台湾 - Taiwan

Sorry again for taking so long to get back with the post. The next day on our vacation was Saturday. We woke up early and went straight to TaiPei 101. It is the second largest building in the world. We took an elevator to the top which goes 100 m/m making it the world's fastest elevator in the world. At the top, you have a nice 360 degree view of the entire city of Taiwan. I took pictures with all of their mascots called the Damper Babies. They get their name from the damper that holds the entire building in place. We then climbed to the very top of the building up two floors to the 91st floor. The view wasn't as good because all of the metal bars in our way; however, I can safely say I have gone pee on the top of the second tallest building in the world.

After that, we went to a temple that was pretty much the same as all the others except it was packed with people. After the temple, we went to one of the biggest squares there. They had a giant gate and a Taiwanese version of the Lincoln Memorial. We watched the sunset then the moonrise, and I got a green tea latte which is one of the best things ever.

The next morning Diana, Charlie, and I went to a park to get a different view of Taipei. We only had a little bit of time before we had to leave and go to the hot springs. The hot springs were really fun. They had three different pools: the first was from 35-38C, the second from 38-41, and the third from 41-44. Apparently after you get out of every pool you transfer to one of the cold pools before moving up to the next heat. The first two were bearable. I decided to move to the top one. After getting into it, I immediately wanted to get out as soon as possible, but I was afraid that the older Chinese people might judge me and think I couldn't handle it. I stayed in for about another minute until the bottom half of me was a nice medium rare. We met an old man there who had lived in France for his entire schooling after high school and who spoke pretty good English. After he found out that I spoke Chinese we switched languages. He then told me the best way to learn Chinese is not to study every day, but the best way is to find a pretty Chinese girl. We went back to the hostel then took a bus to the airport and that was the end of our Taiwan trip.

The weather is finally cooling down here, and without a doubt, this is the happiest I have ever been for fall/winter. ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ

台湾 - Taiwan

Well it's been about a month since I've posted anything. I'm sorry. It's a lack of free time and a little bit of laziness. I guess I will start about 3 weeks back when I was busy being an international movie star. I got a facebook message about being in a movie called Contagion on Sunday night, and they needed extras for the movie the next day. I ended up skipping class and making 600 HKD for my work. The scene we were shooting was set in a Macau casino pre-SARS infection. I was standing about 5 feet away from Gwenyth Paltrow and Steven Soderbergh(the director) for awhile.

This past Thursday, 6 other classmates and I embarked on a trip to Taiwan. No need to worry, we survived the typhoon safely with only a little bit of rain on Friday. We got in about 9 P.M Thursday evening and were at our hotel around 11. We decided we would try and check out the nightlife in 台北(TaiPei) that night and asked one of the hostel employees, Phoenix, where to go. We ended up wandering around until about 2 A.M. without finding anywhere of real interest. We woke up early Friday morning to go to a tea house and eat brunch. Unfortunately, the scenic route to the top was cancelled due to heavy wind, so we just took a bus to the top instead. The tea and food were both really good. We went to 西门(West Gate) afterwards which is one of the more famous shopping places in TaiPei. After that, we went to 淡水(Danshui) which is alongside the river. There we just walked around, and I ended up buying a pumpkin seed brittle. Unlike Hong Kong, all the people in Taiwan give out free samples, and it is amazing. After Danshui, we went to 士林(ShiLin) the biggest and most famous of the night markets in TaiPei. We walked around for a little bit but we were already exhausted since it had been such a long day.

Just want to get this post up since I haven't posted anything in a really long time. I'll get the rest up within the next couple days.

中秋节等等 - Mid Autumn Festival etc.

