the largest amusement park in the world in terms of rides, Cedar Point; going to a Tigers baseball game; grad party hopping, more mundane things like FIFA and GTA; or in times of extreme boredom, electric cart racing around the local grocery store.  Other times, when my friends in Northville were busy or gone, I would Skype at odd hours with my LPC friends. 

One day, I was lucky enough to meet up with one of my LPC friends, without a computer screen and a thousand miles in between us.  My Palestinian-American friend Deema was in the Detroit area for  an Iftar dinner/fundraiser for her dad’s charity, the Palestinian Children Relief Fund (PCRF).  We wandered around a mall for an hour or two, caught up on life, attempted to access the roof of a random hotel, and then finally went to the fundraiser.  At the dinner, several speakers talked about the current situation in Gaza and Syria, and a few children maimed by bombs who received free medical care in the US through the PCRF were present.  Since its inception, the PCRF has flown over 1000 children to the US, and arranged many medical supplies and doctors to travel to Palestine.  Given all the media attention surrounding the situations, it was much more eye-opening to see some of the affected children directly, and hear about a charity that has done so much. 

After the dinner

While I could write much more about the summer, I’d rather not turn my entire summer into a soap opera, or go into endless detail regarding every event and person I’ve met in the past three months. Hopefully, this entry has filled in some of the gaps since my last entry, and I’ll now be encouraged to post on a slightly more regular basis.  Most likely, I’ll recap my end-of-summer family vacation to Northern Michigan in the next post, and then take a hiatus as I go on my next adventure: a pre-second-year trip to Guatemala with my friend Esteban.  I really can’t believe how fast these summer months have went, and within two weeks, I’ll be back to life in Hong Kong!

An Amalgamation of Unrelated Events

The last few weeks have been quite difficult: a constant stream of tests, essays, and any other possible assignment that teachers could throw at us.  That being said, there were plenty of other activities outside the classroom to distract me, and a tremendously long Easter break (aka a four day weekend).  If I have time in the upcoming weeks, I'll expand on the experiences, but for now, I'll abridge them into a few sentences and pictures.  Since my last post, LPC hosted another cultural evening (Latin American this time), I went to a few beaches, found an overpriced but delicious brunch place, celebrated Easter, binged on chocolate, and then binged on Game of Thrones.  Its a miracle that I even have time to write this post, but only since I'm waiting for my laundry to be done and thus I have exactly 32 minutes.

LACE (Latin American Cultural Evening) was nearly a month ago, and it was a fun night of comida, amigos, y bebidas (food, friends, and drinks).  Actually, sin las bebidas (minus the drinks), but I felt that Spanglishing was necessary considering my gringo costume I had to wear for the event.  All in all, the event went really well, and all the Latinos worked really hard to make the best show possible.

The next weekend, some friends and I took a junk boat around Sai Kung, the eastern region of Hong Kong, visiting beaches and waterfalls and relaxing in general.

Chillin on a boat the Hong Kong way

The weekend after, I decided to celebrate Palm Sunday with some of my friends at the Anglican church in Central.  It was really packed, and it was a really good first church service in Hong Kong for me.  Afterwards, we didn't know what to do with our extra palm fronds, so instead of wasting them, we just awkwardly walked around the city with giant leaves.  After wandering with our palm fronds for a little, we ended up at some back alley Western breakfast place, named the Flying Pan, with a 20 minute line to eat there.  It was definitely worth the wait, and I ended up with French toast, pancakes, waffles, bacon, egg, ham, and endless coffee on one beyond American sized plate.




After a good Palm Sunday and too much studying the week after, I made it to last Thursday with only minor sleep deprivation.  Needless to say, that sleep deprivation became much worse after a series of second year pranks.  At LPC, the second years get two weeks off to study for IB exams, thus that day was their last day ever of in-class work.  In reality, they do very little work, instead scheming on how to prank the first years for their equivalent of senior pranks.  Thus, that Maundy Thursday turned into a day of betrayal, with plenty of egg and flour thrown at the first years, combined with 5 am cold showers and forced animal reenactments.  While the first years were in general fine with these pranks, the administration became quite offended when they woke up to the cacophony.

Some would call it hazing... 

