New Territories Living

Heeeeeeeeeeeeeeere's Becca! I'm back in Hong Kong and loving the life here. It's taking me forever and day to get over my jetlag, but I couldn't be happier to be back. My first week and a half here have been pretty tame, filled with re-adjustments and acclimating to the oppressive humidity of a tropical summer. (Who doesn't love going outside and instantaneously feel like their face is melting off?) What I've enjoyed most of all is catching up with my old local friends, some which never thought that we would see each other again.

My first night here I was taken out to the trendy area affectionaly know as TST, because foreigners like myself seem physically incapable of pronoucing it There I was pleasently suprised by Greg, a former exchange student, who is also here teaching English at a primary school. He had just arrived a few days before myself, and neither one of us had any idea that the other was here. We might do some traveling together, perhaps to Korea to visit our mutal friend, Sunny.

Classes/teaching starts within the next couple of days- hopefully by then I'll be over my jet-lag and in a more rested state of mind. I have to admit that I am slightly terrified of changing from student to teacher in a couple of months, with no teaching experience myself. I'm working with a nice British professor and his English 108 classes. I also have library hours where I lead discussion groups and have drop-in time to help students with their English skills. Right now, I'm fairly exhuasted, so I'm going to get some shut-eye. I miss all of you!

HK, Round 2!

Hello Everyone!

This is just a brief note to let everyone know that I landed in Hong Kong safe and sound. I've been using these couple of free days to try to get my sleep schedule adjusted, but so far I'm failing. As soon as I become more coherent, I'll have a nice long post with pictures of my lovely apartment and all my new contact information. I'm not homesick yet, but I wish that all of you wonderful people could come and visit, because I think that everyone would love Hong Kong. More to come latter!

Love,
Becca

Back at good old SMCM

Hey folks!

I'm back at SMCM, starting my senior year! Yay! Right now I'm in my third week of school, and its going great! I'm taking a little more of a workload than usual, but I would like to gradutate in the spring, so thats just how its going to be. This summer was great, but I didn't do much. Waking up at 7am, working all day, and entertaining my highly energetic dogs took a lot out of me. I had some great times, like the O.A.R concert with Devi and my girls. I got to babysit my wonderful nephews and spend some time with them. Its insane how big they have gotten! After work got out, I spent a week in WA visiting my mom's side of the family for my grandparents 50th and Darkow family reunion. Most of these folks I haven't seen in 5+ years! It was great to reconnect with all of them and to be surrounded by family. Mom and I went vintage clothes shopping with my cousin Andrea, where I found this great antique dress! My sister and her boyfriend managed to get off work and come, which made things even better. Grandma Darkow taught me how to work in color with yarn, and I found some great yarn in my old home town. It was such a nice visit out there. Some days I really miss living out there, surrounded by family on both sides, but then I have to think about all the wonderful family and friends that I have, and that I would have never met if we hadn't moved to MD.

So right now this is the courses I'm taking:

• RELG 381: Religious Topics- Passage to India
• SOAN 490: Senior Seminar
• ANTH 281: Archeaology and Pre-History
• PHIL 304: Values Inquiry
• ANTH 243: Biological Anthropology
• POSC 1OO: Intro to Politics

I know that it seems like a lot to do, but I want everyone to keep in mind that my seminar class only meets 7 times, so that cuts down on a lot of what I have to do. As long as I graduate in May, its all worth it. Oh, and a little FYI- I'm starting a new blog just for my knitting stuff. So if you have any cool knitting/yarn related links or anything that feel would be appropriate, just pass it my way. I'll set up a link for it on this page as soon as I have it set up.

There's no place like home

Dorothy was right; there is truly no place like home. I'm loving being back and getting back to work, but all my friends seemed to have dropped off the face of the planet. I was really looking forward to hanging out with everyone when I got home, so get on it guys! (Hint hint)

This summer is pretty much going to be similar to last summer, working and hanging out. I'm even working at the same summer camp, but with an upgrade in position. I went from checkpoint to receptionist like that! *snap* The wonders this does for my career.....But all in all, its great to come back to a job where I was liked so much they were after me to come back! The staff is great, and I have a boss that I actually enjoy working for. If I ever again have a summer where I need a job, I know where I can go. It also feels like a relief to have a job, earning money instead of spending it.