It's been awhile since my last post. Since then, classes have been going for 3 weeks. I like my schedule a lot mainly because I have no classes on Friday. I'm taking Korean, Chinese, Business Statistics, Intro Management, and Corporate Finance. I'm the only white person in my Korean class, so a lot of people like talking to me. We have already learned how to read the entire alphabet in Korean, so I can read every word but might pronounce it incorrectly because the pronunciation is really rough. My Chinese class is completely focused on business and business terms. I'm learning some really useful words for Chinese business that I'm sure will help me on the BCT(Business Chinese Test). Statistics is easily my worst class. The teacher's English is incredibly difficult to understand, and she makes it impossible to stay focused in class. Instead of saying sample, she says zample. Probability turns into probiblity. Intro Management is with all of the IBCE students from USC and CUHK. The teacher is really passionate about teaching, and the material is pretty interesting. Corporate finance is more like what my teacher does for her own personal finance. It's a really interesting course, but I only have it once a week, and it's for 2 hours and 45 minutes making it a bit difficult to pay attention.

Last Wednesday night was the Mid Autumn Festival. It's pretty much the Chinese equivalent of Thanksgiving. They all celebrate the end of the harvest and eat mooncakes. We celebrated with most of IBCE on Friday night. For 60 HKD each, you and your friends get an unlimited supply of meats that you can grill over a fire. They had good stuff like some kind of steak, chicken wings, hot dogs, and sausages. Then they had some more questionable things like fishballs, squid, and something even the Chinese kids didn't know what it was. After that, we ate mooncakes. Mooncakes are one of the most filling foods that ever existed. I had one with green tea, mango, and something that looked like cookie dough.

The next day, we woke up early and decided to go cliff-jumping. The site is pretty far from our dorm. First you have to take a 45 minute bus, then a 20 minute taxi, then an hour or so hike. We actually ended up walking past the waterfall, but we found another beach which was really nice and had very few visitors. It was about 4-5 times as big as the other beach we go to with only 10 people instead of over 200. Anyways, the cliff was about 30 feet above the water. After getting up to the top, I was a little nervous, but I didn't wait too long to jump. I only brought flip-flops to hike in, so after a couple hours I was really excited to get back in the taxi. We ended the day at McDonald's where I had 2 Big Macs, fries, and a Coke since I hadn't really eaten anything all day. 'Til next time...

最后部分 - Last Part

The day after visiting Want Want Group, we went to the Shanghai Futures Exchange and Amway. The SHFE was probably my least favorite of the three just because I had no idea how trading of futures was carried out. We got to see their trading room, but because it is all electronic, it wasn't too interesting to watch. At Amway, we learned all about how their company worked and why they had become successful in China. Since its a direct selling company, its a little pyramid schemey but still interesting.

The following day was our first day at the World Expo. Because it happened to be the first day of school for kids in China, the lines were relatively short. The first pavilion we went to was Australia. They had a really cool movie/presentation at the end which was a good way to start the day. We went to some other interesting countries like Singapore, North Korea, and Iran. There was a section where we pretty much hit up all the countries that hate the U.S. My friend and I had heard the Japan pavilion was really cool, so we decided to wait 3 hours to see it. It was well worth the wait. I wasn't allowed to take any pictures, but they have some really cool technology they are developing like an amazing camera by Canon, a touch screen you can put on your wall, and smaller personalized "cars". Overall that day we visited about 16 countries getting stamps in our fake passports for most of them.

The following day the lines were a bit longer. Thankfully, Amway was one of the sponsors of the USA pavilion, so we were able to skip the line completely. It was nice to get a little taste of America after being gone for so long. We had a couple hours to ourselves then had to meet at the China pavilion. We got incredibly lucky by getting reservations to go inside. It is easily the hardest pavilion to get into having to wait multiple hours to get a ticket to then wait in the actual line. The pavilion itself was pretty good. They had a short ride inside which was one of the coolest things.

