Survival of the Studying Abroad

Travel is glamorous only in retrospect. – Paul Theroux

If you don't know how to laugh, don't travel.  When you are gawked at like a tropical fish through a storefront window by a man who evidently hasn't seen a white female in some time; when you flood your kitchen at midnight after opening your pint-sized combination washer-dryer that was set on dry but chose to perform the opposite; when you go to a champagne bar designed to resemble 1920s Paris but actually features a Chinese jazz trio performing the Carpenters, Lionel Richie, and Alicia Keys; when you are flung, swinging like a gorilla, from the spiral staircase in a double-decker bus because the driver tried to defy the laws of physics just before you landed your last step — if you have no sense of humor, you will not survive.

The anecdotes I've accumulated over the last several weeks, which are vast in number and must be saved for future dialogues, are the sort which demand laughter and are often recalled for no particular reason at random times in public places.  That said, the things that happen here are more bizarre than they are unfortunate or purely humorous.  My friends and I walk away from many of these experiences musing, "How many people can say that?" e.g., "I just spent my twenty-first birthday eating potato chips and pretzels in 1920s Paris with a Chinese woman singing 'Hotel California!' How many people can SAY that?!"

The speakeasy-inspired Champagne Bar at the Grand Hyatt in Wan Chai.

Despite the mishaps, there is a certain sense of accomplishment in knowing the area and successfully communicating with the locals.  Hong Kong is officially bilingual, but single-word English sentences are still the most commonly exchanged, and every time I find someone with whom I can have a conversation, I feel like I won the lottery.  The language barrier makes certain things difficult, like going to a professional printer, and we are always astonished when a Hong Kongese person verbally delivers an entire paragraph in English and we can't understand a single word.  Pointing and repetition are the modus operandi.

My favorite learning experiences have been when I'm wandering, which I wish I could do more often.  One morning before classes, I went to Hong Kong Park, which contains fountains, a man-made pond, a sculpture garden, open and caged aviaries, an art center, playgrounds, various sports courts, and a tea ware museum.  The views are so perfectly representative of Hong Kong: an urban cityscape shooting up right in the middle of a tropical paradise.

Hong Kong landscape: playgrounds, flora, skyscrapers, ocean, mountains.

Augusta and I went to Shek O beach, which was a nice getaway from school, and spent some time walking through the streets nearby.  Some of my favorite photographs were taken here:

My first impression of the Hong Kong environment was a Jurassic Park vibe — man's modern architecture and transportation slicing through paradise — and I still stand by this comparison.  Any time I cross a body of water, no matter how exhausted I am, I fight to keep my eyes open for fear that I might miss something spectacular:

Looking out the window of the ferry from Macau to Hong Kong

The morning commute to SCAD

I won't go into detail about why my twenty-first birthday didn't go as planned, but it involved torrential downpours, unexpected delays, and missing the Symphony of Lights harbor cruise that five friends and I had paid for.  But, sometimes mulligans are part of life, and the booking agents allowed us to ride the following Friday at no extra charge.  Here are highlights from last night:

Hong Kong Island from Victoria Bay

Kowloon Peninsula from Victoria Bay

The experience was every bit as spectacular as the photos.  But with rum.

I debated for a long time before establishing my birthday plans.  When I knew I would be turning twenty-one in Hong Kong, I had visions of a big, grand extravaganza out in the city with lots of people and fancy drinks.  But when my whole worldview shifted a week before the big day, part of me wanted to scrap the whole plan and repurpose that money for something more meaningful.  I finally decided that this was the last time in my life, with the possible exception of marriage, when I should be celebrating me.  I didn't want to regret not having made this day extraordinary.  So, I made plans, and once again, God had others in mind.

Speaking of my worldview shifting, I want to wrap up with a few clarifications in response to letters to the editor:

There are different kinds of poverty, and there's a difference between relief and development.  True.  Right now, my particular interest is in bringing relief — immediate, temporary, non-sustainable relief — to communities who cannot afford to buy food.  This isn't for any particular reason, but I know this is what I want to do.

You could use your art skills to design advertisements for human relief organizations or teach people in impoverished communities how to make and sell their own art.  Also true.  There are a myriad of ways in which I could combine my design training and artistic inclinations with my desire to fight poverty, and chances are high that I will.  I am far giddier at the idea of driving a truck full of beans through the Sahara, but all in due time.  On the same note, I hardly consider my three years of schooling to be wasteful of my time, money, or other investments.  My time at SCAD and the University of Michigan is indispensable for reasons that would require multiple book contracts to discuss.

