The Little Things

28/05/2015

My first FULL day in Hong Kong was something I would have not expected. I would have not expected to meet so many different students from all over the world. There were exchange students from the United Kingdom, from Turkey, from Africa, from Korea, and even some from different parts of the US. It was really interesting to interact will all these different types of students. I slowly started to notice that most of us contained different values, but we were all in this experience together, which was such an amazing thing to experience.

One of the things that I really love about our stay, was the hospitality that the university had on the exchange students. I could not believe the extra measures that everyone in the department took to make sure we were comfortable. They took us out for lunch and showed us some of the culture etiquette found in typical restaurants and shops. First of all, I had been in extreme denial that I completely forgot that we were in a different country with different cultures of eating. I had abandoned the thought that people use chopsticks in Hong Kong instead of the silverware that I am used to (ie. forks, knives, etc.). So, that was my initial shock when eating, but then I saw my buddy (a local student that volunteers her/his time to show exchange students around) grabbing a teapot containing hot water and start rinsing out the chopsticks, spoons, and little bowls. As she was doing this, I asked her what she was doing, and she told me that she was cleaning the utensils. This was just an extra precautionary Hong Kongnians take to make sure that their utensils were properly cleaned. I thought this was so interesting since this is something that I was not familiar with. The other thing that I did not realize  would be part of the eating culture was the use of different colored chopsticks. I found out that when eating with multiple people there are two types of chopsticks used, one for public use and the other for individual use. The one for public use is so that the individual is not contaminating the food with the chopsticks they use to eat. However, my buddy made it clear that if you go with a close group of friends no one minds if you just use one pair of chopsticks. Who knew that in a hour of eating with some locals I would get to learn so much.

After our lunch, I realized that speaking Cantonese will be a very difficult task for me. The buddies decided to teach us some common phrases that are used in Hong Kong, and let me tell you, I was terrible. For those unfamiliar with Cantonese, there are multiple tones used when speaking. If you speak with the wrong tone, you could be saying something completely different from what you intended to say. So when I was just saying the simple number sequence I kept saying something else because my tone was not correct. At that moment I realized that I might be tone deaf, because this simple task was very difficult for me. However, I will not let that hold me back from my future experiences. I just know that I’ll have to be more considerate when trying to talk Cantonese.

This whole day just showed me that Hong Kong is definitely not the United States, but I was excited to know what else I will learn and what’s stored for my future in Hong Kong.