.Day One.

(written 01-05-10 at 5am-ish)

Just woke up from my first night in Hong Kong, a solid 5 hours of sleep. I was exhausted last night, from either the flights, shock of being in H.K., or the intensity of the friends I’ve made. Either way, I still have had a silly grin on my face since I landed. We found the “student ambassadors” who were assigned to pick all us newbies up, and they were definitely good company, even though they can’t pronounce my name (I’m just Ryan to half of them now) and they think Memphis is as big as Starkville considering no one knows where it is (they didn’t really know where TN was either though). I first met Tom, a tall, gangly kid with a wide face (if he were blue, he could probably pull an Avatar) followed by John Jacob (yes, like the song), a middle aged guy studying seminary. He’s from Pakistan yet studies in HK and loves cricket. Candice was sweet and reassured us that they had a plan, which was very appreciated considering the ignorance on my behalf. And there were many others but to just finish off with names, Kinki pronounced “kinky” (local), Nelli (Taiwan), group of Beijing kids, Jenny the American (Boston), and Lee-han-ki and a girl who’s name I can’t pronounce yet (both Korea), and Yury (Germany, born in Moscow though). Lee-han-ki and Yury are the only guys we had in our group of say, 15, so it was humorous to go to dinner and be at the mercy of Car (that’s her name and, yes, she drives an invisible steering wheel when you meet) who ordered for us. We had some typical H.K. pork and a drink called “iced milk tea”. Not bad, probably 90% was half and half milk. Everything ended up being about 50HKD, roughly 6 bucks, I can deal with that. Went back and unpacked everything, roommate’s stuff is here, but he’s not (I’ll comment on that later ><). It’s 5:33am, it’ll be a long day ahead but full of fun, we’re buying Yury and Amelia a camera….Canon.

Completely unrelated, the picture is a shot from over Taiwan on the flight from Korea to Hong Kong. Maybe I’ll get to actually see those mountains someday. ><