What happens in Macau stays in Macau

Macau is where Asia comes to gamble, party, and live larege. It is essentially the Asian Las Vegas. So after two weeks in Hong Kong a group of us decided that it was time to go and see Macau. Getting there was relatively easy with ferries leaving Hong Kong every half hour for most of the day. Once we got into Macau at arround 12:30, after about an hour ferry ride we explored the old Portuguese city and had some great local food. I had the pig's neck, which tasted like good sweet BBQ, and one of my friends had the Ox tail soup. After this we continued our exploration and seeing the mix of architectural style, between east and west. Then it was time to go and check out the casinos. There are many of the same big names that you see out in Vegas: Winn, Sands, Venetian, MGM, and there are also some others. Three of my friends pooled money and put in HK$200 each on roulette, and ended up walking away up 300%. The night turned out to be rather epic as we took the 3am ferry home. It was an absolutely amazing way to spend a day.

Two weeks

It never ceases to amaze me how quickly time can fly by, I am already two weeks into the program and in many ways it feels like I just got here, yet in other ways it feels like it has been far more than two weeks. When I came here I expected that the students would be super intense and studying all the time, and yet that isn't always the case. When I got here the local students cautioned all of the foreigners about how we would be cometing for grades against students who do nothing but study all the time. While students here do strive for exceptional grades they too often choose to stay in bed rather than go to class (although the weekday hangover does appear to be uniquely western affliction), or browse facebook rather than listen to the lecture. The dorm rule banning alcohol obviously must not be enforced as there are three cases of beer in the common room of my floor, and I saw someone walk by the security desk drinking out of a bottle of red wine. Slowly I am coming realize that college students will be college students no matter where they are in the world.

Overall I am having a great time here. Going out and exploring the night life is still nearly a nightly event, which has made this whole place so much fun. The people who I have met here are awesome people are just so much fun to be around. The next couple of weeks like they should be an experience I will remember forever. This weekend I am going to Macau and then next Friday I should be headed out to Bangkok for the weekend.

The other side of Hong Kong

When I got off the ferry at Lamma Island, it was hard to believe I was still in Hong Kong. Here everything is different. The ubiquitous sky scrapers and city buses which dominate the Hong Kong city scape are nowhere to be found and beautiful beaches and superb views exist in their stead. Here we went to a sea food resturant and had an amazing meal consisting of 10 courses of extremely fresh sea food for under US$20 per person. The hikes around the island was superb. I will certainly have a lot more exploring to do in the hear future.

Arrival and first full day

Before I left for Hong Kong, I though I had done most of the hard part, getting all my stuff together responding to all of their emails but this was not the case. Once I got here there was a mountain of paper work to be done numerous runs between offices to get seemingly simple tasks accomplished. Upon arrival I also learned the major disadvantage to packing light... which is that you have to go out and buy the stuff when you get here. My dorm has a beautiful view, and the bathroom even overlooks the water which is incredibly nice. the bus system is going to take some getting used to but shouldn't be all that hard.