Finally, the long weekend arrived, and I was able to take a long deserved break.  Besides the hours of work for the three major assignments due right after break, that was mostly true.  I spent my first day hiking and enjoying the sun in a different region of Sai Kung.  However, my friend Arzu, a much more devoted blogger than I, has already fully outlined the day, so she told me I could just add the link to her blog to summarize the day.

http://arzucanaskin.com/2014/04/22/surf-n-turf/

One note: I didn't actually get stuck on sea cliffs.  I just had to carry everyone else's bags, shoes and the camera with all her wonderful pictures, meaning that I had to double back every few meters so nothing was left behind.  In the end I was frustrated and threw the shoes off the cliff,  but they ended up in a tidal pool, instead of the beach.

Anyways, the rest of the weekend went swimmingly, and I returned to the church in Central plus the Flying Pan for an Easter brunch.  It was somewhat different to spend my Easter so far away from home, but I received a package with a nice note and chocolate from my family to compensate.  Besides chocolate, I ate pretty well over the course of the weekend.  The cafeteria cheaped out for the break, only serving brunch and dinner, with less options due to the deserted campus, and so I went out for Egyptian food with my Iraqi roommate, Thai food with my Burmese, Dutch, and East Timorean friends, and pizza with the hiking group.  In addition, I decided to start watching Game of Thrones to make up for the lack of people on campus.  After 2 episodes a day, I finally finished the first season today.  I unfortunately had a reality check that I will not be able to start up the second season, because winter (I mean finals) is coming.

After my short, forced summary of this month's events, I have to return to learning Chinese and preparing a presentation that determines a large portion of my IB grade in English, not to mention my laundry which most likely has been thrown on the ground by someone due to my lack of punctuality.  Happy Easter, and I really can't believe how fast this school year continues to go!

Theater, Cramming, Macklemore

The last three weeks following Project Week have been a strange roller coaster of having too much work or the exact opposite.  I spent the entirety of the first week preparing for a play, the next week cramming for 7 major assignments, and the last week with the strange feeling of negligible schoolwork.  To top it off, I ended up meeting Macklemore after randomly ending up in the front row of his concert.  After this slightly eclectic collection of events, I decided to make another incoherent blog post to portray another month in the jumbled life of a LPCer.

An ad for the play

Immediately following Project Week, I realized I had to immediately transition back to an overbooked schedule.  The IP (short for Independent Project, which is a student directed play), which I had begun rehearsing for a few weeks earlier, had to complete rehearsals for performances on Thursday and Friday. This play, titled "The Accidental Death of an Anarchist", revolves around a maniac's attempts to infiltrate a ridiculous Italian police force that is trying to cover up a suspicious suicide during an interrogation. Unfortunately for the cast, we had only rehearsed Scenes 1 and 2 of Act One and still had to learn the other two-thirds of the play.  This meant that schoolwork and extracurriculars were put on the back-burner in order to rehearse from 4-11 each day.  Somehow, we managed to more or less learn the script by our dress rehearsal with the theater teacher on Wednesday.  As an idiotic amateur police officer, the majority of my actions revolved around being bossed around or injured, and my actual lines were generally short and stupid. For the dress rehearsal, we accidentally skipped a page and a half, but the teacher's comment was something like, "I really like this and great job on shortening it for this school".  If only we did that intentionally. The next days we performed, and somehow we pulled the show off remarkably well given the time frame.  I'd say my first play in high school went pretty well, at least better than the embarrassing plays of elementary school where I was forced to wear a genie costume for an hour.

The one highlight of the week

After celebrating the survival of IP and a friend's birthday at the tallest restaurants in Kowloon, I had another realization about the upcoming week. Coincidentally, my Geo test, Geo presentation, Chem test, Math test, English presentation, English in-class essays, and TOK presentation were all in the upcoming week.  With all of that, I effectively locked myself in my room and ruined the rest of my weekend with studies, while the gloomy weather outside reflected my mood.  I pushed through the week though, and by Friday, I was quite relieved about the upcoming free-time as a result of finishing so much.  For the first time ever, I had absolutely no homework, so I spent a weekend watching movies, sleeping, and spending time with friends.  I got a few evil glares though when people asked what I had to do for the weekend and I replied honestly with "nothing".

