first week of classes

Monday:

• 1:30-2:50 IELM 225 Operations Research II (Stochastic Processes): The professor (obviously) noticed I was an exchange student and took the time to come over and introduce herself to me. I found out later that she did her Phd at Northwestern and taught at Cornell for a few years! But right now, the class is a basic review of probability. Since I took a probability class last semester, its pretty boring right now...and just brings back bad memories of my previous statistics classes.
• 4:30-5:50 Math 201 tutorial which I didn't have this week.
  

Tuesday:

• 9:00-10:20 ISOM 366 Logistics Management: Seems like it will be an interesting class. The class was smaller and the students were much more respectful. But maybe this was at 9am. There seems to be a lot of group work, which will be a good way to get to know local students, but I'm worried that I will have to play proofreader and head writer on the 10-25 single space case study we have to produce by the end of the semester.
• 4:30-5:20 IELM 225 tutorial which i didn't have either
  

Wednesday:

• 1:30-2:50 Math 201 Intro to Analysis: Well, definately not the most stellar class I have had. We get lecture notes at the beginning of class and the professor basically copies them verbatum onto the white board...although he uses many different colors! This is definitely the most hardcore math class I have had in a while. It is a lot of mathematical proofs, something I have done little of in the past. Although the topics we will cover I have seen before in other classes, usually multiple times, it seems like we will be proving them rigorously. Lots of crazy symbols!
• 3:00-4:20 Lang 113 Introduction to Mandarin: This class is almost all exchange students. Today we were learning the alphabet, different vowels, basic sounds and tones. It was pretty hilarious as the teacher would say a letter and we would all repeat after her, often quite badly. There were points where I could hardly keep myself from laughing. It is hard to keep all the minute differences apart and is kind of all over the place. But I'll do my best!
  
• 4:30-5:50 Fina 111 Finance: I am sitting in on this class since I wanted to get an understanding in finance for my internship this summer. It is my largest class by far, there are about 600 students enrolled in 3 different lectures. The seats in these lecture halls are so comfortable. If this class were any other time than 4:30-5:50, I might fall asleep. But so far the lectures are interesting and engaging.

Thursday

• 9:00-10:20 ISOM 366 again
• 1:30-4:20 Sosc 178: Economic and population growth in china. I'm not sure if I want to take this class or not. I want to try relax this semester and be able to take the time to travel and explore.
• 7-9 Orchestra rehearsal! What an experience. The orchestra is VERY small. Only about 20 people. There is barely a full string section (no bass), there are 2 clarinets, 3 flutes, a trumpet and 3 trombones (somehow!), and a percussion player. Still they are playing reputable music, parts of both carmen suites, another Bizet suite, an arranged version of Jupiter Symphony (same version I played in my first orchestra experience back in 8th grade!) and we sight read Tchaikowsky's Cappricio Italienne. Thankfully, I had my A clarinet, but my other clarinet friend did not. They conductor made a joke that for $20,000 HKD you can change the key signature from B major (5 sharps) to C major (no sharps!). The rehearsal was was quite chaotic: playing when stopped, talking, cell phones, coming in late...nothing like that would ever pass for any rehearsal I have been in in the US! Plus, everything was in cantonese...I was barely able to figure out where we were starting. But everybody obviously was just there because they loved playing music, which is why I am there too! We are playing 2 concerts jointly with Hong Kong Polytechnic university in March.

Friday

• 9:00-10:20 IELM 225 again. A lot fewer people here today than monday. Probably because it was 9 am!
  
• 1:30-2:50 Math 201
  
• 3:00-4:20 Chinese
• 4:30-5:50 Finance

So I am in 16 credits right now, only 13 if I drop the sociology class. I almost feel bad taking so few classes. The some students I talked to are taking 6 or 7 classes! Crazy! I would never to that to myself at Cornell. But like I said before, I want to be able to relax and have fun while I'm here and not focus on school work so much.

It seems that there is a lot less time spent in the classroom. Maybe this means more must be spent outside of class, but I will have to wait and see if that is the case. But taking 5 courses at Cornell, I would often have 2 to 4 commitments to classes each day. Here, even with 5 courses I usually only have 2 classes a day only having 3 classes once. I'm not a fan of the 6 hour breaks in between, or the classes going until nearly 6:00.

The culture of the classes also much different than at Cornell. In some classes students speak up more, but often students are talking in the background. But from what local students tell me, the students from Mainland china are in the library all the time and always mess up the curve. While the classes seem easier, it seems harder to do well in them. At least my grades don't count in my GPA! Regardless, should be a fun and interesting semester.

Campus Life

Now that I've been here about a week, I've kind of settled into campus life and culture. Monday was the first day of the semester, so the campus really came to life as all the local students moved back in or came to campus for class. It was a little overwhelming walking into the main atrium and seeing it bustling with students; I felt pretty out of place. Until then, the only other people I saw on campus were other exchange students, but now it was filled with actual students. I kind of stuck out like a sore thumb. In addition to all the people, various student groups had set up booths. If you have seen Ho Plaza, this his Ho Plaza on drugs. Students build vary intricate booths and props, 15 to 20 of them are there, all dressed in uniform and they swarm you like nothing you have seen at Cornell offering fliers, canned coffee and fishballs.

One group was the new Cabinet for the dorm I live in. They had built an army tank (I had seen them working on it the past week but had no idea what was going on) and had about 20 students dressed up in green army uniforms (complete with helmets, green rain boots and plastic machine guns) marching around the atrium in formation and handing out fliers and paper with the cabinet's name on it. It was a little scary and at first I thought it was some sort of anti-US demonstration. Eventually I got up the courage to ask one of the students what was going on and he explained that there is a strong house affiliation and culture at HKUST and they were trying get recognized by the student body...or something like that, I couldn't exactly understand him. But anyway, it is easy to tell the students are very into the houses they live in and was quite a sight!



I had noticed changes in the dorm though, kind of a changing of the guard from the old cabinet to the new one. On each door, they have a sign with the name of the cabinet. But sometime sunday night, it changed from "Visitory" to "Fourster". They also changed signs around the dorm, including this funny one in each bathroom stall. I'm not sure if the translation is literal, or just meant to be off.

Here are some pictures of my dorm. It is actually a decent size for a double (maybe since the bed is slightly narrower than a real twin bed), but the furniture doesn't move which limits feng shui creativity! There is a triple across the hall which seems awful, as it is exactly the same size as my room, but with 3 people in it in bunk beds. I think they may even have a 4th person living in the room too. My roommate is another exchange student, which is nice and we get along great, but then I'm kind of missing part of the cultural immersion I was looking for. But talking to our neighbor as she moved back in for the semester, students seem to have the same room all three years they are here, so they really accumulate a lot of stuff! My room is so bare...its kind of depressing compared to the regular students' rooms.


From what I've tried so far, the dining halls aren't awful. There are basically 3 canteens, as they call them here. They are kind of confusing to use at first and each has its own system and because of the limited english, I am wary of trying to venture into new ones because I know how to "work" the one I keep going too. Some have western style food (I actually had a good turkey sandwich at one) but I have mostly been eating Chinese food so far. I've gotten really good at using chopsticks, especially with rice (a very important skill to have)!