A September 17th fairytale

Once upon a time, there was a "socalled" student in Hong Kong (anybody know her?). Studying didn't seem the most interessting thing to do those days, and additionally there was this ever so distracting network of German students (beware of "StudiVZ.net"), with the aim of brutally wiping out even the last ambitions of using any brainpower for uni.
This weekend the student once more gave in to the seducing temptation and despite a load of work to be done for uni and a messy room waiting to be tidied and cleaned... she allied with the devil. She threw away her To-do-list and went out to enjoy an amazingly sunny day.
It being great weather in Hong Kong - which is, for those who are not that well versed in geography, on the coast - it was of course the members' of this network's duty to have some fun outside, right? So, basically it wasnt even their fault, yes they all I guess felt quite forced to come together with about 25 people to rent a, you know, just yeah... well, a little Yacht that day (yes, I know, really horrible those white boats, this one way too small, and without a pool) ... just for some "short" 8 hours long... to go out on the sea and well, uhm... researh on the development of the sun, practise some swimming, do some rugby, banana boat riding and wakeboarding and so on. As you can hear, it already sounds like quite some hard tasks, so in order to make it a little nicer, some good tunes were turned on and "few" drinks (only to prevent dehydration of course) and food were served.
It seems obvious to everybody that this day could not have ended without some devasting consequences, such as a suntan and endless empty cans of beer, bottles of rum, smirnoff and other stuff... oh oh...!
Finally the consensus was that this would have to be practised again, in order to gain more routine and enhance our experiences.
And if they didn't suffer from any sunburn or from other uhhm... "influences" they lived happily ever after.

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ATTENTION: IMPORTANT NEWS: Photos of this field-reseach project and all former pictures since the party night in the Mes Amis on the 6th of September are to be found on a NEW PAGE http://claudia-schmitz1.medion-fotoalbum.de. the old link of course still exists and former pictures are there.. just its full....

It's been a while...

... since I last wrote, atually almost 2 weeks, so here's a quick update.
shopping update first:
great news is: I got new shooooeeeees!! yeihhh.. and they are light brown with pink shoelaces Converses. other than that I got a new shirt in pink a new shirt in black with white dots and a black (look out, newly learned word from british people ahead) "cardigan". sounds quite british so I guess I would have just called it a jacket... a thin, cloth kind of jacket!
party update:
Two weeks ago we actually had our first "StudiVZ Stammtisch". Yes really, there is a group of about 80 people by now who study in HK and signed up in the StudiVZ, so we thought, hey why not take this as a good reason to uhm... meet ;) First time we were "only" with about 25 people... but well, we are getting more and more which makes it harder to find a location each time. Anyways. Only problem is that I have uni early on Tuesday mornings... but well, thats I guess something to ignore! So Mondays is always Stammttisch time, a word which, btw, each non-german speaking person should learn by heart, but for those unfortunates amongst us, let me explain: [A "Stammtisch" describes a Group of people with a same interesst who meet on a regular basis in a certain bar or pub] (google definitio :) )
besides monday, there is another important day not to miss out on: Wednesday! the new definition of Wednesday in Hong Kong would be Ladies night, which means: freee drinks aaaall night long!! yippiiii, lucky me that I have thursdays off!
Uni update:
So that Tuesday was the first real day of school here.. very busy, cuz in the first week I actually went to 9 instead of only the required 5 courses, just to see which ones are nicest and least work to do in order to chose which ones to continue with. I ended up with some interessting subjects on Tourism in China, Airline Management of course Chinese! Buuut... no I am not so lazy, I also took some well, rather unloved ones: Tourism Policy and one about Ethics and Law yuck yuck yuck.. just figured that it would be better to do this here... who knows when NHTV will "plan" a course on this ;) ? Oh and of course an important aspect I considered when I put my schedule togeether is, that now I have EACH Monday off, which means that I can go on long weekends, and EACH Thursday off, which well, uhm.. I will use for most intensive studying purposes only! ;)
Until now the classes are all fine, project groups have been formed and so far they also seem to work out well! The most fun is of course the Putonghua class (Mandarin Chinese) which consists - until now - mostly of pronunciation practise of various vowals, initials and finals to build a word... but I am proud to say that I could also already ask someone for how he or she is and for the name... not that I would understand the answer though, and not to mention that they dont speak Putonghua here in hong Kong but Cantonese. Well, this brings me to my next topic here:
Travel Update:
For the single benefit of improving my chinese I thought I should go on a trip to Shanghai!! And currently it seems as if that will be in about 3 weeks, at the enf of hte month and beginning october. I'll probably meet up with Megan there, (remember, the american girl from the hostel in Beijing) and I might also go to Anji and Hangzhou where she lives.
Oh and one more thing I should not forget about is of course last weekend, where I went to Macau from Sat. to Sunday with Mandy and Fi. macau to celebrate Fionas Birthday! Macau is this peninsula about 60 km west of here, a former Portuguese colony an thus full of mediterranean architecture, restaurants and atmosphere, in combination with a bunch of luxury casinos. Unfortunately I didnt win any money there, which means that I almost have to go again, right? Anyways, Macau was great fun! On our second day there we got a glimpse of Hollywood feeeling, when, not thinking of anything to happen, we made our way to the beach - one of the most ugly ones ever seen, but surely THE tourist attraction for Chinese mainland tourists. Another attraction for them? oh yeah of course: Fiona and me: wow: Westerners! Especially becasue of Fi's red hair they came over to take pictures of us, not only one, a zillion!! and then of course with them on it on the left and on the right and so on... one guy even shot a motion picture of us! unbelievable, but fun! Also had the best "pork in a bun" and grilled octopus from one of those stands there.
now that was it again... today I have to do some school stuff, some organising and so on and I might go out for IPod shopping as well... if the weather stays nice and there is no new Typhoon coming of which we had three during the last week and no more earthquakes of which there was one.... byeee ... zaijian!