Some of the delegates

The stra
nge weekend of nothingness progressed into another regular school week.  I had enough time to finish assignments, but I was able to stay more balanced with life too.  On Wednesday, we technically had a day off of school, but in reality it was dedicated to a school wide Model UN (MUN).  If you don't know what MUN is, it's a simulation of the processes of the UN on issues of global importance, where individuals serve as delegates for different nations in a day of debate.  I was the Nicaraguan delegate, and in my committee, we focused on the issues of organized crime in Latin America.  At the end of the day, they gave superlatives as "awards" for our work.  I earned the honorable title of "most likely to be nuked", most likely due to my fact checking of the Costa Rican delegate and proposed economic sanctions on the US.

The next day was another interesting day.  A few weeks prior, a friend invited me to attend the Macklemore and Ryan Lewis concert for that day, so I'd been really excited to go for a while.  After a day of school, some beach volunteering, and a quick dip in the pool, I headed out to Asia World Expo, nearly an hour and a half away by MTR, intending to meet up with my friend Sam.  Along the way, the MTR was shut down for technical issues (a rarity considering the near perfection of Hong Kong's public transit), so I had to find a bus, and I was worried I would be late.  On the bus, a group of students from a different international school were chatting, and somehow we ended up making conversation.  One of the student's asked me if I was from LPC and if I knew his sister who went there.  When he said her name was Sam (the same Sam I was meeting up with), I had one of those "small world" moments.  Anyways, we made our way to the concert hall, and I managed to find her, and my other friends, Abraham, Vincent, and Dele.

Waving the Hong Kong flag

As we waited for the concert to start, I realized that we had a minor issue.  Apparently the queuing system for our ticketing section wasn't first come first serve, instead based on the order of ticket purchase.  Due to a collection of ticket numbers ranging from 50 to 2000 in our group alone, we decided to just sit together at point 50 so we wouldn't be separated.  What this meant, though, was as we rushed into the hall, we were in the front row, exactly in the middle.  This prime location allowed us to be within 15 feet of the stage, with some of the best views in the room.  The atmosphere of the concert was incredible, and my first concert ever continued to get better and better as Macklemore performed.  Between the live band, Macklemore's music, and the excitement of the crowd, I will definitely remember the event.  At two points in the concert, the security approached us, telling us to be prepared because Macklemore would start crowd surfing where we were standing.  Ironically, after we passed Macklemore into another section of the crowd during "Can't Hold Us", a group of five foot tall Hong Kongers literally couldn't hold him, and he nearly fell.

Before the crowd-surfing failure

Near the end of the concert, one of the security guards approached me, noticing my Michigan t-shirt (which I wouldn't have wore if I hadn't went swimming before), and asked me if I was from the area.  Saying yes, we then had a conversation about the Detroit area, since he was from there too.  He asked me what I was in Hong Kong for, and after a little, he asked if my friends and I wanted to get backstage passes.  Needless to say, I accepted, and as soon as the concert ended, we were thrilled to get to meet Macklemore, Ryan Lewis, and Wanz.  After a fifteen minute motivation speech and Q&A session with the singer of "Thrift Shop"'s chorus, Wanz, we were ushered into the room where Macklemore and Ryan Lewis were.  Despite only having a few seconds to chat with them, it was pretty remarkable that I was able to randomly meet them due to the shirt I was wearing.  After leaving the concert hall, we were all pretty stunned by the turn of events that evening, and we returned to LPC, with the memories of the night ingrained.

After a semi-productive Friday, I entered another weekend.  It's been pretty good, with only a few minor complaints like the fact that my March Madness bracket is getting destroyed and I have an entire English book to read by Monday.  In the near future, there will be the Latin American cultural evening, and a chartered boat trip with the return of warm weather.  Anyways, these last weeks have been pretty awesome, (f*ing awesome to quote "Thrift Shop") and time has continued to fly by during my first year in Hong Kong.

