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)!