First week of the semester

Not so many posts lately as I've been busy to take my guest around HK. :) Anyway I'm trying to post these on somewhat chronological order.

The first two weeks of this semester are over. They included many lectures, hall life activation, first hall team practices for me, starting to learn Cantonese, buying hall stuff and eating street food. So much to do and also quite much to tell about. I'm writing separate posts on some things, for example course selection.

Anyway let's begin with Monday 21st of January, the first day of the semester.

The hall life has activated as everyone has come back from their holidays. On Monday my floormates were making cotton candy when I came home! As cotton candy is just sugar, it doesn't taste that special, but it's fun to make it. :) The machine was small, so it took some time and skills to make a good looking cotton candy.

Andrea making cotton candy.

Vian made a really nice looking one!

I also had to go to buy new sneakers for the hall practise on Tuesday. So, I went to Mong Kok with a local student Sally from my floor as my guide. There's practically a sneaker street starting from Mong Kok MTR Exit E. It's not a street market, but a street full of sneaker shops. I'm really not sure if you should bargain in these shops, but I guess a good thing to do is to ask what is the price as they will give a discount. On 1st Feb I went to Mong Kok again to buy indoor shoes and also got a discount on those.

Love the red color! (although the shoes are aready a bit dirty)

On Thursday I found again one small difference between Finland and Hong Kong: how people protect their books. In Finland we have this self-adhesive plastic, but here they tape a piece of plastic around the book and it looks the same outside. My floormate Vian helped me to cover my book and she said that if she would come to Finland she would buy a lot those self-adhesive plastic rolls. :D

Floormates made hotpot on Thursday. Note that the ingredients are just put in and thus not cooked yet.

On Friday I went to Causeway Bay after school, planning to explore Sogo, a japanese shopping mall. It turned out to be full of more expensive clothes than I expected. After going a bit around Causeway Bay, I met Simon and Andy and we bought street food: curry fish balls, imitation shark fish soup (or something like that) and egg puffs. Super cheap and ok taste. Liked curry fish balls more than the soup. Dessert is always good. :)

The street food counter.

Egg puffs. <3

After that I went to a Hong Kong cultural night organized by Cedars at our university. Nothing that special in there, but I got to try play some traditional Chinese instrument that looked a bit like Finnish kantele. After the culture night, I went to eat fried rice with Rhys, Ilona and Holly.

On Saturday I woke up late and was planning to go to Mong Kok shopping, but I met a group of exchange students at the bus stop including Keun Hee and Monica (from South Korea). So I joined them and we went to eat dim sum at Hong Kong station.

Chicken feet on the right. It actually just tastes like chicken, but the bones and structure make it difficult to eat... especially with chopsticks.

More dim sum.