AFESIP Project Week Cambodia

Last week was Project Week, a week filled with many unique and memorable experiences as I traveled and worked in Cambodia.  Li Po Chun offers each student an annual trip during this week to countries throughout East and Southeast Asia to volunteer and experience the local culture. For me, I have been involved in the school's anti-human trafficking organization, Students Against Slavery (SAS), so I was placed in the trip for students to volunteer at shelters for girls who were rescued from sexually abusive homes or brothels.  There were two shelters ran by a Cambodian charity named AFESIP, one with older, more visibly traumatized girls in Phnom Penh, and the other for primary and secondary school age children, located in the more rural village of Kampong Cham.  Most of the guys, including myself, went to the younger center, due to the comparatively lower degree of male mistrust there. I found my stay at this center, Somaly House, to be very inspirational and moving, and I still can't even begin to imagine the horrors that so many of the girls there had to face.  One disclaimer about this likely text-laden blog post: I can't post any pictures of the girls or the center because I signed a confidentiality agreement and it would be potentially dangerous to several of the girls under the protection of the shelter, and it would also lead to me being sued.

The closest we were to well rested the entire trip

Going back a few days, my group left LPC at the blissful time of 5:30 am, foreshadowing for the upcoming week of waking up at 5 am everyday.  We piled on the bus, slept, went to the airport, and then boarded the short flight to Phnom Penh.  Two and a half hours later, we touched down and separated into two groups.  The sunny, dry, 90 degree Fahrenheit (30 something Celsius, but I still don't understand) weather was great, and my group quickly set out.  After some time of red dirt, lane-free driving which would have failed a driving safety test in the US within a minute, we bought our last non rice meal for the week at a local market.  It was a slight culture shock for me though, because as I bought food, I was surrounded by several gaunt children all asking for food or money.  This continued even after we left, with other people trying to clean our car, even standing in the middle of oncoming traffic to try to stop us.

Rambutan sales at the market

The safe roads of Cambodia

Later that afternoon, we arrived at Somaly House and were instantly surrounded by several dozen girls.  A few of the second years on the trips were returning for a second or even third time, so the girls were happy to see their overseas friends again.  They even started welcoming the newcomers as if they already knew us for quite some time.  The majority of the day was spent with introductions, Khmer and Western clapping games, and other lighthearted fun.  At some point, a few of us started offering piggy back rides, and by the end, we were just exhausted circus rides. Eventually, we settled down for dinner, and then had a dance party.  The party was the first of several wake up calls for me over the course of the trip, since it was really startling to see elementary school girls grinding and twerking as if they were the dancers in a rap video or the VMAs.  By a combination of our own ridiculously horrible dance moves and the more kid oriented songs that we tried to play, this issue slightly decreased, but even by the last night's dance party, it still occurred sporadically.

The only legal picture from the center aka art therapy gone wrong 

The next few days, we started settling into a routine of planned, but more often unplanned, events and activities.  Several of the art and drama students arraigned some art and theater therapy sessions, for example the girls would draw a good and a bad face mask and then would act out each of the masks.  While some of the youngest girls did not understand these activities, in general, the girls became quite involved and were more expressive of their past emotions, even though they did not tell the full details.  Apparently this was not the case in the older girls center, as there was a tear filled therapy session where they openly discussed many of the deaths and abuses that had occurred in their lives. However, outside of the theater therapy sessions in both centers, girls would occasionally discuss their pasts, but again, it would be a breach of confidentiality to share these stories.  Needless to say, no human should have to deal with the kind of evils that these friendly, smart, and emotionally strong girls have faced in their childhood.

As the week continued, the bond between everyone continued to strengthen.  While a few girls would remain out of sight studying, the vast majority would confidently approach any of us whether to talk, play, or learn.  Along the way, many impromptu English-Khmer lessons occurred.  We would help read books with the older girls or sing the alphabet song with the younger girls.  (One minor digression, it was difficult for me to sing the ABC song because every time we arrived at the last letter of the alphabet, people would sing "zed", but I would unknowingly say "zee", and then I would receive an awkward stare for confusing the other girls).  At the same time, the girls would share a bit of their language with us, and despite our botched pronunciation, they were always enthusiastic and supportive of our broken sentences.  I only now remember "I want to eat mango", "Don't touch me", and "I don't speak Khmer", but the memories of working with the girls will linger much longer.