Thursday 31st until today - 1st day of school and city tour...

so here we go, an update on the latest breaking news!
Thursday we had another introduction, but this one was much more interessting though since the lecture was held by Robert Burns - the founder of some uninteressting luxury hotels like the Regent Group and stuff... ;) - was really great to listen to his story!!
After that we got a tour though our faculty, so just the School of Hotel and Tourism Management, not the whole campus luckily… in the office I switched some subjects around on my timetable so now I have Mondays off, - which is great for few trips to China or wherever :D :D :D
After the school stuff I met up with Julia and Laura to go to the beach together, where we met up with some guys from the University of Hong Kong, quite a fun afternoon, nice and relaxing! only annoyance was that the bus took like an hour to get to Repulse bay, so I gotta figure out a beach closer by, cuz I don’t wanna take such a journey so often, or at least not as often as I wanna go to the beach!! Afterwards we went to a Thai restaurant and had some real good food there… then went home quite late.
oh and important: Thursday was Mrs. Johnsons birthday (my host-grandma in Boston) so to reach her on Thursday I called her on Friday… confusing with this time difference!!

Friday I had my first classes at PolyU! how exciting!! well, it was a lecture in “China - Hotel and Tourism” and I really liked its contents so far! afterwards we had the seminar for the same course. Was nice but the Chinese girls in the class seemed as if they had never spoken in front of a group before,… very nervous and too shy to even introduce themselves. Also it was a little childish, but maybe that’s just typical?! hmmm ---- oh and one good thing about the class is also that our lecturer asked us whether we thought a fieldtrip to china was necessary to understand the culture… well, you can imagine the answer!!
At night I met up with some people from the StudiVZ (Germans know it! – a webpage where majority of German students is registered… kind of a network) who are all here in HK… that was nice also, we found a German “Biergarten” and had real Bitburger beer there…. great greaat… and they even also sold German food! gotta remember that place!!

Yesterday – Saturday I went on a city tour organised by PolyU. We went to Hong Kong Island and there to Central, Wan Chai to the Exhibition Centre, to Admiralty to a little port, to Repulse bay and to Stanley market. In Repulse bay we went to some kinda open air temple, with a ton of Buddha statues and if you touched them whatever they stand for would come true – as our tourguide said! The line at the money and successs one was very long, so I didn’t stand in line thre, but instead got in went to the love and family one with all the others for the fun of it! uhuu.. exiting!! oh and I went over a bridge and just because of that it is absolutely sure that I will live three years longer. so actually when I die I will know that I would have usually died three years earlier already. It would be interessting to find out how the Chinese figured that out tough!!
After all that we went to one of Hong Kongs highlights – the Viktoria Peak. the way up we passed quite a few villas in the mountains, all with a great ocean view, a tropical garden with pool and a Rolls Royces (already picked my future one ;) ) but the view from the top was of course the greatest. WOW! Undescribably unbelievable!! very very great!

And finally today I met up with some guys who were on the tour yesterday and together we made our way to Sham Shui Po, where our tour guide from yesterday had recommended a very special restaurant for us… a snake restaurant! hmmm and the snake was so yummy!!! and afterwards the guy even let us hold a snake – an uncooked one I should say!! Quite scarry at the first moment, but after a few deep breaths I realised that I was still alive and it was actually quite interessting to hold it… maybe I’ll get one when I’m back in Breda, what do you think, Antoinette, Karo and Anke???
After that I went to Mong Kok to the Ladies market with Fi and Mandy, just to make sure that I would go shopping once more before I die of the snakes poison. It was really nice over there, got a new bag (finally, cuz I really needed one), a new pink belt, an alarmclock which doesn’t make the sound of a bell waking up the whole floor (was definitely necessary to prevent a small-scale war between France and Germany) and a new greyish top! and now that’s where we are… I am sitting in my room, its almost midnight and I am sharing my chair with Mandy who is sitting next to me – occupying half of my chair…!! tomorrow I am still off while everybody else goes to uni… so I will enjoy a whoooole long day at the beach with some people who just as lucky as me!!