What does any of this have to do with being in Hong Kong?  Hong Kong has infected me with a hypersensitivity to current volumes of human consumption, especially that of luxury goods.  The ten-story shopping malls, designer bag obsession, and post-casino fine jewelry store infestation turned my love for shopping into horror at the wastefulness of first-world countries.  I wasn't prepared for an environment where people shop an average of every 2.5 days.

                              

Here's to laughing when there is no other option.

eb

Stranger

When we get out of the glass bottle of our ego and when we escape like the squirrels in the cage of our personality and get into the forest again, we shall shiver with cold and fright. But things will happen to us so that we don’t know ourselves. Cool, unlying life will rush in ... – D. H. Lawrence

If you have not read my last post, do so now.

I don't think anything has ever permeated my life the way my desire to fight poverty has in the last two days.  I think about it when I wake, when I go to sleep, and so far as I recall, the moments in between.  I am thankful that God has given me the ability to concentrate on my work when I need to, but the instant I pack up my computer, my thoughts return to loftier goals.  The idea of my participating in human relief efforts still seems unspeakably foreign, because it has never been so much as a flicker on the radar of what I plan to do with my life.  I think the most "effort" I've put in to helping the less-fortunate is buying a (RED) campaign t-shirt from GAP.  With a gift card.

I can tell that it's going to take some time for me to learn how to adjust to the lifestyle that my new plans demand.  The more I wrap my mind around what it means to invest my life in fighting poverty, the more I realize I will lose — and essentially gain.  I am overwhelmed by the amount of research, penny-pinching, self-discipline and inner transformation that has to happen before I can begin to think about defining long-term plans, so I am tackling these with baby steps: identifying luxuries — a concept that has been drastically redefined for me — which I can eliminate immediately; seeking out reading materials that can begin to open my eyes to the taboo realities of what real poverty is (already, I've learned that the vast majority of the world, myself included, haven't a clue), and deciphering the new purpose for finishing my education and pursing excellence in graphic design, an idea which I once considered paramount to my career but now seems peripheral and meaningless.  However, as I imagine it will be quite some time before God has fully prepared me to dive into the deep end, I believe continuing to work as a designer is the best way to utilize the gifts with which He has already equipped me in order to take financial responsibility for paying for college, support myself in the interim, and set aside a small fortune for when I finally take a plunge to do whatever, wherever.

Two days ago, I was well on my way to becoming an upper-middle-class design professional.  I shopped the sale racks at GAP and LOFT and DSW, sipped on Starbucks coffee while I worked with the Adobe Suite on my fifteen-inch MacBook Pro, and occasionally (maybe even regularly) went out for a meal (and a drink) with friends.  I whined about things like jeans made with low-quality denim, subway ads with a poor typography treatment, and my favorite coffee shop rearranging its furniture and moving my favorite highboy tables to a corner with only a partial street view.  I recognized these frustrations as trivial, certainly, but with my gift of babbling for the sake of babbling, at least two or three people would know of them by the end of the day.

I'm not as horrified of my former lifestyle as I am unable to comprehend it.  Yesterday, a friend invited me on a shopping trip to the three-story (soon to be six-story) Forever 21 in Causeway Bay.  Thrown off-guard by an offer that would have been a no-brainer a few days before but which now seemed absurd, my instincts were still so confused that I agreed.  As we exited the MTR station onto a bustling street separating us from the shiny skyscraper adorned with a monstrous plasma screen television, I felt like someone from the plains of Africa seeing a department store for the first time.  I was a stranger in my own stomping ground.

Girls like me (who I used to be) swarmed throughout the three floors, snatching garments from racks of bold, funky clothing that they would grow tired of in twelve months.  I floated through a gallery of sequins, fake gold jewelry, neon leather, sheer silk blouses, and string bikinis with Popeye and Hello Kitty.  I looked around, and for the first time, I couldn't make sense of the idea of recreational shopping.  These people are trying on clothes for fun.  She's never going to wear that sweater; she probably has six more of those at home; do we really have nothing better to do with our time than try on clothes that we don't even need?  I tried on a few basics that I could see myself wearing in India or sub-Saharan Africa, but my mind translated every price tag into "food for a child for two months," and I put them back.

I do not aim to condemn shopping or heap guilt upon those who enjoy any of the luxuries I have mentioned or implied.  My purpose in conveying this experience is to illustrate how my whole world turned upside-down overnight.  With a perspective shaped by my goals to fight poverty, nothing makes sense anymore.  It's like how I've always wanted my relationship with Christ to be, where He's all I think about and my every decision is therefore based on Him.  I guess, in a way, that's becoming closer to the truth, but I won't pretend for a second that the desires to reverse poverty and to have a relationship with Christ are synonymous.

