First Impressions

Welcome to Hong Kong!

Victoria Gardens

All sorts of new trees and animals to learn (though there are still pigeons!)

Spiky tree

Library! 

Happy Valley Racecourse

Local Cemetery, only slightly packed full

Display at Times Square HK (bonus points if you can name that character!)

So after not falling asleep until about 2 am local time, I was still up and about, ready to explore by like 6 am. Man, flying on planes messes with your sleep schedule. I killed some time re-arranging my box of a bedroom (I believe my parent's fifth wheel trailing is bigger) got some local money from the bank and set off exploring.

First stop Victoria park, a lovely patch of green space only 3 blocks or so from my apartment. I was really surprised with how quiet it was walking around. Granted the day was really overcast but it was still saturday and I expected more people walking around. HK has a lot of fences along their streets sot hat pedestrians can only cross at designated intersections and these were the only time I felt crowded at all really.

Anyway I wandered around, just taking it all in. Found my way to school for Monday and then set off in search of food. I wasn't very adventurous for lunch (turkey sandwich) but in my defense I had enough weird plane food and no real breakfast. Lucky for me, anyone I actually needed to talk to spoke English, and only one guy at the bank had an accent I had trouble understanding. Strangely enough though, whenever I hear someone talking Cantonese of Mandarin (can't tell the difference right now) I have this really strong desire to respond in Spanish. I dunno what it is, other than just recognizing that the language is not English so I know I can't respond in English. Though I don't think Spanish would be of any more help!

Then I got lost. So lost in fact that I ended up inland at the Happy Valley Racecourse (picture above) when I thought I was headed back towards the harbor. Oops. Ok, so it's just a little harder to navigate when there are buildings EVERYWHERE and the sun isn't out. Guess I'll need to work on my orientation a little bit more....