After the week flew by, we realized that our visit at the center was unfortunately drawing to a close. We had a final dinner and performance, and then we took several minutes to thank and wish well upon our wonderful hosts at the center.  The realization that several of us might never be able to return to the centers and see the girls again was too much for a few of the LPC students, and some of the girls were afraid of abandonment again and loss, and thus some crying began.  The next morning, these emotions intensified, and when us LPCers were forced to board the buses, it was quite a depressing atmosphere.  Due to the likely possibility of returning next year, I was not quite as saddened, but at the same time I know that I will miss them all, and the transition back to school will be slightly more difficult this time.  Finally, we waved goodbye, and our bus pulled away towards Phnom Penh again.

Upon arrival in the city, there were automatically many plans for our short stay in the city.  We ditched our bags at a guesthouse and were shuttled to the headquarters of an anti-trafficking NGO named APLE, which focuses on the legal prosecution of foreign pedophiles involved in Cambodian sex tourism.  We had an interesting two hour presentation and question session on the state of trafficking in the country and about APLE operations.  The sad reality of sex trafficking in Cambodia was already well known to us from our visits to the shelter, but this discussion added much to a more precise knowledge of the situation.  To continue with this issue, I was later talking to some friends on a different project in Cambodia who had to deal with some traffickers who attempted to buy her and another of our friends.  However, when they figured out that she was 19, they did not want here anymore because she was "too old".  On the other hand, they were completely interested and serious about the transaction for the 16 year-old girl.  Luckily, they managed to regroup with some others and leave before the situation decayed.

After the presentation, we again boarded the bus and headed out to a site called the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum.  Upon first entering the gates and reading the signs, I was quite impacted.  Over the four years of the Khmer Rouge, this former school was turned into a concentration and torture camp, just as every other school was shut down nationally.  This one, also known as S-21, was a top-secret camp that held around 20,000 people during the regime, yet only seven of the documented residents are known to have survived.   One especially creepy aspect of the museum was the immediate connection to the past.  Very few renovations have occurred, and the original beds and torture equipment are placed in the identical positions as they were when the tortured corpses were found, with no glass protection walls, just a picture of the deathbeds and corpses upon liberation of the camp 40 years ago. The endless rows of victims pictures was quite haunting too, and by the time we left the site, I was again quite shaken by human atrocities.

Cells at Tuol Sleng

The barbed wire used to prevent prisoners jumping to death

Khmer architecture

Despite the relatively depressing day, I was still able to appreciate the beauty and culture of Phnom Penh. Architecturally, there are many grand Khmer pagodas and stupas, impressive restored colonial buildings, and also the beginnings of glass high-rises after a decade of steady economic development.  In addition, the food of the city was quite delicious, with an interesting mix of French and Southeast Asian food, along with a wide variety of other types of food.  Strangely enough, the touristy waterfront was lined with stores like "Happy Pizza" and "Magical Herb Pizza", all of which were filled with a sketchy collection of people.  While we did end up getting some pizza elsewhere, the only herb involved was actual basil. We closed our night eating ice cream, visiting the night market, then boarding a tuk-tuk and traveling near some monuments.

A crowded Buddhist temple with plenty of incense

Eating ice cream under a baguette painting

Tuk-tuking

The next day, our group left the city pretty fast, and we returned to our busy Hong Kong lives.  Relaxing in my comfortable dorm room, I can't help but to daydream about Cambodia   The country has clearly faced many issues in the past and into the present, like genocide, trafficking, and sexual abuse, and I am glad that I have had a reality check.  That being said, I also really hope the girls at the center benefited from our work and play with them as much as we did.  Looking back on my experiences, I will always remember the sights and stories I've seen and heard in Cambodia, and I really hope that I will be able to join the trip again next year to Cambodia.

Links:

AFESIP: http://www.afesip.org/
APLE: http://www.aplecambodia.org/
More info about Tuol Sleng: http://www.tuolsleng.com/

Food, Scandis, and Queen B

While the title of this blog means absolutely nothing to most people, I'll try to explain at least a few of the spontaneous and memorable occurrences that occurred in the past week, which lead to such an eclectic title.  After an overly busy January, I was able to kick back and relax for a week of sand, sun, and Singapore for Chinese New Year.  I now have have to unfortunately face the reality that I came to Asia to study and learn, but before I slip back into that mode, I'll linger over the trip a little longer by writing this blog.