As for my sentimental side, I am missing Hong Kong with all my heart. The first week home was so surreal, and I've noticed some major changes in myself, and some others have pointed out. The things I would say I miss the most are my wonderful friends that I made there, both local and other exchange students and the food! Oh, how I miss the food. Hong Kong food is fantastic, but the food in Thailand is like food sex- its that damn good. And cheap!

I know that I was little out of touch while I was in Thailand, but thats what happens when you have to pay for the internet. Needless to say, my trip was beyond fantastic. I'm in love with Thailand. I got to see my best friend, meet great people, try bizare foods, stay with monks, and be there for the King's Diamond Jubilee. And Thai people are some of the most kind hosiptable people you will ever meet. I never had a bad experience with any of the locals. As for were I went, I spent some time in Bangkok- craziest city ever, then in Hua Hin, where Jason's university is and where the king lives. Then we headed back up through Bangkok to a little town near the Burmense border called Pai. Pai was such a small town, but it was wonderful. Its where I ate the best food of my life and swam in a waterfall. I also meet Israelis, South Africans, Germans, and whole bunch of locals. After Pai we headed back down to Chiang Mai, the 2nd largest city for the week long celebrations of the Diamond Jubilee. The Thai King Bhumibol Adulyadej has been on the throne for 60 years, which makes him the longest reigning monarch in history. He even outdid Queen Victoria! There were yellow shirts, fireworks, portraits of the king, and parades every way you looked. It was truly spectacula. My favorite event was held in Bangkok; only royalty, both Thai and international, was invited to a viewing of the royal barge parade on the river that circles Bangkok. It was also broadcast nationwide on TV. It was one of the most opulant displays of granduer that I have ever seen. Just breathtaking.....All in all, Thailand was incredible. I miss it so much!

So thats my vacation in a nutshell. There are some other great stories, but they would take way too long to type out, and I think that people would run out of paitence. If you are interested in hearing more, or just wanna talk/hang out, you know where to find me. I'll update over the summer, but I can't promise any excitment to compete with my trip abroad- just me working really. Its good to be home!

Thailand!

So Thailand is awesome, not buts about it. I don't have time to go into detail about everything, but here is a short list of all the awesome things I have done in a little under a week:

• ate frog- yum!
  
• fed/petted an elephant
• had ant egg soup- not that tasty
  
• spent a day and night a socialist Buddhist community
• tried fried grasshoppers
• swam in a waterfall
• went on alms rounds
• met the first ordained female monk in the Thai Theravada tradition
• learned some Thai
• got a job offer to work at a animal shelter in Hua Hin

More to come later when I don't have to pay for the internet. I'll be home soon!

Long time, no post part 2!

So that last weekend I posted was pretty exciting, no? Thats one of the reasons I really like being here, something exciting is always happening. If I was back at St. Mary's, my weekends would most likely consist of work, homework, and sleeping in. While I'm here I feel that I need to get out and do everything possible that there is for me to do. I still have a pretty lengthy list of things I need to do/see here. Terrence promised me that the week after next, we'll go the Chinese Opera. The Hong Kong Ballet Company is also doing a production of Sleeping Beauty, which I also really want to see. I love the ballet! I think that Karen and I will go for our birthdays next month. Its crazy, we have 5 birthdays in a row among the exchange students! May is going to be a fun month for me.