Please pray for me as I begin to let go of who I was and learn who I am.

Here's to being a stranger in your own land.

eb

Hands

Through travel I first became aware of the outside world; it was through travel that I found my own introspective way into becoming a part of it. — Eudora Welty

The content of ViennaSong has been redirected by new authorship, effective immediately.

Until today, my time in Hong Kong, outwardly glamorous, action-packed, and exotic, fell short of my expectations.  Curious, as I came with very few expectations, mostly out of ignorance; but I did anticipate a grand, life-altering, travel-inspired revelation that would magically allow me to see the world in a different light because of how experienced, well-rounded, and innovative I had become.  Not yet, naturally — it's only week three — but I had hoped to see the beginnings of my rebirth by this point.  Even as I wrote about lens-turning and focus-shifting and any other romantic garbage my fingers spat out, my words were closer to wishes than realities.  They described a change for which I hoped, not a transformation that had already begun.  And it is always at this point — the point where I think I have everything figured out — that God reveals Himself to me.

This morning, as I swiped through my Facebook homepage before starting my work, the world stopped when I saw this photo:

I don't hate my life; that's not where I'm going with this.  In fact, I rather wish the text had been omitted altogether, but design principles are irrelevant now.  The image struck me.  Not due to unfamiliarity; the concept of poverty isn't a new one to me, and it probably isn't new to you, either.  I've cringed at photographs, struggled through videos, and flipped past dozens of articles provided by people with a better grasp on reality than mine, who spend their lives trying, often vainly, to educate the more-fortunate.  The only possible explanation for why this particular image struck me is the power of the Holy Spirit.

I lingered at the photograph for a little while, imagining how it would feel to touch that little hand, so grotesquely fragile I feel as if I'd break it.  Before long, I began to wonder, in my disgusting nature, whether this is a screenshot from one of those World Vision commercials that used to interrupt my childhood T.V. shows, with a gray-bearded man prattling on about how you, too, can help a child for "only a dollar a day."  I went about my day, but the more this image flashed through my mind, the more I began to see the transformation for which I had hoped.

Part of my dissatisfaction with my first few weeks in Hong Kong lies in how familiar it is.  Some things are different, of course — double-decker buses bustling down the left side of the road, Chinese people bantering in Cantonese all over the place, the ever-present stench of pungent seafood — but too much of this environment is just like the United States, if not fancier and more sophisticated.  I wanted to see "the world," a world very different from mine, not one with palatial Louis Vuitton outlets and luxurious sky bars.  I didn't come here for a vacation.

The best way I can describe what happened today — I still don't fully understand it and probably won't for a while — is that this photograph was a catalyst, igniting a reaction between my growing disgust with the overblown luxuries of Hong Kong and my aching desire to go to parts of the world that will truly cause me to see and think differently.  I didn't expect the glorious transformation to be instantaneous, but it feels as if it was; and now, out of nowhere, God has entrusted me with a burning desire to invest my life in human relief.

When I say "instantaneous," I mean, my photography professor got my wheels turning again this afternoon, and by the end of the twenty-five-minute bus ride home, I was estimating airfare to India.  I entered my apartment, saw my reflection in the full-length mirror, and was disgusted with the marks of luxury tattooed all over me.  The money I spent on the haircut I considered a bargain twenty-four hours ago could provide food and schooling for a child in Kenya for five months.  I knew this, but somehow it had no meaning until now.

Please join me on this journey as I prayerfully consider when and how to move forward.  At this point, I still intend to finish school and graduate next spring, but major considerations include where I will go, which organization (if any) would be fitting for me to work with, and options for financing this new lifestyle while paying off substantial student loans.  This is still so unfamiliar to me that I feel as if someone else is writing, and I suppose that's true.

Here's to self-discovery.

eb

The Photographer

Travel does what good novelists also do to the life of everyday, placing it like a picture in a frame or a gem in its setting, so that the intrinsic qualities are made more clear. Travel does this with the very stuff that everyday life is made of, giving to it the sharp contour and meaning of art. – Freya Stark

My photography professor, a sarcastic young Israeli with a wry smile and a smoking habit, asked us to define the DSLR camera.  What separates it from the point-and-shoots responsible for Facebook photos everywhere?  The answer, he said, is that it allows the photographer to look through the camera and see the image through the lens before he captures it.  This is essential when every aspect of the photograph is under our control — the composition, the amount and duration of the light to which the image is exposed, the focus, the depth — each quality is a conscious decision made by the photographer and can mean the difference between a photograph's future in the gallery or in the recycle bin.