Our last day in Shanghai was a free day. We ended up going with a couple of the CUHK kids to a kinda touristy place a bit outside of town. We went on a gondola type boat ride through the canal that last about 15 minutes. We then walked around and looked at shops. At one cart, they were selling pets, and you could get a rabbit for less than $6. They also had a chipmunk which I'm fairly certain they captured off the side of the road and put in a cage to sell. Saturday, we headed back to Hong Kong and our trip was over. Coming soon, I'll be talking about my life at CUHK now that real classes have started up.

Quick Post

Just a quick post before I forget. I left out the performance we went to go see in Yang Shuo. It is called 刘三姐 Liu San Jie. It was directed by the same person who directed the Opening Ceremony of the Olympics. It was an amazing musical/play thing and had over 600 people in it. Most of them come from villages nearby and do other things during the day.

Continued

Sorry it took so long to get around to making this next post. Getting started with classes has been a little hectic. So, after an entire free day of biking and driving mopeds, the next day we took a 4 hour bus ride to the Long Sheng Rice Terrace Fields. Before we began the hike, we stopped by and watched a Yao minority group performance. One of their beliefs is to never cut their hair, so most of them have hair that is longer than they are tall. One of our friends was called up on stage to get "married" to one of the women. After that, we began the 45 minute hike to the most scenic spot for the rice terrace fields. From the top, the view was great; however, it was a little hazy making the pictures of the mountains in the background not as good. The next day was a traveling day. All I did was wait the entire day. We finally got into 上海 Shanghai around 1:30 a.m. The next morning we woke up to go to the first of our company visits. The first stop was 旺旺集团 Want Want Group. They are actually a much more legitimate company than they sound. I can't remember exactly which product, but they hold 70% of the market share with the next closest competitor around 2-3%. After eating lunch and changing clothes, we went to Chenghuang Temple, but it was just a complete tourist area selling everything you could possible imagine.(Yes mom I bought a mask :D)

Just to talk about the food briefly on the trip. The first meal we had in mainland was $3 yuan for a bowl of noodles. Morning noodles are on of the specialties in Gui Lin. At this particular restaurant, it was served with a choice of beef or pork, peanuts, and some sauce. In Gui Lin, dog meat is also a very popular dish which is usually eaten in the winter. Some slang used in Gui Lin is to actually call friends 狗肉 dog meat. So while we were in Yang Shuo, we set out to find some dog meat. We spot a restaurant called 狗肉饭馆 which literally means dog meat restaurant. Well its a little bit down an alley then you have to turn up the stairs and find the restaurant. Conveniently located on the right side of the poorly lit stairs is some throw up. We then go up and find the restaurant, and it turns out it is closed. Fearing for our lives, we run back to the main street. The food we ate in Shanghai is similar to what we usually eat in Hong Kong, but they have one specialty called 小笼包 Xiao Long Bao. It's a dumpling with regular meat inside, but they also put some soup broth, and they are incredible. We had a restaurant that was relatively cheap and served them about 5 minutes away from our hotel. It was 1 yuan for 1 dumpling. We ended up eating there 3 times in our 5 day stay.
More to come! I promise you won't have to wait as long as this time

桂林- Gui Lin

Due to the massive amount of things I must cover in this post, I have decided to break it into 2 or 3 sub-parts. First is about Gui Lin. We left for Gui Lin on August 23rd, and I went on my first real train ride. It was a 13 hour trip total but wasn't nearly as bad as you would think it was. Each seat is actually a bed so from about midnight until 7 a.m. I was asleep to pass the time. Everyone said the beds were uncomfortable, but I slept fairly well. When we arrived, we went to get get ready, and then went to breakfast. We ate breakfast for 50 cents, but it was still incredible. Later that day, we went to Elephant Trunk Hill and hiked up to the top. You can see some of the pictures on my Picasa. After that, we went around in a small cave, and then hiked to the top of that. After that, we went to Reed Flute Cave which is where all the colorful pictures come from.