Back to where I left off in the last post:

After the street performers and photo-taking sessions with random strangers, another week of classes was pretty mundane for me. My history professor almost exploded with rage as people kept coming into class later and later. Sunny was sitting next to me laughing as he raged, and I was looking at her like she had gone crazy. The last thing you want to do is laugh at an angry person. But he did agree to take us out for Indian food at the end of the semester. That week classes seemed to be getting more relaxed and fun. Its the beginning of the end for this semester, so things are starting to wind down more. I've actually got some papers to write and some other work to do. The final exam schedule has come out, and I only have 3 exams. If there are no rainstorm/typhoon delays, I should be finished by the 19th of May. To be safe though, Professor Starr recommends that we don't leave until the 24th, which is what I plan on doing. The I'll go to Thailand and have adventures with Jason there, and get a good massage. I haven't decided wether or not to take my computer with me, so you might have to wait a long time to get the adventures from there.

That week we also got a visit from a diplomat from the mainland, Professor Cheng Si-wei, the Vice-Chairman of the Congress of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress of the Mainland. (What a tittle!) He came here to tour all the universities and give speechs and what not. Some of the exchange students were invited as Student Ambassadors to meet him and have a dialouge session with him. So I had to get dressed up in my suit and I was given a free Lingnan pin for this event. Exciting! I like the pin, it looks like the logo of the school, but its in gold and about the size a penny. It makes for a nice keepsake, and its even better that it was a gift. In this dialouge session, we were given the opportunity to ask the professor anything we wanted, and we could ask in any language, because he knew about 6. I was really excited about this, and I was the first person to ask him a question, which was, "If you were the president of the USA, what would be one thing that you change about US economic policy and why?" I thought that it was a good question, until he, who had been speaking perfect English up to this point, pretende that he couldn't understand a word I was saying, and all he would say was "I can't answer this now. Come to my lecture and it will all be explained" Talk about the big brush-off! When Megan asked her question about the greatest challenge facing our generation, he said it was studying. I feel like he brushed off all the exchange students questions, but gave five minute answers to everyone else. He's one slippery Chinese diplomat. We did get to take a group photo with him, that was later published in several newspapers. I'm in the back row, in dark mauve. The professor is the center older Chinese man with the black hair. Next to him are the President and Dean of Lingnan. I have photocopies of articles, 2 from Chinese newspapers, and one in English. I hope that there is still a chance to find the originals. I went to his lecture the next week, but he still didn't really answer our questions. It was basically how the American economy is going wrong, mainly in textiles, and how the Chinese economy is taking over. And it wasn't that good either. I was a little disappointed by him, but it was also really cool to meet such a high Chinese offical. He seemed really excited to see the exchange students.

The we have the super-awesome weekend known as Rugby Sevens weekend. Every year Hong Kong holds an internation rugby tournament, which lasts for 3 days. On Friday, university students could get in free as long as you showed your ID. We were lucky; tickets can start at $600HK and go as high as $2000 US! And thats for one day! Americans are really out of touch when it comes to popular sports. Everybody else really likes soccer and rugby. We got to the stadium around 3ish and it was the largest group of Europeans that I have ever seen in my life. It was like a mass exodus of white people. There were people in costume, and everyone was so proud of their country and screaming at each other. It was so different from all the sporting events I've gone to. I love European enthusiasm. We managed to find seats for all 10 of us, and it became pretty aparent that we were the only Americans in the stadium. It was really interesting to see the politics behind some of the stuff, like when the Taiwan team came out on the field, the announcer called it them Chinese Taipei, (capital of Taiwan) and thats how they were listed on the scoreboard. They were set against the Chinese team too. Each game only lasted about 30 minutes. As far as I understand, rugby sevens is played with seven players on each team, and you can run with the ball, but you can only pass it backwards. Some times you do this weird huddle thing, and tackling is always permitted. It looked like a lot of fun. And the boys were cute! I suddenly remembered my weakness for professional rugby players. The highlight of the evening had to be the USA-Canada game. For about half an hour, we turned from normal students into screaming ravenous USA fans. The enthusiasm from the Europeans was infectous. We had one of the Canadian girls with us, and we started screaming at each other. Then one of the Scottish guys who were next to us came over and said " Wait till Scotland comes out on the pitch, we'll sort all of you out" The USA lost by a point. And then we and the Canadians were all friends again.