When you travel for the first time, you set out with a lens that doesn't know what it means to be turned.  You realize you've been on automatic focus for twenty years, programmed to adjust to the lighting conditions of where you are.  You get comfortable, only having to make tiny adjustments; but until you change the quality of light passing through the camera — measured by the ISO value, of course — you deny yourself certain abilities for which you were created: to respond to different qualities of light, to open or contract the focus of your lens, to allow in more or less light according to the outside conditions.

Then you fly to the other side of the world and find yourself completely out of focus.  You get stared at (frequently and shamelessly), trampled upon, and forcefully spoken to in a language that sounds like someone repeatedly and violently stubbing his toes.  You stand out, keenly aware that all eyes are on you, and you try to go about your business with as few embarrassments as possible.  All the while, you adjust.  Some things, you recognize as familiar but are somehow different in this new light; others, you've never seen before, and significant changes have to be made before your young eyes can make sense of them.  Soon, you look back at what was once familiar, and you find that your focal point has shifted.  You sense that something has changed, and it isn't what you see that has changed.

A true photographer doesn't take photographs; he makes them.  He controls every aspect of the process of "drawing with light," and the resulting image is to his credit.  What happens, then, if we allow the Light of the World to operate us?  Let Him focus our eyes, control what goes in and out in His timing, and use us to create a work of art for which only He is responsible?  Imagine the exhibition of His work.

Here's to focusing on Him.

eb

Firsts

I am not the same having seen the moon shine on the other side of the world. – Mary Anne Radmacher Hershey

I happened to see it from the 118th floor of the Ritz-Carlton, Hong Kong.

Four friends and I made our way to the eighth floor of the International Commerce Center, through the lobby and up a hill, through the Ritz lobby and into an elevator to the 103rd floor, across a landing to a final elevator, and up to Ozone Bar on Floor 118.  My ears popped four times between Floor 8 and Floor 103, a swift movement that happens faster than you can say "vodka on the rocks."  We arrived on the 118th floor, walked down a sleek, gorgeously-designed hallway, and entered the highest bar in the world.

Awed by the ever-changing neon glow and sexy, sleek interior design, we floated past glamazons and their accompanying gentlemen to a host in a suit that cost more than my entire wardrobe.  "Drinks for five?  Right this way."

The inside bar at Ozone, on Floor 118 of the Ritz-Carlton, Hong Kong.

He showed us to the outside bar, which we didn't realize was literally outside until we looked up, wondering why it was so windy, and saw the moon shining down through the ever-present Hong Kong fog.  Chic thirty- and forty-somethings lined the glass wall looking out onto Victoria Harbor and the legendary Hong Kong skyline, shooting us icy glances as they sipped overpriced champagne.

The view: northern Hong Kong Island, Victoria Harbor, and southern Kowloon.

We ordered fruity cocktails and blackberry mojitos, marveled at the breathtaking view, and soon moved to the inside bar, where a hostess led us to a circular couch and provided coasters and perfectly-salted walnuts.  Absorbing the atmosphere created by robust, organic sculptural forms, dramatic lighting, and tasteful techno accompaniment, we savored every drop of vodka and rum and enjoyed each other's presence for an experience we treasured as a truly remarkable privilege.

One of Ozone Bar's Seuss-chic columns.

Before leaving, we stopped by the restrooms, just because we knew they'd be fabulous.  No disappointment: marble surfaces, disguised stall doors, and rows of clean washcloths for each woman to have her own towel.  We soared back down to the 103rd, then the eighth floor, and walked past an army of taxis waiting in anticipation of intoxicated Ozone patrons.  One last view of the skyline, and we returned to civilization.

A final glance at the Hong Kong skyline from the entrance to the Ritz.

• • •

Today, for the first time, I was able to take advantage of connections made through friends back home.  Maik and Katie Friedrich are the college ministry leaders at Watermark, an English-speaking church in Hong Kong that originated with the help of a man named Charles Thomas, who grew up with the pastor of my parents' church in north Atlanta.  It sounds complicated because it is, but one: we're talking about connections in Hong Kong, and two: the Body of Christ functions as a single family, and this is not the least bit unusual.

I met Maik, Katie, and some of their students from International Christian Fellowship at Hong Kong University for hot pot at Mou Mou Club in Mong Kok.  The hot pot experience is similar to fondue, but with soup.  Servers bring you the raw meat of your choice, you select rice, noodles, vegetables, fish balls, and tofu from a buffet, and everyone cooks their food in a communal hot pot of broth.  Delicious, but definitely not appropriate for those with food allergies or germophobia.