My trip started over a week ago on New Years Eve.  Actually Chinese New Years Eve, so instead of the ball drop and parties, I spent my hours camped out on night buses, McDonald's, and the airport floor.  Due to my flight leaving at 6 o'clock in the morning, I couldn't reach the airport from the nearby bus stop, meaning I had to find an alternative route. This alternative route ended up as an hour long MTR ride (until it shut down at midnight), another hour wandering the city to find a different bus, and then a deserted 1 am shuttle to the airport.  In the end, we still reached the airport with four hours to spare, so I napped, ate at McDonald's in true American style, and continued my American streak by skyping home.  When the check-in gate finally opened, we received our tickets, waited some more, and then boarded the plane.

My first Malaysian meal

The plane ride was surprisingly comfortable for a discount airline, Scoot.  Briefly diverting to product placement, I really liked Scoot.  I ended up sitting in upgraded seats for both flights, with enough room to stretch out fully, while paying as much for a peak season Hong Kong-Singapore flight (4 hours) as I would for a round trip Detroit-Chicago flight (an hour).  After touching down, I met up with 3 others, and we ate a snack before taking a bus to Malaysia.  After crossing the border, we continued eating, this time at a local food court.  I managed to have a full Malay buffet for less than the equivalent of five US dollars.  This blog isn't intended as a food blog, so I'll avoid going into too much depth, but regardless, the rendang, sambal, roti, and other dishes were spicy and delicious.  We finished eating and took a long taxi through the unnatural oil palm filled Malaysian countryside.  A few hours later, we arrived at a somewhat sketchy sea-side town called Mersing, which serves as the ferry port for several islands, including our destination, Tioman Island.  Since we couldn't catch the ferry that day, we found a cheap hostel, ate a meal that was twice as expensive as the room, and then boarded the ferry the next morning.

A gorgeous hostel with
the nicest amenities

As we approached the island, the murky brown of Mersing's polluted waters faded out into the crystal blue of beach vacation advertisements.  We arrived at the jetty, surrounded by legitimate rainforest (unlike the millions of African oil palms that have replaced the forests of the mainland) , beaches, and the ocean.  We checked into our chalets, conveniently located five steps from the beach, before ditching our luggage and going for a swim.  A side-note on the luggage: one member of our group thought it would be a good idea to pack 11 pairs of shorts, a hair dryer, hair straightener, laptop, and textbooks for a week long vacation while the rest of us brought backpacks.  Needless to say, she then couldn't carry it, so lugging around this bag became a communal responsibility for everyone else on the trip.

The view from our actual hotel

The rest of the day was spent lounging around the beach, swimming, and forgetting the stresses of IB life. Somewhere along the way, one of my friends started blasting Beyonce music and I have no clue why, but somehow her music became the theme music of the trip.  Everyone who went on the trip can basically sing along to half of her new songs, albeit terribly.  My friend's love of Beyonce invaded the entire trip, and so whenever we saw watermelons or surfboards, which are unfortunately rather common on Tioman, she would start singing because Beyonce (or Queen B as she is also known) randomly sings about them in her equally random song "Drunk in Love".

Reenacting a Beyonce music video

When we were not eating, swimming, or failing at Beyonce karaoke, we were meeting random people.  The island attracts an diverse mix of Chinese tourists, Rastafarians, backpackers from Europe, and Malays.  Among this interesting lot, we especially enjoyed the company of some Swedes.  We were walking along the island one day when my Norwegian friend, Lucas, overheard some people speaking Swedish, and he started talking with the couple, named Eric and Frieda, since it seemed unlikely that he would meet other Scandinavians on such a remote island.  After having a nice chat (actually I have no clue what it was about since I didn't understand), they went with us to a restaurant on the beach.  There, they started talking about their life adventures and misadventures.  They were on their way to Australia for work, but they had also worked in Indonesia, Norway, and Sweden.  When we started talking about their jobs, they mentioned that they don't get jobs before moving to countries, they just get tourist visas.  Later, they asked us how old we were, and we all responded 17 or 18.  Frieda said, "Hmm, what was I doing when I was 17?  Oh yeah, I was kicked out of school!"  We asked her for what, and she excitedly shrieked "Drugs!".  After this, our conversation spiraled downhill as she gave an extended account of drugs in India, Oslo, and around the world.  By the time we finished our "enlightening" conversation, Frieda had had a few too many drinks, and we excused ourselves.

