Meeting the locals

Yesterday was the official I-House opening ceremony. All the residents were invited to attend, so Pei-chin and I went down together. It was nifty. The chinese here seem really big on ceremonies... We listened to some head honchos talk about how they wanted to foster an international village in the I-House. And I think last night was a good step in that direction.

Part of the ceremony included the cutting of a roast pig. It's apparently a tradition to cut a roast pig at opening ceremonies. Something about it bringing luck and whatnot to the thing being ceremoniedidid. However you spell it. The food was diverse and fun. I tried some random yellow sauce on my pork and nearly choked to death. It was nasty.

I got to meet a few locals including Alfred, the Warden's son, and Sui Fung (see the pic), a girl who lives in the apartment across from mine. Everyone was super nice. Sui even offered to guide us around Mong Kok (please ignore the fact that she managed to get us lost twice). :)

After the ceremony I hung out with two other Canadians from U of Ottawa and we had a good time wandering Mong Kok. Jinny's only been in HK since Saturday, so we left pretty early so she could catch a bus back to her dorm.

It's strange how even in a city of 7 million people, you manage to run into people you know. On our way into Mong Kok, we ran into Jaspar and his friend from the Netherlands. On our way back from Central, Kimberly (a student from California) just happened to get on to our subway on her way back to campus. At least with Jaspar he was easy to identify... Tall, pale, blonde hair. You can see foreigners here a mile away. It's fun.

I'm headed off to Central again so I can go exploring with Emily. Normally I have no problem exploring on my own, but since I've been here, I've become used to being with other people on my exploration walks... Now I don't want to go anywhere by myself! I need to get over this.

Toodles!

UPDATE:
It's been about 7 hours since I wrote the first part of this post. :) First of all, I've fixed the first two pics so they don't blow out the margins. :P

HK island was fun as usual. Emily and I got lost (well, since she was counting on me to be a guide, *I* got us lost), but we managed to find a train station with no problem.

We mainly wandered around the streets, checking out something besides Kowloon, which made for a nice change. We found some random costume stores, which will be handy for halloween here. We also found a gazillion random stalls selling ribbons.

Another discovery was Lan Kwai Fong - the expat district in HK. I've been hearing so much about this place that I felt let down when I finally saw it. It's not even a city block of bar after bar after bar. I don't get what the big deal is... Yeah, all the clubs were of western origin (we saw a club with Canadian hockey stuff), but it didn't seem all that exciting. I guess we'll have to check it out at night sometime.

We left HK earlier than originally planned because we felt like going to see a movie, and we didn't know when or where they were playing. I managed to get us to Mong Kok and found a theater, so we went to see The Brothers Grimm. That was an amusing movie, but nothing terribly exciting. I was more amused by the chinese subtitles, and the fact that I was laughing at things no one else was laughing at. (I'm sure that when all the people entered the theater, they all saw this giant white ghost sitting at the back of the theater.)