A hot pot lunch at Mou Mou Club in Mong Kok

Afterward, we went to Langham Place, a mall in Mong Kok, the grandiosity of which fits right in with most Hong Kong malls: at least ten stories, dozens of escalators, an ice rink ... the whole package.  It was in this mall where I ordered my first Starbucks beverage in Hong Kong: a tall Hazelnut Latte, which was amazing, even though I usually prefer black coffee.

Riding one of the many escalators in Langham Place in Mong Kok

The store I found most intriguing sold a variety of his-and-hers home goods, like coffee mugs and pillowcases, with hand-drawn cartoons:

 

I later tackled the Ladies' Market, where I bartered for the first time!  Assuming a direct correlation between how angry I made the vendors and how good a bargain I got, my best deal was a leather wristlet for $100 HKD, which is about $12.80 US.

Here's to unforgettable firsts.

eb

It'll do.

 When you travel, remember that a foreign country is not designed to make you comfortable. It is designed to make its own people comfortable. – Clifton Fadiman

... except at the Gold Coast Residences.

I came home with a headache — one of those headaches that prohibits me from doing anything until I've laid down and slept — to find men repairing one of our bathrooms, and housekeeping was to arrive any minute.  After they knocked and I welcomed them inside, I curled up on the couch, hoping I would feel better lying down.  Within a few moments, I hear, "Missy!" as one of the adorable Chinese ladies taps my leg and motions for me to go sleep in my room (I'm not sure how they knew which one was mine).  I walk down the hall to find my crisp white sheets perfectly made up, clean towels folded on the window seat, and a freshly swept floor.

This happens twice a week.

I still think our accommodations are more than somewhat ridiculous — SCAD has a knack for finding and seizing luxury in unexpected places — but admittedly, I have grown to appreciate the person who sits in the lobby of our tower solely to hop up from the front desk and open the door with a "Good morning!" when we enter or exit; the security guard at the gate who lets everyone in, so it seems, with "Hi!  Hi! ... See ya!"; and the people at the marketplace checkout who bag up my groceries for me faster than I can count out the Hong Kong dollars I owe them.  I have paid for this treatment, I suppose, but it is still a breath of fresh air when adapting to a new country and SCAD quarter all at once.­

• • •

We went clubbing on Thursday night, as so many SCAD students do, which was a multicultural experience in and of itself.  Ladies got free entrance with a glass of (painfully cheap) champagne at Otto, which is the SCAD–Hong Kong club of choice.  I had intentionally come with friends who weren't looking to get drunk, so the experience didn't quite live up to what others had made it out to be; but the most interesting part of my evening was a conversation with a Taiwanese professor of psychology from Hong Kong University.  After chit chat regarding where we're from and why we're here, I sensed more in her than an alcohol tolerance obviously higher than that of her girlfriends.  She looked at us with purpose and said, "Travel. Travel as much as you can. Go everywhere."  She said to go to India in particular, and I asked her why, even though I already knew.  She said they have the poor — not like they don't have air conditioning; like they don't have food — and they also have the very, very rich, all together in one place.  She said they're the most spiritual people; it changed her life.  We toasted to America and the magic was gone; but India is the only place where someone has specifically told me to go, and she is the second person to do so.  Some day.

• • •

The rest of the weekend largely consisted of shopping in Mong Kok with Augusta.  I have never seen one person buy so many pairs of shoes in one day, but it helps that she wears a size 6½, which is par for the course in this part of the world.  Meanwhile, I'm left asking for 42s to fit my oh-so-enormous 8½ feet.  We made American idiots out of ourselves by asking if we could try things on, which, on the whole, is completely out of the question.  That's why they have giant mirrors: so you can hold it up to yourself to judge whether it will fit!  We weren't feeling quite that adventurous, especially when many of the styles here have equal potential of making us look like either runway models or misshapen walruses.

A few purchases from Nathan Road in Mong Kok

We also made it up to Victoria Peak on Saturday morning, which is the highest point on Hong Kong Island and consequently has the best view.  It's best to visit at night for the lights show, when the buildings in the skyline all light up in different colors that pulse to music; but that's for another weekend.  We went on a foggy morning, and we're proud of it.

The tram up to the Peak feels like a roller coaster: steep and fast.

Morning view from the Peak!  Most of Hong Kong is in visible from here.

We have fun together.

The food here is fantastic — they have everything — but then, I haven't tried anything too strange, and I'm okay with that.  My only complaint is that when they serve "coffee," it's really milk coffee, and it looks like this:

But they serve it with brown sugar, which I think is adorable.

