The Day I Lost Ten Pounds to Registration

My first day began at 6am, which is when I touched down in Hong Kong. The moment I stepped out of the plane and into the boarding gate, I was assaulted by that familiar scent of Hong Kong: city streets, the ocean, bus exhaust.

My day was vastly simplified since my Great Uncle (or something...hereby referred to as 三叔公 or Third Great Uncle) picked me up from the airport, fed me, and had his friend (who had a car!) help me move my stuff to my dorm. He also helped me purchase necessities like toiletries and bedding (and we had a car so I didn't have to walk it all back!)

They left me on campus; I was on my own.

Registration was a HUGE PAIN. I had to walk here and there and back again.

Coming from UCI, whose layout is relatively simple: the campus is based around a circle and all the major buildings are accessible from that circle. The farthest you have to walk involves cutting across the park-nucleus.

HKU is not set up in a convenient way at all. First of all...it's on a hill. And it seems like going through buildings is the easiest way to get to other buildings, but I find that disorienting.
You'd be surprised to find that many of the buildings don't have elevators. In a prestigious school based in a supposedly modern metropolis, there are hardly any elevators where it's convenient. I definitely worked up a sweat.

I walked up stairs.

I walked inside a building, walked across.

Nope, this is the wrong direction.

Walk back down stairs

Walk up somewhere else.

At least I practiced my Cantonese skills asking for directions. And I'm losing weight?

After that riot, I went home to finally settle in my dorm. I took a shower to wash off all the grime and traveling and airplane on me.

And now, the real fun adventure begins!

I met two new friends and we just went to Central and began wandering! Yes, wandering. Even more walking here-and-there. With no destination in mind, we hit the streets!
My two new friends! =) We're on a really long moving walkway.
Yay this is our favorite ride!

This moving walkways carried us up to the bar streets. Not quite LKF, but close by. The bars were full of expats getting drinks in classy bars; I've never seen so many white people in HK before! It wasn't really our area since we weren't there to drink, and the bar food looked too expensive.

And because we were aimlessly wandering in an area with no food, we began to get really, really hungry.

We walked back downhill to get away from the expensive bars and turned the corner when I saw a lit-up sign that said Dumpling Garden or 饺子园。

The funny story about this restaurant is that there's two of them on the same street, practically across the street from one another. And there was yet another dumpling house a couple doors down from the second location we found. Dumpling house street!
We walked into the other dumpling house at first, but when they made us wait to be seated, we ended up with good ole Dumpling Yuan.


Hungry and waiting for food!
Look at those delicious condiments! I can't wait for that vinegar and chili oil to eat with my dumplings!

Like a typical American, I like things fried! I ordered some 锅贴! These giant fried pork dumplings were juicy and GIANT. I don't know how, but I managed to eat them all. Mmmm I really love me some dumplings; you'll be seeing more blog entries about dumplings for sure.

I think I would've liked to have a better destination than "anywhere" and I would've liked to show them somewhere more interesting than the SoHo area, but all in all, I had fun.
Even without any advice, we still found a decent restaurant to eat at!