After the game, we stopped for some dinner in Wan Chai, and just observed the mass crazyness all around us. It was like it was St. Patty's Day, Christmas, and Halloween. All the people who were in the stadium had apparently all come down to Wan Chai, which is about a 3 square block area. I saw two guys dressed up in full bear suits, heads and all walking down the street with beers. Well, there goes my childhood. My personal favorite was the group of about 6 middle-aged British guys dressed up as the Queen, with sashes, wigs, maskes, and crowns. I wanted to get a picture with them, but they moved pretty quickly before we could catch up with them. I did manage to get one with some guy who thought he was a superhero or something like that. It was awesome to see all these people from 18-70 out having a great time. They had to shut down a few of the streets because of the massive crowd. While we were walking down the street, I saw some guy very calmly walk out of the bar, and lie down in the street, like he was going to take a nap or something. I didn't understand that. Some woman who was walking by us as we were sitting on a patio stopped, and framed us with her fingers like she was taking a picture, which was just a little bit weirder than the guy napping in the road. Everyone was also really friendly and suprised to find Americans in Hong Kong, especially at a rugby tournament. I felt like we were the only Americans in all of Hong Kong that night. I also noticed something else about the British people that I meet. They have some innate desire to visit all the former British colonies when they travel. Almost every one that I have talked to plans on visiting, or has visited India, Austrialia, New Zealand, and of course Hong Kong. Only we are left out, and I wonder why that is. I'm doing my best to convince them to come to the USA. It was such a fun night.

Saturday I had plans with Sunny to go to Cheung Chau island, but we bother overslept. Instead a group of us went to the beach, which is just a 20 minute bus ride away. The beach is also free, but the water doesn't look that clean. I went in for a little while, and nothing weird happened to me. Its so nice to be able to go to the beach in early April though. I checked the weather that day, and back home it was in the 40s and raining. Anyone jealous yet? I also managed to get some work done, and my laundry too.

Sunday Sunny and I ventured out to Cheung Chau island. Sunny is one of the exchange students here from Korea. She has been at Lingnan since the start of fall semester, and I adore her. We have a history class together, and she is so much fun. Cheung Chau takes about an hour to get to by ferry, and I would say that its easily twice the size of Lamma Island. It has a much bigger fishing village too. Even a McDonalds. We didn't really come to the island with a plan, but more to just walk around and enjoy the beautiful day. There are no cars on the island, and it seems like everyone owns a bicycle. The first thing we walked to was one of the temples where an impromptu Cantonese Opera performance had begun. We watched it for a while and then went and explored the temple, which was tiny compared to the ones that I have seen so far. It was very quite inside the temple, but once we went back out, it was buzzing with noise. We tried to find the pirate cave that I had been told about, but no such luck. We spent most of our time walking around the island people watching. We found a playground on top of a hill and I decided to let my inner child out. Sunny got a great picture of me on a little bouncy ducky thing, and I have never been so happy in my life to see swings! I know that I don't look happy in this picture, but I was having a great time. The thing dipped forward really deeply, and I was scared that I was going to fall off or something like that. Sunny caught that moment perfectly on film, don't you think? Even though we didn't really do a lot of touristy things, I had a great time just walking around and really seeing Cheung Chau. Comparatively, to the rest of Hong Kong, its rather relaxed and slow-paced. My kind of town! If I have time, I think that I will try to get back there and manage to explore the whole island. It wasn't small enough to do in one day.

Thats it for now with my adventure updates! Things have been a little tame recently with the semester winding down, and finals approaching rapidly. I still plan on spending almost a month with Jason in Thailand and beyond. My roommate Terrence insisted I come back to Hong Kong for a couple of days before my plane leaves and spend it with her and her family. She and I are going to stay with her grandfather, Guon Guon, at his apartment, with her parents and grandmother, Ma ma, down the block. Her Ma ma knows how to knit, so hopefully I will pick up a few tricks, and learn how to cook proper Cantonese food. Maybe even learn some more Cantonese- I'm pretty much going to have to, Terrence is the only one in her family who speaks English. I also want to cook for them, something easy, but very American. Any suggestions? So those are my plans for after finals and everything.

