e-Blog (International Students): Charlotte Rye, from Leeds University, England @Cityu

Sunday, September 19, 2010

Charlotte Rye, from Leeds University, England @Cityu

I am Charlotte, an exchange student from Leeds university in England. I study Economics and during my year here I am taking mostly business related courses as well as some cultural modules. Having been in Hong Kong for four weeks now, I am starting to feel much more settled and like this is home. The first few weeks were really fun but very busy! There is no such thing as a typical day here since there is so much to do and the variety of these things is huge. Hong Kong is great as there is a different thing to discover about it everyday and always something for everyone. You can get anything you want here.

Being a student whive living here is great and you get to meet so many people from every corner of the world. CityU has been brilliant at making the exchange students feel welcome and at ease and showing us some really great places to go and to eat.

Monday. So I do have to do a bit of work, even though there is plenty of time to play as well! Today I had a three hour class - three hours seems a lot and is different to our one hour only classes at home but it goes fast and a lots can be done in this time. I then had a class for my Mandarin module which is really interesting but very hard! After this I had lunch in the Garden café on campus which serves really good and cheap food like salads and sandwiches. In the evening I went to my Hall Orientation evening where everyone gets the chance to meet others in the same hall. There were some activities and a meal afterwards, it was nice meeting all the local students and they are really enthusiastic and good at planning events for people to feel welcome and get to know one another.

Tuesday. I don’t have classes on Tuesdays and Fridays off which is really nice. Today I went with some friends to Wan Chai to apply for a Chinese visa as we are planning to visit there is a few weeks. It is a pretty long and boring process, with lots of waiting but it is worth it to be able to travel to China! After this we had dinner in Food Fest which is a really cheap and tasty food court very close to our halls. We then met some other friends and got to MTR to see some Cantonese opera. This was quite an experience and unlike anything I have seen before. The costume and set design is really impressive, however not being able to understand the words made keeping up with the start a bit difficult

Wednesday. Today I just had one hour of lectures, after which I went to Mong Kok to visit the market there, this is a great place to pick up bargains - you have to haggle. After this we went to the island and went up Victoria Peak, where you can see one of the best views of Hong Kong, the harbour and Kowloon. We came here on our first week but this is something you can do over and over again as it is so amazing. We wanted a chance to take our time and appreciate the views better.

Thursday. This is my busiest day at uni, I have two 2 hour classes and one 3 hour classes, so I am tired after! I went for a swim in-between classes, having an outdoor pool on campus is brilliant - its so cheap and really convenient. In the evening, a big group of us went to LKF to have some drinks, since Thursday night is ‘ladies night’ there and many bars have free drinks for girls! This is a great way to save money and have fun! We then went to a club nearby and stayed out dancing until quite late..

Friday. After a long lay in we went back to Wan Chai to collect our China visa and had lunch there. We then came back to CityU and took out some DVDs from the brilliant media library which has every DVD you could want and watched in in a common room.