Amazing week with Jenny - off to China tomorrow

What a great time I had with Jenny last week! I really enjoyed it sooooo much. Fortunately I only had to work for 3 days and so we spent quite some time sightseeing and shopping.
We went to see quite a couple touristy places, like the peak (night and day), Stanley, walking around in Tsim Sha Tsui and HK island and we spent a day in Macao. Some of the pics can be found on my web album.

jenny here

For today I'm only writing a short message, I still have heaps of stuff to do before I leave to China tomorrow. I will be working in 2 different hospitals for a bit more than 2 weeks and then after that I'll take the opportunity and travel for a bit. All in all I'll be gone for about 4 weeks, so probably there won't be any news from me during that time as I don't know if and when I'll have access to the internet. For the traveling part I'm hoping to go to Wuhan/Sanxia (3 gorges, with the big dam), Xian (terracotta army) and of course Beijing. So as you can imagine I'm very excited already!

m

A day in HK with Karie, Linda & Cindy - just hating amsterdam weather

aaaaarrrrggghhhhhh now I know again why I passionately hate the weather in Amsterdam! Jenny was supposed to fly here via Amsterdam, but the flight was canceled, apparently due to thick mist. Now she has to go via Paris and will arrive only late afternoon tomorrow instead of early morning. So we basically loose half a day (which can be a lot if you only have 1 week). Oh well, nothing that can be done about it now, still it's VERY annoying!

But about nicer things; I had a nice, though busy week in the clinic, and fortunately also a short one (yesterday and today were public holidays in HK). So yesterday I met with Karie, Cindy and Linda (my student ambassadors, amazing how many ppl they recruit here to look after a poor little country boy in the big, bad city :-) ) We had a great day. They took me to different places around HK tourists usually don't go, so that was a good experience. I posted a couple of pics in my webalbum, some explanations give by the comments on them.

a day with karie, cindy & linda

And at the beginning of this week it was party time for the Wuxian hall. This is the hall (same thing as the different houses with Harry Potter) I am living in and on the Monday and Tuesday evening they had organised some events everybody could join. Somehow I was the only exchange student who was there for the whole time and all the local students were amazing. As most things were in Cantonese they translated everything for me, showed me around and just made me feel special cuz I was there. Really great! And of course I also took some pictures (though more videos, seems like I also need to open a video portal... hmmm, lets see how bored I'll be tomorrow waiting for Jenny... damn Amsterdam weather...), so have a look, again, they are with explanations.

Wuxian hall festival

So as I already wrote tomorrow Jenny will hopefully finally arrive, am really looking so much forward to this coming week! So maybe some more news next week.

M

new website/Hong Kong

Hello everybody

I decided to leave my old website behind and create a new one as the old one was not quite what I wanted and this one makes life a lot easier. Especially the upload of pictures goes a lot faster and easier, so that will happen more often from now on (I hope :-) ), about the writing I am not too sure yet....

So I will start this new website with news about my stay here in Hong Kong.

Well, I've been here for about 4 weeks now and it has been a very intense time. Especially the beginning was very hectic, hardly any time to do anything else but studying and sleeping. Fortunately everything slowed down a bit, though it still isn't relaxed. (so actually I could also be studying instead of writing this.... :-) ). I am working at a private clinic of the Polytechnic University ( http://www.rehabclinic.org/index.asp ). On a usual day I have to be there from 9 to 6, which means I get there about half an hour early and leave about about 1 hour late. After dinner (mmmmh, great food here) I go back to my books and study for another hour or two. And on the weekends I also calculated 1 day for sightseeing and 1 day for studying and other things. Fortunately this has reduced a bit, so I don't have to study that much anymore, but still it is intense.
My time in the clinic will end in mid-April, then I will leave to the 'real' China :-). I got the opportunity to see and also work a bit in hospitals in Guangzhou and CongHua, 2 cities about 2, respectively 3 hours away from HK. After my time there I get a short break of 1 week and then its back to HK and being in another private sports clinic here, to finish of with the HK football sevens in the end of May before I go home to Amsterdam.

So what have I done so far. Well, actually its not been too much sightseeing as Jenny is coming next week and we are planning on doing all the big things together. So until now I mainly used the weekends to relax and get out of the city to feel some nature again. But first of all here are some pics about HK.

Just click on it and a album will open!

Impressions of Hong Kong

So my first trip here was to Lantau Island, together with Laura. She is a finnish student who also worked at the clinic for an internship. She'll also go to China with me, at least for some time.
Lamma Island is the 3rd biggest island of HK, a little bit of hiking/walking can be done there and they have very good seafood. So we walked for a while and then had a really nice lunch....

lamma island

Last weekend we went to Macau (former Portugese colony, gambling paradise today) and over the border there to Zuhai. In Zuhai we had some lunch, which was great experience on its own, no English menu, no, pictures on the menu and nobody spoke English in the restaurant. And unfortunately our Chinese (those couple of words we speak) didn't help either. So we just picked something from the menu (ended up being some liver with ginger sauce, not bad) and tried to order a lemon chicken with the lonely planet guide, which ended up being lemon juice :-D very funny. At least the rice was ok.

macau and zuhai

And this weekend we went to a park in the new territories, walking along the sea, together with Emma and Linna, two PT students from the Mainland. In the end we spend most of the time on a deserted beach, I didn't swim though as the water was disgusting... Still, it was fun.

walking to the beach

Well, that's it for today, gotta get some sleep before the work tomorrow again. Hope you like the new website, should be easier to access now, same goes for leaving comments.
Cheers
M