Long time, no post

So once again its been forever since I've updated. I've had tons of adventures, so this is going to be a pretty lengthy one, maybe even a two-parter! (Ooooooooooo) I'm still doing wonderful and everything- its just that when you get back into the swing of real life, or as real as it can be for 4 months, you get incredibly occupied with other things. And I've never been too good at this whole keeping in touch thing. I feel like a jerk sometimes, but I'm working on it.

So when I last updated, I left you all at the end of my Lamma Island trip with Megan and my usual Sunday at Prof. Starr's house. That following week of classes was more exciting then the usual week. On Monday afternoon, the Office of International Programmes (Thats how they spell it- leftover British influence) threw a Welcome Reception for the exchange students, international buddies, and students from Lingnan who had gone abroad in the previous semester. It was a nice little teatime affair, complete with tea and little sandwiches with the crusts cut off. We spent time just hanging around talking with the different students and professors and took a nice little group photo. This one feature yours truly, one of the Korean exchange girls- Sunny, and two local students. The trick is to learn how to tell Koreans apart from the Chinese students. (I can do it) Prof. Starr encouraged us to promote Lingnan to our fellow students when we got back home and that was pretty much it. Just a nice little meet and greet. But I also love the fact that they have tea time here. I wish that we had tea time back home.

Tuesday night was also a lot of fun. I was recruited by my hall committee to play basketball in another inter-hostel game. No one seemed to care that I haven't played basketball in years, or that I was exceptionally horrible at it. After about 20 minutes on the court, I was bright pink from head to toe and had made no major contribution to my team. We really didn't have much of a strategy, and no one told me where to go. I spent most of the game standing there wide open, and none of the other girls passed to me. Not that I would have been able to make it in the net anyway. They seemed excited just to have me play. Needless to say, we suffered a crushing defeat. It was still pretty fun, and it made me realize how horrible at sports I am, well at least basketball. I did pretty well at badmintion when I played with Jon earlier that day.

Later that week, I had my first exam of the semester, which I am proud to say that I got a perfect on, the only perfect in the class. So it was a pretty exciting school week for me, well maybe not exciting, but more out of the usual routine of just class, work, and spending time with my friends. Friday night was St. Patty's day, and what I have dubbed the "Dim Sum Crew", (myself, Megan, Jess, and Karen), decided to go out for Irish food, with Megan's Irish pride ablaze. That was a great night.

We headed on down to TST, better known as Tsim Sha Tsui, to a pub/restaurant named Delaneys for dinner. When we walked in, we immediatly ran into other exchange students- small world! This place was great, it was filled with Europeans and the tables looked like they had come from the Medieval ages. All the waiters were very Irish, and from the looks of it, all a little tipsy. They had a DJ playing all these old Irish folk songs and a fiddler too. I knew that it was going to be a great evening. We managed to snag a corner table next to this very sweet British couple, and talked with them for a while. They had been traveling the world for 2 months and were trying to decided between Hong Kong and Thailand in which to settle down. They also taught us some Irish folk songs. I was super-excited because I got an Irish breakfast which had all the food I was longing for, sunny-side up eggs, toast, potatoes, etc. It was so good!! It was probably the best breakfast I've had, and I think that its mostly due to how bad I wanted it. Other exchange students showed up, and we finally had this huge group of people that just took over one side of Delaneys. It was fantastic. Everyone was just really friendly and fun, and I met some cool people. Like Zac the barrister from England who kept calling me a nutter. I learned some European slang, and taught some American slang too. When we went outside, they had shut down the street traffic to accomidate everyone who had come down to that area to celebrate. It was the largest group of white people in Hong Kong that I have seen in one place here. Just crazy. One of my favorite nights here so far. We also played some trivia games in the restaurant and everyone won a Guinness hat. Who knows what I am going to do with it though. It worked for some silly pictures.