The next day, we headed to 阳朔 (Yang Shuo). Instead of taking a bus, we took a 3 hour boat ride down the river which had really nice scenery. After arriving in Yang Shuo we had free time the rest of the day. I　ended up passing out asleep as well as my roommate. We went to dinner, and afterward decided to check out the night life. At one place, they played the only Chinese song that I know all the words to, so everyone liked me. The next day we went on bicycle ride through some of the village/towns outside of Yang Shuo. We had more free time in the afternoon, so we decided to rent Mopeds. To rent a Moped in China, you only have to give them $10 USD for 60 km of Moped use. They don't require you to present any form of ID or require you to fill out a waiver. Driving in a downtown city.

It may turn out to be longer than 3 posts. It is a lot longer than I expected.

大陆 - Mainland

Tomorrow we head off to Guilin, China. It's located in Southeast China hopefully not too close to all of the floods that are happening. It's about a 13 hour train ride away. It's a relatively small city in China only 1,340,000 people live there. It's well known for its scenery. After Guilin, we will head to Shanghai and spend 5 days there. We are going on a few corporate visits, so I will get to try out my new suit that I bought here. We are also getting two full days at the Expo from 10 a.m. - 10 p.m. When we return, I will have all of a day and a half to get ready for classes that start on the 6th. I'm a little worried about what my roommate will be like. I'm also incredibly worried that I may get placed in a 3 or 4 person room with constant Cantonese that will make me go crazy. Also here is an interesting article I found on China's economy:

夏天才开始 - Summer Finally Started

I've been meaning to make this post for awhile...Friday, we finished up our summer classes. For my morning class, I didn't have to do anything because I had already made my speech on Thursday. In afternoon class, we had to take a mock BCT(Business Chinese Test) which was pretty hard. Earlier in the week, I had two speeches on Thursday, an oral test on Tuesday, and a written test on Monday. It is sad that the morning class is over and that some of my classmates are leaving Hong Kong. Fortunately, a good number of them are still going to be here, so I will be able to see them next semester.

I haven't been doing much since break got off. I figured I would start learning Korean since I now have a lot of Korean friends. Yesterday, we went to Lamma Island. There are two ferries you can take from Hong Kong Island. One goes to a populated side, the other goes to a fairly deserted side of the island. We ended up taking the second one. We hiked for about 30 minutes to the beach. At the beach, it had a great view of a factory behind us. After swimming for a little while, we hiked to the other side of the island and ate dinner at a Lebanese restaurant, but we only ordered pizza. I'm really enjoying the time off.

Just a recap of roughly how many new words I learned this past summer. If we assume there were 40 new phrases per lesson (conservative side), and we learned 15 lessons that's roughly 600 characters from morning class alone. I can tell that my Chinese has improved significantly over the past few months while my English gets worse and worse >_<.

日本菜 - Japanese Food

Friday night, we went to a Japanese restaurant with about half of our class. The two Japanese guys in our class ordered us a bunch of authentic Japanese yakitori(kebabs). I ate some crazy stuff like cow tongue, chicken butt, and chicken heart. It was all really good. Of the weird stuff, chicken heart was probably my favorite. They said next time we would go to a sushi restaurant. They paid for my meal because they said I was not old enough to have a job, so I didn't complain.

This is a group picture after the lunch.

很多事 - A lot of Stuff

It has been awhile since my last blog update. Nothing extremely big has happened since then. Not yesterday, but the Friday before, it was my friends birthday. If you have any Korean friends, you should eat their birthday dinner with them. It is a custom in Korea that if it is your birthday you treat everyone for dinner.

This past week we got a lot of rain, but it has cleared up for the weekend. Last night, I went to see Inception. In Hong Kong, instead of buying a movie ticket and sitting where ever you'd like, the ticket you purchase has a designated seat on it and you have to sit there. It was really cool watching the movie and being able to look down and read some of the subtitles in traditional characters from time to time.