The drink selection is incredible.  There's an almond drink, which tastes like marzipan; fresh squeezed blueberry juice (amazing); Black Cow (Coke topped with chocolate ice cream), and hundreds more varieties of fruit juices, cocktails, dessert drinks, tea, and milk coffee.  And as for food, lest anyone think I'm beginning to miss American food ... Augusta and I shared a Mexican pizza tonight, and it was delicious.

Here's to studying abroad in a land of luxury.

eb

Faces

A journey is best measured in friends, rather than miles. – Tim Cahill

"A hand towel?!" Augusta's cute little nose wrinkles as she throws her head back, dissolving into laughter at the thought of my drying off every morning with a towel I can barely wrap around my hair.  It's true — our apartment was short a bath towel when I moved in, which did raise a peculiar dilemma when I stepped out of the shower— but the world has bigger problems, especially when housekeeping comes twice a week.  It wasn't that funny.

Nevertheless, she pushes the curly blond hair away from her face, returning to her bowl of ice cream, and I can't help but giggle at the little girl I see inside her.  Augusta, from whom I am somewhat inseparable now, has an effortless femininity that makes me feel perfectly barbaric in comparison.  We share a profound desire to tackle every shopping district in Hong Kong; the unquestionable preference of a single, pricey glass of wine over getting wasted free of charge; insatiable appetites and a radar for sugar; and and a carefree disposition that allows us to find joy in curiosities like sushi earrings (and I quote: "Sushi belongs on my ears, not in my tummy").  We do everything together, like a couple of middle-school sweethearts.

• • •

Half an hour before studio today, I followed Erin out into midday Hong Kong traffic as we scurried to an Indian restaurant, home of her favorite three-dollar meal.  She had just brought me to a brilliant little paper store near school, where they sell every paper imaginable and hardly speak English.  Purchases in tow, we popped into a pet shop to look at the puppies before picking up lunch.  I kept checking my watch, wondering how we would make it to class on time; but Erin is from New York and has lived in Hong Kong for a year, so I trusted her ability to conquer the city in twenty-seven minutes.  We made it to class with time to spare.

With thick winged eyeliner, turquoise nails and slightly disheveled blond hair, she told me of her unfulfilled desire to own a cat, her Italian-bodybuilder-with-a-British-accent boyfriend who really ought to get a bigger bed, and her uncertainty over whether the stick-shift itself would be backwards in a car in Hong Kong.  She extended an invitation to join her and a friend for the Ching Ming festival — a celebration in which the Chinese respect the dead by cleaning their graves and presenting gifts, while Westerners stand around and drink in approval — as school will be canceled next Wednesday; before I could decline, the subject had changed again.

• • •

Monday night, I stumbled across the Facebook page of an old music connection, Jerry Junkin.  Professor Junkin is the Artistic Director and conductor of the Dallas Wind Symphony and the Director of Bands at the University of Texas, where my brother played in his ensemble in college and I at a high school music camp.  Not having seen or heard news of him in ages, I looked to see if his work had taken him elsewhere — and was astonished to find that he now also conducts the Hong Kong Wind Philharmonia.  Incredulous, I sent him a message, and he replied that he is flying here Saturday with a concert the following Friday.  I have since bought two tickets to the concert at City Hall and look forward to seeing Professor Junkin for the first time in four years.  Augusta is coming with me.

Here's to friends in foreign places.

eb

Who Knew?

There are no foreign lands.  It is the traveler only who is foreign. - Robert Louis Stevenson

I tried to write the last two evenings, and my body completely shut down with exhaustion before I could get a paragraph down.  It's wonderful.

Before noon today, I had already taken care of two errands at SCAD; written 3 postcards, bought stamps and mailed them; tootled around Sham Shui Po's fashion district, where I bought a top for about three U.S. dollars; and discovered a fantastic bakery within walking distance from SCAD, where I had brunch for about one U.S. dollar.  We all have jet lag such that we naturally wake up at 6:30 in the morning, wide awake, which promotes early morning productivity.

This weekend was filled with spontaneous adventure, cultural lessons learned, and the beginnings of some really cool relationships.  On Saturday, a friend and I spent the day in Macau — another SAR, so technically part of China but basically independent — where we came across everything from ancient ruins to a dragon dance performance to delicious egg custard tarts.  After an hour-long ferry ride across the South China Sea, we began wandering the peninsula past an absurd number of casinos when we finally whipped out the Macau guide books and — gasp! — looked at a map.  It was then that we realized how distorted our senses of geographic scale are after living in the States.  We were covering ground faster than we could keep up with on a map and were dumbfounded when we realized that we had nearly reached the other side of the peninsula before we figured out where we were.  Once we got past the casinos and trotted down Avenida do Dr. Rodrigo Rodrigues until we reached civilization (which, to us, meant street food), we found an old fortress (Monte Fort) and the gorgeous facade of what was once the Church of St. Paul.

