On Monday i moved in to BU (Baptist University) for the beginning of our orientation week. Most people were arriving that day which seemed to cause much confusion, as when i went to put my stuff away in my room i found that four different people had their belongings in our two person room. It turned out that two girls were just storing their hand luggage there for the time being because their bags had been left behind somewhere around Germany on the trip to Hong Kong, and the person with the keys to their rooms was out on an airport trip to pick up some teachers coming from China, so they were having a bit of a nightmare day. We're staying in student acomodation and so each room has two beds, two wardrobes, two desks etc. The rooms are also in pairs - connected by a bathroom with separate cubicles for the shower and toilet, so i guess you would need to get on with the other people that you share your space with or else it would not be a happy arrangement. Luckily for me this wasn't the case, as my roommate Ali, and the other two girls in the next room, Karen and Catherine, are absolutely lovely. We spent the first day rushing through those awful initial conversations where you end up listing the same mundane details to thirty different people, such as your name, college, course, age, where you live, gap year or not etc, so that by the time dinner came around we were all very relaxed, quite excited and enjoying each other's company. We were taken out for a 'hot pot' which is where two large pots of boiling water are placed on heaters in the centre of the table and you pick different meats from a menu, which are brought raw and which you cook yourself. As the meats are cut so thin, they cook ridiculously quickly (as in, they take about a minute to cook), but we still ended up staying there for hours. It was quite a cool experience and a really nice, informal meal where we all got to laugh at our attempts to cook with chopsticks.
The next trip did not run so smoothly. We've all been split into groups which will move around different schools together, and as a group-bonding activity our group, which at that time consisted of Karen, Nigel, David, Pippa, Shivani and myself, decided to go to a karaoke dinner to break the ice. We thought it would be hysterical, as did two of the other groups, who decided to tag along. As there were now 18 of us going, Karen (my group's director) spent the entire day trying to find a place so that we could book tables, which she finally managed to do. However, upon our arrival, some people decided that they didn't want to pay for the karaoke dinner because they didn't want to sing, or didn't want to eat, or didn't want to sing OR eat, which i expect would have been useful information to have before we arrived at the place. This wouldn't have been a problem in itself, except that some people didn't want the group to split up either. After much frustrating polite indifference from a minority, and indeciciveness from the majority, we decided to forget karaoke and try and find a restaurant that might take 18 people at a moment's notice at 9.30 at night. It wasn't the most fun i've ever had. However, harmony began to be restored in increments as first we ended up finding a cheesy knock off of Bill Wyman's 'Sticky Fingers' which managed to accomodate us all, second we ordered food, and third a terrible Chinese band (with a singer reminiscent of the one from that band in California Dreams) came on doing awful covers of U2, Spin Doctors, Ocean Colour Scene and Natalie Imbruglia, which was about as good as karaoke, and very entertaining for us all. Thus the night was salvaged, and in fact, turned out to be a pretty good one. I think the lesson learned here is not to try and organise a group of 20 or so young adults, who are likely to not want to do the exact same thing as each other. Our group is still going to do karaoke, but as there are only 7 of us, it isn't likely to be a problem and if there is...well, there's always Sticky Fingers.
The second attempt at a group night for my team was to go and have dinner at the top of Victoria Peak with the discretionary money that Karen had been given for us for the week. As we were leaving, four of the other girls who hadn't realised it was a group activity asked if they could come along, so Karen changed the booking at the restaurant and we all headed out together. At the top of the Peak we found our restaurant, 'Peak Outlook', which was this absolutely gorgeous place draped in delicate fairy lights, overlooking one side of the mountain. We had a table in the garden, so got to sit outside in the warm night surrounded by gentle lighting and greenery. It was absolutely picturesque. It was also wonderful because it meant that we got to know the four girls (Sarah, Lara, Hayley and Cal) much better, and they are all really, really nice people. We has a really leisurely meal, and talked about different places we had been and projects we had been part of and the excitement of the coming weeks. Afterwards we went to see the view, which although i had already seen, was equally breath-taking the second time around. It is wonderful to be in Hong Kong, and it is so good to meet so many great people that i had yet to come across in Oxford.