Today, we met our Chinese counterpart of IBCE. They only found out on Thursday that they would be in the program. All of the kids I met seem really nice. We went out to dinner with a few of them tonight, and it was a lot of fun. During the lunch, it finally felt like the program was completed. Everyone at both colleges is incredibly excited for it, and I felt honored for the opportunity to be in the program. The next coming years are going to be fun for sure.

台风 - Typhoon

Our first typhoon is happening right now. I was expecting it be a bit stronger, but it is only a level 5. This past week I was incredibly busy. I had a test on Wednesday, oral test on Friday, and a speech on Tuesday. Everything went pretty well, and I'm happy to have it all done with. I got a haircut last Thursday. Everyone but me seems to like it. It's really Asian looking. It's been pretty quiet here without anything too interesting to report on.

黄大仙- Huang Da Xian

Today for afternoon class, we went to Huang Da Xian. It's a temple for this guy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wong_Tai_Sin . We got to practice our Chinese with one of our afternoon teachers, and it was very useful. I haven't put up the pictures yet, but they are soon to come. We had a test today which was pretty difficult at some parts, but hopefully I did ok. Friday, I have an oral test which requires me to memorize 4 paragraphs in Chinese and then recite 1-2 from memory. Then they ask me supplementary questions that I don't know yet. Friday, we might have our first typhoon since we've been here. I'm mildly excited for it, but I hear we'll be trapped in our dorm for a couple days if its bad so that'll probably be very boring. On Monday, I need to write my own speech that has to be 3-5 minutes long and then it'll have a 10 minute Q&A session afterwards. So, I've been pretty busy recently. After Monday, things should quiet down for a little while. Tomorrow, I have the day off, so I plan on getting a haircut, and I'm praying that it goes well, and I don't look like Goku afterwards.

按摩和保龄球 - Massages and Bowling

Friday morning, I missed the first hour of my morning class to go get my mainland visa so that I could go to Shenzhen Friday night. Shenzhen is the city right on the border between China and Hong Kong. One of my friends had heard about a massage parlor where it was ridiculous cheap. It ended up being less than $70 for 3 hours of massage, a place to stay for the night, unlimited fruit and ice cream, and access to a sauna and hot tub. It was my first massage ever and it was really good. Saturday morning I ended up coming back early because I didn't bring enough money with me.

Saturday me and another IBCE classmate were going to go bowling with some Koreans in our class. He ended up getting stuck in Shenzhen for too long so he was a little late. It ended up being me, three Koreans in my class, one of the Koreans friend and his three friends, and another student from the US. We went to a restaurant where we all got some noodle dishes. We went bowling after that. It took me awhile to get warmed up but it my last game I got a 158. After that, six of us went to a Beatles themed bar to watch the Paraguay vs. Germany game. It was really fun to hang out with some people who actually live in Hong Kong, and hopefully I'll hang out with them again soon.

Peak, Buddha, Beach

I've been very busy since my last post. This week we had Thursday off for Hong Kong's Independence Day. A bunch of us decided to go to Victoria Peak because the sky was very clear that day, and we thought we'd get a good view of downtown Hong Kong. It took awhile to get there, but it was well worth the view. I uploaded my pictures a couple days ago. Unfortunately, my lack of a tripod made some of the night pictures really bad. We didn't take the tram up to the top of the Peak but took a bus instead. I've decided I'll be owning a house at the top because the view is incredible. One side you have the ocean, the other has all of Hong Kong .

On Saturday, we went to see the Tian Tan Buddha, which also a good ways away from where we live. We took a cable car to get there which is really cool. You go over the water and over a bunch of mountains. I thought this Buddha was really old, but it turns out I'm actually older than it. It was built in 1993.

