Mg-Goy

My first word in Cantonese - mg-goy (the goy is pronounced with a higher intonation). It means please, thank you, and excuse me. Probably one of the most important words I'll ever need here.

My first full day consisted mostly of just running around campus getting logistical stuff organized. My adopted Buddy, Cancy, took me and two other girls who met him, Erica and Vivian, around Hong Kong U, where we got all sorts of registration forms and signed up for picture-taking for our student cards. For our first meal, Cancy took us to a place on Water St (downhill from the university). It was a really small local place that a lot of secondary school kids go to for lunch, according to Cancy. I ordered "Spicy Chicken Wing and Spicy Pork with Rice" that came with a Mandarin Lemon Green juice. It was delicious. I got a huge bowl of rice with ground cooked spicy pork and a chicken wing with veggies and some other tasty stuff. I was extremely crowded and surrounded by noise and local secondary-school students. It was the experience I was looking for. The typical plasticware used is a small ladle-type spoon and chopsticks and normally you use chopsticks to put noodles/rice/meat/whatever on the spoon and then you can dip the spoon in the broth and drink and eat it all. It was so good. The subtle flavors were unbelievable.

After lunch we went to the Causeway Bay, a huge shopping district center in an area called Central. There we shopped around for linens, pillows, and cheap cellphones. What I've noticed about pretty much the entire island/city is that everything is built skinny and upwards. The buildings and billboards are seriously bigger than anything you would see in London or New York. No joke! I'll take pictures next time I'm there. The luxury shopping is ridiculous. Humongous billboards of Luis Vuitton, Gucci, and Armani take up whole blocks, along with Omega and Rolex. The luxury shopping per capita I was told by someone who works at the US Consulate is more than in NYC and London combined! That is just nuts. I would describe everything above the road as like NYC and everything on the roads is like the UK. All the street signs, roads, traffic, everything, is like London. The crazy thing is that it's all in a language that looks like scribbles to a non-local.

Yesterday, I had orientation with all the other exchange and visiting students. Most were from California (the UC system), and everyone else was scattered all around Europe (France, Britain, Germany, Poland, Austria) and Australia and New Zealand. I met a guy named Giovanni from Italy who goes to school in Manchester, pretty cool guy. Met a ton of people from California. And a couple students who had been here last semester ran the orientation and invited us all out to Lan Kwai Fong later that night, so we could go out and check out the scene with them. Before, a girl who goes to UVA who lives in Hong Kong, Olivia, and her family took me out to dinner in Repulse Bay to a restaurant called the Verandah Restaurant. It's rated very high in LonelyPlanet. We started with Yam Nueh (Thai beef salad) and sliced pork neck. Both unbelievable. Then we had chicken and fish tiki with garlic naam bread, and duck curry. It was all sooooooo good. I couldn't believe it. After a great dinner with great conversation, Olivia's parents dropped me off in Central where I walked to Lan Kwai Fong and met up with everybody else at a club. This area is pretty unique. It is 100% committed to getting anybody BUT locals/Chinese people. Bars with names like "The Keg" line the streets. From Irish to Mexican to American to German, the types of bars and clubs are as different as the people that drink from them. It's all ex-pats, foreigners, and some locals who try to be cool by hanging out, smoking cigarettes and drinking Smirnoff outside of the 7-11 right at the bottom of the hill. It was quite a scene. So many neon lights, you wouldn't believe. Actually, I read that Hong Kong has the biggest neon sign in the world! Wonder where that is? I was so full after the dinner that I was just tired and ended up taking the bus back.

People everywhere are so friendly. Meeting up with Olivia, I was on the bus looking at a map making sure I didn't get lost, and a young guy next to me asked me where I was going. We got to talking and he got off with me and walked me to where I had to go, and after I told him I was an exchange student at HKU, he told me he studies there also. He was so excited to meet me that we exchanged numbers and he told me he'd call me later. His name is Tiger, because he was born in the year of the Tiger. I've learned that everybody has a Chinese name/birth name, but then they have an American/English name that is either given to them or they can pick it themselves. Once I come across some weird names, I'll let you know.

Today, I had to get up pretty early to get my picture taken for my student card. After that I spent most of the time running around campus learning how to get a Hong Kong ID card since I'll be here for longer than 6 months and also figuring out how I can switch my studies. I got it all worked out though, and after I found Giovanni and some other students and we decided to get lunch. I wanted some real good local food, some small place that's really good. So we started walking downhill (really really steep; this Western part of Hong Kong is really one big hill), and turned on some side streets. We passed this one place that was really small, and had no English, and I was ready to move on just to see what else there was. But the owner came out and said "noodles" in broken English so we figured, why not? After looking at his all-Chinese menu (which was a piece of paper the size of a small receipt in Chinese characters), we managed to tell the owner that he should just choose what should go in our bowl of noodles. We got a seafood bowl, a meat bowl, and a meat+veggies bowl. I had the meat+veggies bowl and scarfed it down. It was pretty damn good. The owner knew English pretty well. He told us his shop's been open for 40 years, and he has a clipping from a newspaper from way back when, and even commented on how well I use chopsticks! This place really is just a hole in the wall. The kitchen is about the size of a bathroom stall, and there are just 2 circular tables with small stools surrounding it. But the food was great and it was really cool finding this place. Giovanni and I took some pictures with the owners and then walked around the city more, spotting other local restaurants that were packed and made a note to come back and try them.

Now, I'm probably going to watch a movie, maybe play some guitar with my hallmate (he's a ridiculously good guitarist - been playing for 7 years, all self-taught, and plays everything from heavy metal to blues), and then I think I'm going to go to a lecture titled "Three Global Taxes to End World Poverty". Sound pretty interesting. I want to check out the gym also, now that I have my student card, and then Olivia said she'd take me out tonight with a bunch of her friends. Probably Lan Kwai Fong again. Classes start Monday. More to come then.