Before the dive 

Another day on the trip, we went diving.  Lucy and I were already PADI certified, while Lucas and Annemaayke were able to go on introductory dives as well.  The amount of live coral surpassed anything I had seen in prior dives, despite the beginning of some coral bleaching.  Swimming over a seemingly endless reef with three sea turtles and an assortment of fish was quite an experience. I'm really hoping that I will find some time in the next year and a half to dive through other parts of Southeast Asia, since the diving really is some of the best in the world.

Under the waterfall

The day after, we went for a jungle trek.  At the narrowest point, the island is 7 km wide, so we followed this trail over a mountain and through the woods to a beach on the other side.  The forest was filled with monitor lizards, innocent looking monkeys (more like demonic actually, since they ransacked the snacks on our porch one day) , snakes, flowers, and giant trees.  Along the way, we took a detour to a waterfall and swam next to it for a while.  After drying off, we continued the hike and arrived at the beach.  We spent a few hours swimming and relaxing before we caught an open-air taxi back to our hotel.

Juara Beach

After all our great experiences on the island, we were very reluctant to leave Tioman, but we boarded the ferry and returned to the brown waters of Mersing.  Along the way, our ferry stopped for a few minutes, emitted black smoke that covered the starboard windows completely, and let out a miniature oil spill.  Luckily, the crew solved the issue, and I didn't need to reenact the Titanic.

Just kidding, we did reenact the Titanic, but in a kiddie pool

After arriving on the mainland, we immediately boarded the bus back to Singapore, meaning we skipped breakfast to board the early ferry and lunch to board the early bus.  When we arrived in Singapore, we met up with our friend Mariyah before eating "breakfast" at 5pm.  This breakfast ended up as more of a feast, with endless satay, coconuts, samosas, and curries.  We might have reached our daily nutritional needs in that meal alone, meaning we were all very full.

Eating from banana leaves

The next three days in Singapore flew by.  With all the ethnic diversity of Singapore, there is a wide range of cultural sights and food, meaning we were busy and full most of the time. On the first day we visited a mosque on Arab street, then we ate from a very good Halal restaurant.  On the next day, we went to business center and ate seafood at a waterfront restaurant.  Another day, we visited little India, before going to an Indian restaurant and eating with our hands off of banana leaves.  In addition, we visited a restaurant at Raffles Hotel, one of the several British colonial buildings in the city, and had snacks and drinks.  Somewhere along the way, we ate Vietnamese food, Mexican food, and I found my first Asian Wendy's, but I hardly remember in what order.  I'm glad I don't live in Singapore, because I'm pretty sure I would be morbidly obese and broke if I ate as well as I did during those three days.

Marina Bay Sands

Our stay in Singapore didn't revolve entirely around food though.  We walked around the botanic gardens, the Supertrees (where we met more Scandis, but they weren't as interesting as Frieda), took the elevator to the cruise ship like building, Marina Bay Sands, and visited one of the UWC campuses in Singapore.  It was really nice to meet other UWC students who had a variety of interesting backgrounds and experiences.  I met my American co-year, Naila from North Carolina, and we talked about our schools and lives.  Lucas met up with his Norwegian co-years, Annemaayke met her Dutch co-years, and poor Hannah had no British friends, due to her national committee.   We took the obligatory UWC pictures, said goodbye, and probably went out for food again.  Later, we went swimming at the apartment pool, but then we were locked out when our friend forgot both her keycard and the apartment number which would have let her call the room.  After running around the pool in a bathing suit, she found out that the key was in her pocket. Anyways, we had an awesome four day tour of Singapore, but ultimately, had to return to the airport.  After a relaxing sit in the complimentary massage chairs, we boarded the flight, slept, and returned to Hong Kong at 5 am.

United United World Colleges

All in all, my trip through Malaysia and Singapore was simultaneously busy and relaxing, and I arrived in Hong Kong ready to face the upcoming months of school.  At least that's what I said yesterday, because today I realized I was lacking the motivation to even organize my notes.  Anyways, I finished 90% of the work before break, so luckily that lack of motivation wasn't detrimental to my grades. I really hope that I'll be able to visit those countries again in the future, but if not, I'll remember those experiences with friends, Frieda, and lots of food.