Today we went to the beach, and it was awesome. We kinda took the wrong bus, so we didn't end up exactly where we wanted to go, but everything worked out. We ended up buying a ticket and went on a 20 minute boat ride to a beach. It was pretty crowded, but the water felt amazing. After swimming around for awhile, we went to the other side of the island, and no one was there. There were some rocks in the water, so we kinda snorkeled using them. I got pretty burnt because at the store the sunscreen was like 70 HKD, so we all bought lotion that had SPF 24 for a lot cheaper. It didn't work out too well... Unfortunately, I didn't get to do too much American stuff for it being 4th of July, but it was still a great day

总是带雨伞 - Always Bring an Umbrella

No matter what, if you are in Hong Kong, bring an umbrella with you.

下雨了 - Rain

It's been awhile since my last post. Not too much interesting has happened since then. It has been raining here nonstop since Friday night. I had class like normal all week. I finally bought a cellphone, so I can finally communicate with friends here. I have my first test tomorrow. It's on 5 chapters that we covered in about 2 weeks and a day. They grade impossible hard here. For multiple choice, fill in the blank, etc it's not bad, but for grammar related questions, you can make one mistake and miss about 6 out of 10 points.

So, I've had my blog title for awhile， and I keep getting a lot of questions about it so here's the meaning behind it. I'll quote Kyle/the James family "the shower represents Hong Kong and that because this is such a good opportunity, but also a huge cultural difference you don't won't to put up barriers and not take all of the chances to experience something new. If you did limit yourself, you would metaphorically be wearing a rain coat." Also Mr. Williams was also close with his guess.

香港花园 - Hong Kong Garden

Yesterday we went to the Hong Kong Garden. We were originally going to go to Victoria Peak, but it took a little too long to get started, and we decided we'd want to spend the entire day up there doing a bunch of cool stuff. The garden is in downtown Hong Kong about 5 minutes away from the Metro station. It had cool stuff like birds, monkeys, and a few frogs and alligators. The walk to the park was pretty miserable because it was all uphill, and it was ridiculously hot. The weather at the start of the day was sunny which was a nice change from the usual overcast. Surprisingly the sun made the weather more pleasant because it didn't seem like I was in a steam room the entire day.

端午节 - Dragonboat Festival

Today was the Dragonboat Festival. It comes on the 5th day of the 5th month on the lunar calendar. I'm not exactly sure the purpose, but an ancient poet/scholar was exiled and ended up drowning himself in a river, and the entire holiday is tied around that. We left here at about 9 to go to Hong Kong Island to watch the races. It was about a two and a half hour journey to finally get to our destination which was far away from downtown. By the time we had gotten there, all the races were over, but the bus ride over was really cool, and there was still a lot of stuff to do once we arrived. We were all exhausted by the time we were heading back.

P.S. post here to try and guess what you think my blog title means. If you guess right, I'll bring you a reward when I return. No kyle allowed...

Nan Lian Garden

Yesterday, we were thinking about going to Victoria's Peak to check it out for the first time, but there was a lot of fog, so we decided to try somewhere else instead. We went to the Nan Lian Garden which is right in the middle of a really urban area. There was a bunch of cool stuff there. They had a couple restaurants, a tea house, and an incredible Buddhist temple. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to take any pictures of the statues because it wasn't allowed.

After we went there, we went to a Pizza Hut in the mall. Pizza Huts here are waayy nicer than they are in the U.S. Later that night, we went to watch the game in the city, and it was a lot of fun. There were tons of British and American fans all going crazy. I go back to school tomorrow, so I've just had a relaxing day all day today.

学校 - School

So, school started Monday, and I've been busy ever since. We have class from 9:30-12:50 and then 2:30-4:20. I've had to squeeze in a bunch of stuff in between classes like open a bank account, get things signed, etc. The classes are pretty hard and in all Chinese, but I can definitely tell I'm getting better already. The people in my class are from all over the world. There are people from Japan, Korea, Germany, England, and Canada. This weekend we are thinking about going to Victoria's Peak on Saturday, so I'll be sure to take tons of pictures.

