Let the monotony begin

Well, today was my first day of classes. Luckily for me, my cantonese extended to being able to ask "Where is 2 4 1," meaning, "Where's room 241?" The damned classroom was on some weird balcony with no sign on it.

Anyways, my History of Modern Palestine and Israel class seems promising. The prof wants to focus on how the news can be very biased and so on. I also had a lot of fun at my Intro to Mandarin class. For the most part, all the people in my class are Westerners, plus a Frenchie/Korean or two. Time will tell how things will be. I'm mostly psyched for my Chinese History class on Thursday.

There's one girl from Germany in all of my classes this term which is nice. We had fun today comparing country's and the like.

Speaking of making new friends... I was walking to the subway station when I overtook a chinese girl. She smiled at me and said "Hello" and I replied likewise. I kept walking really fast, trying to get ahead of her on the path but she kept pace with me and kept looking at me. I didn't know what to do. Seriously, for 3 minutes she walked beside me, silent. I didn't know whether to stop, speed more more (I was already at break neck pace) or try to broach a conversation. Finally she asked, "Are you an exchange student" and proceeded to grill me on Canada, my thoughts about HK (was she a communist spy?), and the like. I just keep chuckiling over the first 3 silent minutes. It was so awkward!

I have to admit, a lot of my expectations about HK have been blown out of the water. For one thing, bathrooms aren't nearly as terrifying as I was expecting. Honestly, the bathrooms in my apartment are probably the scariest I've come across. Everything's much cleaner (well, street wise that is). People are very appreciative of my attempts to use (mangle?) cantonese.

I need to find an English bookstore... I'm lacking in reading materials.