The next day, I met up with Zac to show him around Hong Kong. He had only been there for 3 days and had seen nothing! (Well, nothing by my standards) I took him around TST and then to Sha Tin. We had a nice day, and it was really interesting meeting fellow travelers. I've noticed that the people who are traveling around here, wether it be other exchange students or what, feel this instant commraderie with each other. Like we're all part of the same club and we have to stick together. Its fun that way because you meet some interesting people, and hopefully do some networking. I meet some one from the mainland who really wants me to come to his town, which is outside of Chengdu, after I graduate and teach English. Or the Irish boys we met on the subway who made us sing Danny Boy with them. Just pure sillyness sometimes, but its really fun. I hope that I keep meeting people like this as I go on traveling. You never know who you might meet.

That week was another ordinary week of classes, nothing too exciting. There was no meeting at Prof. Starr's house that Sunday. Classes are still going fairly well. The work has picked up a little bit, but still not up to the level of what I am used to. All I really have left is the rest of lectures and a couple of papers, until finals time comes around. Most of my finals will be done the first week of May, except for my statistics one which my professor still doesn't know the date for. I figured that it would be statistics that gives me a hard time, considering that I have a burning hatered of the subject, and it seems to be the subject that gives me the hardest time. I hate statistics so much, and I feel like its almost pointless, even though I know its not. Its just the way I relate to math, like oil and water that want to beat each other up.

That weekend Megan and I had tickets to the Hong Kong Dance Company's performance of a modern peice called "Hands in Hands" It was very interesting to say the least. From what I understand, it was about a deaf girl who joins a dance company, but then everyone hates her, and she prays and these Thai gods come out and dance around. I think that there is something that I just wasn't getting, but I enjoyed it none the less. The dancers where incredibly talented and I really wasn't expecting the children's choir to pop out at the end and sing a song about the world being beautiful. I was also sitting next to an old man who was clearly a very proud grandfather. When the children came onstage, he kept smiling, laughing, and tapping me on the shoulder to point out one of the kids to me. It was really amusing, and he was so proud. After the show, Megan and I tried to take pictures of us all dressed up on a stairway near a beautiful chandiler, but they wouldn't let us. The conversation went as follows:

Usher: Are you trying to take a picture on the stairs?
Me: Yes, its very beautiful and I would like to show people from home
Usher: Well, you can't take pictures on the stairs
Me: Why not? It will only take a minute
Usher: Its too dangerous.
Me: Dangerous how?
Usher: You could fall down the stairs
Me: Oh it will be ok. I'll hold on to the handrail
Usher: Well, you just can't do it. I'm sorry
Me: Ok then. Thanks

So no pictures of the interior of the Hong Kong Cultural Center folks! I guess that it was to dangerous after all. Sometimes I feel like I'm just being messed around with by the people here, just because they can. Oh well, what can you do? We decided to take a stroll on the Avenue of Stars and people watch before we went home. It was a nice warm night, and a surprising large crowd of people are out at 11:30pm on the boardwalk. We saw several groups of breakdancers, and there were small crowds everywhere standing around local musicans, singing and having a great time. My favorite was the woman from the mainland singing ethnic minority songs and dancing. Her songs were mostly Mongolian and Tibetan. While we were watching this performer, a little old man came up and tapped me on the shoulder to ask me where I was from. He explained to us that he was from Hong Kong, and he had a friend with him from the mainland who had never met white people/Americans before. He wanted us to take a picture with his friend and his family. So Megan and I were like- why not? This family ate us up. We took almost every combination of photos possible. Me with the guy, Megan with the guy, me holding a Chinese baby, and my favorite, one with the guy with his arm around me and me looking incredibly startled. I wonder what this family is going to think once they get home and look at these pictures. They also kept telling me how tall and pretty I was, because before them, I never knew that Chinese people consider me tall! It was just so disarming, but the family was really sweet.

END OF PART ONE