勘探 - Exploration

Sorry for going so long since the last post. I've been really busy, and it almost feels like I made the post last night. So since you've heard from me I've done a lot of exploring. Saturday afternoon, we met four of the CUHK IBCE students. They all seem pretty cool after only talking to them for a little while. After that, me and a couple other friends went to the mall in search of SIM cards or a phone. It was pretty tough to understand what they were saying, since it's a little technical. We then finally found out that you need to have a Hong Kong ID card in order to sign up for a contract which we should be getting soon.

Then, me and Diana went exploring, and we decided to get off at the KowLoon Tong exit. As soon as we got off of the train, we saw Festival Walk, so we decided to go in. It was tons of stores, an indoor ice skating rink, and a movie theater. We explored around there for a little while and decided to go back.

Sunday we met at 11 for a tour of the 沙田 Plaza. This is where we were the night before, but after the tour realized we hadn't gotten anywhere close to exploring the entire thing. We went to a "wet" market where they sell things like live fish, pig snouts, chicken feet, and other stuff like that. I bought a ridiculous Chinese shirt that's white, purple, and orangeish-yellow. We got back from that and immediately decided to try and find a night market. We decided on the Temple Street Market which is about 40 minutes entire trip from our dorms. They have knock-off watches for $5 and signs that make no sense like "Don't fart in the bed". On the way back, we made the mistake of walking along side of the market to see several women of the night trying to find some business. After we got back, I instantly passed out.

到香港 - Arriving in Hong Kong

After several hours of travel, we finally arrived in Hong Kong. Our plane leaving Detroit was a little late, so it added to the already too long plane flight. I had decided to sleep as little as possible on the plane to try and avoid the jet lag... Unfortunately, I still woke up at 5:00 a.m. and couldn't go back to sleep.

We didn't have internet at first and that's the reason for delay in communication. While I didn't get to see all of the city on the drive in, the little bit I saw is incredible. The impression I got is a fusion between New York City and Baltimore, in China.

The campus is on a mountain. It is impossible to go anywhere without walking up or down a hill, but everything is within about a 5 minute bus ride. We're headed to the city for the first time tonight. It was really cloudy today, so there wasn't a good opportunity to take pictures, but there's plenty of time. I've got some pictures of my room and the view from my window that'll be up soon. Farewell til next time

一路平安 - Bon Voyage

It's finally here. After months of waiting, I am finally headed off to Hong Kong. This time tomorrow I'll be about 7 hours from the city. Being in the first class of IBCE, I really have no idea what to expect. Everything's going to be great. It's just leaving for so long is going to be strange. So much will change in the next coming months. So everyone, I'll be back in 14 months, and I'll see you then.

Some Basic Info

I just wanted to get some basic information up on the program itself and my travel itinerary.

The primary objective of the International Business and Chinese Enterprise (IBCE) program is to develop undergraduate students into professionals who can operate and succeed in the Chinese business environment. The Darla Moore School of Business will admit 20 students per year into the IBCE program. These students will be matched with 20 students at the Chinese University of Hong Kong . During the course of the IBCE program, Moore School students work towards a Bachelor of Science degree in Business Administration, major in a special track with the International Business concentration, and complete a second business major at the University of South Carolina.

USC students spend the Freshman and Junior years at USC, and their Sophomore and Senior years at CUHK. IBCE students will participate in intensive study of Mandarin Chinese (Putonghua) with two summers in Hong Kong . Over the course of the four year program of study, students may also pursue internships in the United States and China/Hong Kong, with linked opportunities for graduate study.

Departs			Arrives		Cabin & Class	Flight Segment Status
Delta 1475	Atlanta , GA (ATL) Gate: N/A	10:55am 2 Jun 2010	Detroit-Wayne County , MI (DTW) Gate: N/A	1:00pm 2 Jun 2010	Coach (K)	Confirmed
Delta 27	Detroit-Wayne County , MI (DTW) Gate: N/A	3:30pm 2 Jun 2010	Hong Kong, Hong Kong (HKG) Gate: N/A	7:15pm 3 Jun 2010	Coach