Ruins of the Church of St. Paul

Just as we were headed to see a temple up the hill, we heard a drum show begin and ran down to catch a dragon dance going on right in front of the facade!  I wasn't expecting to see this at all while I was here, and I was thrilled to be up front, video recording the whole thing.

Dragon dance in Macau

On Rua de São Paulo, we had bubble tea and a Portuguese lunch of delicious pork sandwiches and egg custard tarts called pastéis de nata.  We took a different route back to the ferry and somehow ended up on the top of a hill, where the only way down was to take the cable cars down to where we'd been fifteen minutes before.  To our delight, it costs about twenty-five cents to ride the cable cars, and we finished our long day with a gorgeous aerial view of Macau.

Click here to see photos from Macau.

• • •

Yesterday, on my way to lunch near my flat, I discovered an artists' market filled with pastry-themed trinkets, genuine leather and ivory products, jewelry, and the tiniest, most intricate doll house accessories I've ever seen in my life:

The size of a small matchbox, this tea set was among furniture, shoes, chandeliers, pastry cabinets, and telephones.

I bought a ring and a necklace and left to catch the SCAD shuttle, where there were two other students, one of whom I had met at orientation, and the other whom I had not met, but turned out to be one of the girls in the apartment I was originally assigned before they switched me to a higher floor in a different building.  I had originally planned to spend the afternoon window-shopping in the IFC mall, which contains a two-story Apple store and dozens of couture designer brands, but Augusta, my could-have-been roommate, was headed to a stationery store and the fashion district, which suddenly seemed like a much better idea.  The three of us resolved to conquer Sham Shui Po together, and we spent the afternoon shopping, drinking bubble tea, and having dinner at a Pizza Hut that puts America to shame.

Breadsticks? Please. Try the bruschetta topped with tuna and mozzarella.

It took me ages to scan the menu of fruity drinks, tropical salads, bread-bowl soups, bruschetta, seafood pasta, and yes, pizza.  I finally ordered a dish of premium seafood on rice, covered in a white cheese sauce.  It was fantastic and at least half as expensive as it would have been in the States.

Hello, squid.

Click here to see more photos from the artists' market and Pizza Hut.

• • •

lessons learned  If everything's bigger in Texas, everything is definitely smaller in Hong Kong. • Peel off your visa, stick it in your passport, and have it stamped at Immigration, not Customs.  This was not apparent to those of us who had never traveled before. • It is considered an offense to talk to a bus driver while the vehicle is in motion. • Most of the shops in the fashion district sell wholesale; if you want to buy something, you can choose from the items in the sale bins at the front of the store. • When you get off the ferry at Macau, walk north, not south, unless you are in fact there to gamble. • Here, we use A4 paper with two holes, not letter-sized with three.  The Chinese find American printers to be a pain in the rear for this reason. • Paper weight is measured in grams here, not pounds. • If you have an all-in-one adapter/converter, make sure you're on the right setting when you use a hairdryer; however, if you do blow out the power, maintenance will take care of it right away. • Cab drivers don't necessarily know where the Gold Coast Hotel is; better take the 52X home.

Here's to finding out the hard way.

eb

The Great Affair

For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go.  I travel for travel's sake.  The great affair is to move. – Robert Louis Stevenson

Look out at the Hong Kong skyline with me while I tell stories.

Maushumi stumbled in around midnight last night with three suitcases, slightly flustered.  I, of course, had been passed out for hours, succumbing to the first wave of jet-lag; and since she only expected one other roommate, whose belongings were clearly present but not herself, she peeked into what must have been the empty third bedroom but was, in fact, my room.  Introductions were made.

In the next twenty-four hours, as we collaborated to produce between us a single functioning hairdryer and straightener, an Ethernet cord, and a converter/adapter, we found more in common than a commitment to SCAD, a passion for travel, and a hopeless inability to read Chinese menus.  Over mediocre iced coffee drinks, we spoke of past relationships, good and bad; we drooled over the unparalleled facilities of SCAD – Hong Kong, a cutting-edge fusion of historic value and breakthrough design technology; and we wandered about Sham Shui Po with SCAD guides who were our age but had the benefit of having lived in Hong Kong for half of their lives.

SCAD students frolicking in the first-floor lounge

The beautiful building has incredible work inside ...

... outside ...

... and everywhere in between.

Click here to view my photo tour of SCAD – Hong Kong.

