Hi from Hong Kong!

For anyone who knows the song, "It's five o'clock somewhere," I can verify, it is indeed always five o'clock somewhere. I flew with my classmate Kathryn from Chicago to Hong Kong and we had five o'clock lighting nearly the entire way. We also flew over the north pole (cloudy, unfortunately, so no santa sighting) so I'm not quite sure what the time was at that point. My guess is there's a hole in the fabric of space-time at the north pole because we spent 15 hours in the air, but landed 17 hours later according to time zones. This is the conclusion I reached in my sleep deprived and mentally addled state.

Flight path from Chicago to Hong Kong

We've now been in Hong Kong for a full week! I will be spending the term studying at the Chinese University of Hong Kong through the engineering exchange program at Dartmouth. Before anyone asks, no, I speak no Cantonese and yes, my classes are taught in English. The locals speak English to a varying degree and most signs have an English translation. I'm here with five other engineering students from Dartmouth and six hundred other international exchange students from all over the world. There's also about 20,000 local undergrads at the university who we are taking classes with (not all in one class, that would be absurd).

The view out of my dorm window. Those are university dorms in the foreground and the mountains we hiked in the background across the bay.

We spent orientation period generally being disoriented: getting lost on campus, wandering around in the city, trying street food: it's a great way to figure out a place!

I plan to use this blog to share anecdotes on day to day life in Hong Kong and any adventures I find along the way. Hopefully I'll share thoughts at least once a week but no promises during midterms.

Here we go! What better place to start than with a hiking story:

Trail sign!

Last Thursday, I set out on a hiking adventure with two other exchange students. For anyone who hears Hong Kong and thinks urban jungle, yes, there is a city (which I actually haven't visited yet) but Hong Kong is actually mostly forested jungle over mountains. Super awesome! My legs have mostly recovered from the Dartmouth 50 a month ago (hiking 50 miles in 27 hours. Good times) so we figured we'd do a short hike to ease into the hiking in Hong Kong. But the terrain isn't the problem. Unlike New England trails, (which don't believe in switch backs because why walk back and forth when you can climb straight up the mountain) trails here follow lovely meandering paths going back and forth up the steep sections. No, the problem was the fauna. An hour and a half into the hike and a quarter of a kilometer from the summit, we ran into a massive spider on a massive web.

I'm not afraid of spiders. I love spiders. They eat bugs. The look cool. So naturally I volunteered to pass by the web first. Come on guys, I told my hiking companions as they edged backwards down the path, it's a spider. It's more scared of you than you are of it.

Famous last words.

I crept up to within a foot of the spider. Right at mouth height. It raised its two front legs and snapped its finger-joint sized pincers at me. Once, twice. Yup, that's enough of that.

The picture doesn't do it justice. It was a big as my hand. My open hand.

Back down the path we sprinted, every step imagining the spider in hot pursuit. Shaking with adrenaline and dripping with sweat we paused for breath a suitable distance down the trail, no spider in sight. We never did see the view from the summit. Maybe another week. Or maybe a different peak. Just to be safe.