Culture Shocked! My First Day in HK

I'm here! I'm here, I'm here, I'm here! It took about 19 hours total and I lost a whole day, my lunch (several times) and a lot of my sanity, but thanks to the help and support of the kind and generous people I've met here and back home, I'm finally happily moved into my dorm in Hong Kong. But it's definitely been a bit of a journey. Let's start from the beginning....

I left on Saturday night/Sunday morning from LAX at mid-night midnight (after sad I-miss-you-and-love-yous with the folks/uncle and tearful chick-flick worthy goodbyes with my boyfriend) and took  a 14 hour flight to Beijing on Air China. I exchanged my money, bought a frappucino, and was on my way!

The money has ANIMALS ON IT! YES!

At this point, I was quite nervous, and needless to say, the fact that the flight attendants couldn't understand me was exceptionally frightening. I guess I always knew there would be a language barrier, but my goodness! I felt so disoriented. Culture shock is a much bigger deal than I expected it to be. I slept most of the flight but I always felt like I was on my toes, just in case I had to speak to someone. I was served two meals: "pork noodle" (my first chinese noodle dish, though because it's airline food I don't know if that counts) and beef with rice at 2am Beijing time, which I found hilarious because who eats rice for breakfast, amirite?! Basically I was just excited to be eating "genuine" Chinese food. 

When I arrived at the Beijing airport, I was overcome with a genuine sense of accomplishment and then a total sense of overwhelming fear of my surroundings. I mean, I expected studying abroad to have some scary moments, but I was so disappointed in myself! I was in a new country, doing exciting things, and yet I was whimpering like a baby! Believe me, doing something big and grand on your own for the first time is no cakewalk. When the wi-fi in the airport didn't work (so I couldn't send "I'm freaking out" emails to my loved ones) and I accidentally wasted 30 US dollars on an international SIM card (thinking I needed one for HK, which is silly because I only need it locally), I basically felt I was the most helpless person ever and had meltdown #1 of my journey. Still, I was distracted by asian coke cans and this weird ad for teeth whitening (or something) and once I got on the plane to HK I was nearly okay.

Chinese Orange Crush and Sprite make everything okay.

I was in awe of this guy's strange and beautiful emotional expressions.

However, the story only goes downhill from here. The flight to HK was at 8:00am and only four hours long, during which the jet lag made me strangely alert and awake. I drank a lot of water but started feeling hot. Like sickly, weird, feverish hot. I took off my jacket and felt a bit better. Then I ate a Chinese breakfast that consisted of congee (kind of like oatmeal made of rice), hot pickled mustard tubers (which I smelled but didn't eat), a black sesame paste bun, pears in syrup, raspberry yogurt and... here's the kicker: what appeared to be a small brown fermented hard boiled egg. Which I ate. With abandon. Because, why not?

Badddd decision on my part.

By the time I got to Hong Kong, I was hot, thirsty, nauseous and exhausted from carrying my overpacked luggage. My HKU buddy (a local assigned friend for international students), Ben Chu, met me at the airport and helped me with carry my suitcase (Thanks so much Ben!). He is also in the arts faculty at HKU, studying history. He speaks German, Cantonese, English and Mandarin, which I found extremely impressive, and he's a great tour guide too.

Ben Chu!
We chatted about Hong Kong and our different cultures on the bus ride (50 HK dollars or 6.50 American dollars) to my housing, but I started to feel ill on the bus ride. Really ill. By the time the 1.5 hour bus ride was nearing it's conclusion, I could barely talk for fear of vomiting. I just couldn't stop thinking about that disgusting fermented egg. Even now, when I think of it, my gag reflex gets set off. I was incredibly tired, carsick and dehydrated, and by the time we got off the bus, I was ready to lose my lunch. Which I did. In a public restroom. It was not my proudest moment.

After checking in at the Pokfulam Amenities Centre, Ben walked me up to my dorm room.

I felt a little better so we ran to the nearby 7-11 and bought some water, then ran over to HKU to begin my check in process. HKU is approximately 5-10 minutes away by bus, but even that was enough to make me feel pretty sick again. Poor Ben! I wasn't very good company in this condition, but he was still nice enough to help me find the Global Lounge Exchange Office before he headed to the library to turn in a job application (good luck Ben!). 

I started the check in process, realized I had forgot my passport in my dorm room and that I'd have to go all the way back on my own to find it (unless I had lost it along the way, which was even scarier and more horrible) and that I had no change for the bus. Oh I felt so defeated and nauseous and awful. I used my phone to call my boyfriend internationally in a panini shop and was basically completely overwhelmed. 

I found my way back to my dorm, found my passport, vomited several more times in the bathroom, and laid down, miserable, on my new dorm mattress. I say mattress because I did not bring blankets, pillows or sheets on my journey and I had nothing to lay down on. I was cold. This was difficult. I felt useless, defeated, and it was one of the top ten hardest days of my life. I called my boyfriend over Skype (thank God wi-fi here is easy to access) and complained my little heart out, while he listened and talked me through it with a dedication of a thousand suns (Thank you so much, Tim!). 

After some rest, I was able to stand up for long enough to go down to where I checked in to find out about blankets and sheets. I talked to the incredibly kind check-in lady, who let me  rent some from the school for 100 HK dollars for the semester. Surprisingly enough, I also ran into a UC student from Irvine, Anna, who invited me to have dinner with her and some friends later. I was still feeling pretty bad, but decided I needed some sort of food and towels and other necessities and went along. 

We took a bus to Central where Anna, her friends, Ping and Gordon (who were also from UC) and I grabbed food at a small noodle shop. I ordered the "plain noodle" since I was convinced any strong flavors would upset my stomach (and I love noodles), and it was just heavenly. It was something like a chicken broth with udon-like noodles and green onion in it and it was honestly the only thing that saved my stomach. Also it only cost 12 HK dollars (1.50 American dollars)! Thank God for noodles!

Noodles: They'll save your life.

We then went to Japan Home Centre and Watson's for towels, linens and other home essentials. In total, to deck out my entire room with bedding, towels, toiletries, hangers, laundry detergent and toothbrush only cost 240 HK dollars! That's 31 US dollars! I was pretty happy about that. 

When I got home, I was feeling much better, and my roommate had moved in! Her name is Fiona and she's from France (though she lived in Mexico for the first fifteen years of her life). We get along really well and I was really grateful that she didn't speak much Cantonese either. It's nice to have someone go through the same things you're going through!

My roommate Fiona, in front of our residence hall.

In the end, my first day actually turned out pretty well! By the time I went to sleep, I felt much better, had successfully made friends and navigated the HK public transportation system and made a nice little home for myself. The culture shock (and incessant nausea) was hard to deal with, but the people here are also more helpful than I could have ever anticipated. Being on my own in a country where I don't speak the language is different and a little bit scary, but the world is full of nice people who are willing to help you out no matter what language you speak! 

But that doesn't mean you can't have a meltdown now and then :)