• • •

As we walked through Sham Shui Po, we passed a restaurant — which I fully intend to visit — where you can pick out a snake, and they make it into snake soup for you!  Far more interesting than lobster, in my opinion.  One of our guides, Anne, whose family moved here from Canada when she was eleven, made the following contribution to our discussion of slimy edible creatures: shortly after moving to Hong Kong, her mother was crossing a street in the city when out of the shopping bag of the woman in front of her emerged a tentacle.  A tentacle, followed by an entire octopus.  The octopus crawled out of the woman's shopping bag and onto the street, fighting with all it had not to be made into fried octopus that night.  A valiant effort, to be sure, but the woman scooped up the octopus, dumped it back in her bag, pulled the drawstring tighter, and went on her way.

• • •

Nothing slimy for lunch today, just a Turkish meal of soup, chicken wings, and rice at Dragon Center, a 9-story-high shopping mall in Sham Shui Po with an indoor roller coaster and ice rink.  Tomorrow, a friend and I are making a day trip to Macau to see what we can see.  Incidentally, I will be returning to Macau when my Art History professor takes a group of students for a field trip — on April 20, my twenty-first birthday.  Also this weekend, I hope to go shopping in Mong Kok, and at some point I'd like to hit Ocean Park on the southern part of Hong Kong Island.

Here's to seizing the day.

eb

Sunrise

Welcome to Hong Kong!  I wrote the following on the plane.  More about HK this weekend!

Certainly, travel is more than the seeing of sights; it is a change that goes on, deep and permanent, in the ideas of living. - Miriam Beard

Today is the beginning: the beginning of a dream — a collection of dreams, perhaps — dreams of seeing the world, of escaping my comfort zone, of learning how to reform my identity as a Westerner into that of a human being.

A year ago, if I could have chosen to go anywhere in the world, China would have been on the ‘Anywhere But’ list.  So, in the spirit of pursuing the aforementioned dreams, I booked a flight for a ten-week study at SCAD – Hong Kong.  Like most transformational events in my life, I plunged ahead at full speed without the slightest notion of what lay ahead, and already it is the most enriching experience yet.

Today, for the first time, I saw the sun rise twice.  It first rose in Toronto, where, also for the first time, I descended from the plane not through a stuffy retractable tunnel into the airport,  but on a small staircase, as if I were a World War II hero or Jackie O.  I silently wished I were wearing nylons, a pencil skirt, and a scarf blowing in the wind as I waved to someone on the horizon.  I would have pretended to were I not aiming to catch a flight to Hong Kong.

Hours later, as I sat on a second plane, eating noodles and pork to a soundtrack of Diana Krall, God introduced Himself to me as the Painter.  Through the tiny window that would also serve as my pillow for the night, he showed me His icebergs, a la Jackson Pollock.  He must have done them like Pollock, too, splattering the paint on the ground and later stretching the canvas, because you could see where the dried paint had cracked in the process.

When I woke from a fitful sleep, He had moved on to a Rothko sky: a color field painting entitled Cornflower, Coral, and Seal No. 7.  It was more pure than Rothko, though; instead of paint, He had chosen soft pastels: a stroke of each color, then a single smear with His thumb.  I know because he taught me that trick.

Chinese sunrise, a thousand times more beautiful in reality.

We’re flying over China now.  The terrain below looks like those plaster handprints you force children to make so you can hang the fossil on a wall with their names carved in.  Every river, every valley is a wrinkle: those wrinkles that grade school girls see when they pretend to read your palm and declare you’ll live a long life because the wrinkle goes all the way across your hand without stopping.

The sun is rising again.  I didn’t know what it was at first: a tiny pool of fluorescent rainbow sherbet on the horizon.  Then it rose, with an unparalleled beauty; the kind of beauty that burns your retinas because you can’t turn away no matter how much it hurts to look.  As it casts an orange glow around men’s silhouettes across the plane, I’ve completely forgotten Toronto.

The rivers are more gnarly now, spelling cursive words like “Taurus” and “grasshopper.”  A single large river swims over the land, and there is no explanation for its perfect curves but that God saved it for last, dragging a stick through the mud like a child.  A passenger asks that I close the window, so this morning’s exhibition has come to an end and I’m left with a touch-screen television that stopped functioning correctly a third of the way into this fifteen-hour flight.

This afternoon, I will check into the Gold Coast Residences, which could likely be the most luxurious place I will ever live.  And for that, SCAD, we thank you.

Hong Kong Gold Coast Residences

I usually discover God’s plans for me about a year or two after they begin to fall into place, and this trip is no different: every time I see a photograph of the Hong Kong skyline, I realize that my not being accepted at NYU three years ago wasn’t because I wasn’t ready for New York; it was because this way, I could have something ten times better.

Hong Kong at night

Here’s to living out dreams.

eb