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...