I have been in Hong Kong for a week now. It has been, in one word … “different”. Hong Kong is a totally different world to me, although my parents are both from HK and I grew up watching HK television series and movies. Waking up at seven AM and the weather is already 99°F, being jammed into a cart on the subway, and just being around other people who I look alike. For once in my life seeing the random “White person” is a spectacle instead of seeing an “Asian person” walking down the street. It is a whole new experience; I am not sure how I feel about it yet though. Time will only tell since I still have at least ten months to go here.

So far the daily routine has been the same. Wake-up, go drink tea/eat dim sum, take the subway to some random place to walk around, eat some more, walk around more, eat dinner, watch some Chinese television series, shower, and go to bed. It is growing boring. Things should get better once the semester starts though.

Luckily my last day in the states was spent exactly the way I wanted it to be. I spent the whole day with my friends; my high school friends will always hold a special place in my life. Initially started the day with Bryan but we had no plans so after some brain storming I somehow had this urge to go mini golfing, so on our way to the course in Ware, we stopped by Rachel’s house. It was good to see her again. It is still bittersweet to know that the girl was my best friend for sixteen years, since we were one, but we went a year without speaking to each other and now it is still the every six months “we should hang out.” She is still the same Rachel I grew up with though and I really do miss the friendship I had with her. Maybe we will rebuild our friendship, someday. But after that I went mini-golfing with Bryan, it was not as exciting as I had hoped. We just goofed around, took pictures, and he beat me by three strokes!

After the extremely fun golf experience I made a random phone call to Jess S. and we headed to her house where we played pool. We never finished the game though, it was more like we got to three balls and after twenty minutes we had still failed in getting any of them in, so I just got fed up and pushed them all in with my hands. So, I WON! We then went to my house to wait for Patti and Jess F. to come over so we could go head out to dinner at Horizons, where Rachel works. But while flipping through the station on the TV, ESPN2 was airing the Texas Hold’em Championship, so of course I got my cards and poker chips to start a game. We then decided to have a poker night instead, get calzones from Pichonios, and then get desert at Horizons. We downed our steak and cheese with mushrooms calzones, played some poker where Jess F. the girl who said she did not know how to play schooled us all, and ran to Stop & Shop for cheesecake instead of going to Horizons because it had gotten too late. I swear Jess F. had to be sleeping with the dealer. Sorry, inside joke. Said my very tearful goodbyes to everyone, especially to Bryan, and went home to do some very last minute packing.

Left Wednesday morning, I hugged and kissed my dad goodbye crying leaving the house and my sister and her boyfriend, Jinn, brought me to the airport. It was really hard to say goodbye to my sister, cried so much that both our shoulders were soaked. Took off from Bradley in CT at noon, got to Detroit at around two, left for Tokyo at four, got to Tokyo the next day at 5:45PM, ran to my flight for Hong Kong that was already boarding when I got to Tokyo, and arrived in Hong Kong at nine. I was only in Japan for five minutes; I wish I was there for longer. We will see next summer; I am going to start planning my summer trip around Asia. I want to go to at least Thailand, Malaysia, South Korea, and Japan. I do not know if I will ever be this close to all these countries and cultures ever again where I have the freedom to do whatever I want.

I went to Macau with my mom and Aunt Annie on Monday to activate my student visa. Macau is the land of pork chops (Portuguese) that speak perfect Cantonese! Took the ferry, which took around an hour, and I threw up. It was my own fault for downing a bottle of iced tea before we bored but I was sitting at the edge and well the boat enjoyed shaking a lot. We ate some dim sum, although I wanted to eat some Authentic Macau or at least Portuguese food instead, and gambled legally for the first time in my life. My mom gave me HKD $20, I managed to double that on the slots but in the end I lost it all. No beginners luck. Afterwards we took the taxi to Portuguese town or something like that, a bunch of old buildings still in Portuguese architecture and of course to see the famous ruins of St. Paul or in Cantonese “da sam ba”. It was amazing to see, so beautiful. The downside to all of this is that it was so hot and humid; I was sweating profusely and was drenched in sweat. Yeah, gross.

My mommy and little brother left yesterday, I was so sad. No more family for ten months. Now I have my grandmother to nag the hell out of me. I hate dim sum.

I will update with pictures and everything later.