Category Archives: Exchange

Year End Thoughts on Exchange

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Hello!  It’s been a while.  I have a good excuse.  I’ve spent my last 2 months on exchange filling every moment up as much as I can by sleeping at 4 and waking at 9 and living life to the MAX.  Is that a good enough excuse?  I thought not.  I’m sorry. I am back home now and digesting what has been happening and I am still waiting for all of it to make sense. 2011 was a year of growing for me in many ways of which I will slowly elaborate.

On January 3rd,2011 I received a very pretty agenda.  Knowing my past experiences with trying to keep Journals, the decently sized daily boxes gave me hope that perhaps I can finally consistently keep a journal since all I would have to do is fill a little box every once in a while.  I filled those boxes with tiny writing, sometimes overflowing. Sometimes with huge writing. Sometimes with drawings. In colour, in black.  I did this for about half a year.  And then for the first time in my life I was dumped.  My home life was more out of control than it had ever been. And so I stopped. And that was regrettable because on Dec 31 as I look back at it there are many fun things to read in there. Even when the entries are only 5 words long. I am not a literary genius, but 5 words that meant a lot to my past self makes me feel good that something actually meant enough to me to write it down.

Some Monday in February: “If there is something you want to say, you better say it or write it down, because those words will never mean as much as they do outside that moment.”

And so during the 2nd lowest period of my life, I went on exchange.

Last night at a party of about 25 friends from high school + some strangers, someone asked me “How was exchange?” I said it was amazing and life changing. He asked “how?” I didn’t have any answers. No, I  did have some, but they were just too personal to say out loud.  As for other changes, I felt like they are there but I can’t put my finger on them just yet.  The dust is still settling around the solid formation of what I have learned and who I have grown to be.

I’ve learned a lot about the person that I can be. Without being fake, without trying too hard, without feeling uncomfortable.  There was a me in Hong Kong that I was, that was very much me.  However, at the same time, very much a me I had not been.  It’s hard to explain. I wasn’t putting on an act, I was just being myself, it just wasn’t the same self that I am here usually. If anything I felt I was more true.  The environment and the conditions were completely different. You know the limited time you have with those people, you know your chances of seeing them again are small, so for me, I was everything that I am without hiding away behind social masks because of time limitations to develop relationships. I suppose.

Exchange was the best decision of my life. It was a grand adventure. The adventure continues now in a different way as all the things I’ve subconsciously learned, and all the ways I’ve changed, are trickling into my current reality.

Like how when I was at my brother’s wedding a week ago and spending family time, I had a sudden recollection of a conversation with someone I met in HK about family.  My family situation isn’t rare but it’s different and I always thought that my reaction to it is something extremely shameful. I admitted something to that guy that I have never been brave enough to admit to anyone before only to find that my rotten thoughts were so impeccably shared. At the wedding it came back and this feeling of “it’s ok” hit me.  Something that I had been struggling with so long is on it’s way to being set free.

Like how last night when my ex-boyfriend said “I want you to be happy” in a tone that seemed to assume that I wasn’t, my heart secretly gleamed with happiness and I couldn’t understand why.  I thought then that maybe it was because I was happy that person actually still cared about my happiness. When I thought about it this morning again I understood.  It was because, and I am not exaggerating at all, I was happy every single day in Hong Kong. Almost.  Not just happy, ecstatic. I was actually enjoying my life almost every single day. I don’t know about you but that doesn’t come easy for me.

2 days were exceptions. 2 days where I cried myself to sleep because I was depressed (good thing my room mate didn’t move in yet.) Other than those 2 days, every day was a wonderful adventure. Even when I lost my cell phone in Korea and spent my last day running around Seoul looking for it.  Even when I lost my camera in Hong Kong and photos of the past 2 months, including everything of Korea. (I took a trip to Korea while on exchange, it’s pretty common to travel around while on exchange.) I have never ever experienced such an extended period of happiness in my life.  I am incredibly thankful to have received this.  I am also thankful to now know that everyday can be a good day.  Since I was young I believe that bad days are what make the good days good.  No, good days are good days.  Bad days will still happen, live with it. But my life isn’t in this zone of accepting things as they are.  I don’t have to wake up or go to sleep thinking “…it’s another day already.”  I don’t have to accept that “shit happens.” This world is huge but it can feel like something so tiny when you realize it is all in your reach after all.

Actually, maybe one of the reasons why I felt like I was not the same me in Hong Kong was because I was so happy and smiley. What friends I met in Hong Kong describe me as is not the same as what my friends here describe me as.

I am still passive and indecisive, but I’ve become more in control of my life.

Maybe it is because Hong Kong is an bustling sunny city where I don’t have to have days sitting at home being unwilling to go out because of the rain or sit at 11 pm thinking there is no where to go because everything is closed. (You are still #1 in my heart Vancouver!)  There world is still there. A previous me would say that the world is not waiting, things are ever changing and if you’re not running fast, you’ll be run over.  I used to just let myself get run over once in a while just because it felt too futile to try, and I needed to accept failure sometimes. (Going back to Me Inc. in 1st year: “Failure is not final!”) I still believe the world won’t wait, at least not forever because the world IS waiting, it’s a sitting duck and all I have to do is go get it.  It is that simple. Just don’t miss your opportunity.

2012, I will try my journal keeping again. Maybe a different approach this time. No lines please.

Happy new year everyone!

I think I have a tendency to think that a new year is a new start, I’ll try to tell myself that it is a new second and that is a new start too.

 

I hope to share more of the things I did on exchange and what it was like in a later post (rather than just talk about my personal growth), so if you have any questions please ask away!

I also made some vlogs while I was on exchange…

ENJOY!

Ups and Downs of Dorm Living

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If I haven’t mentioned it before, when attending UBC I live at home in Burnaby, an hour away from school by transit, with my family. My dad, my overprotective brother and my mom who is there once or twice a year. Hong Kong is a whole other story. I am living in student residence. Hall 2 of 9 Halls with other people around my age with a distribution of about 50% locals and 50% other (international, mainland China, exchange.) Or at least that was what I was told the distribution is.

The only similarity is the distance to the nearest mall is about the same and the route to it is divided by a similarally steep hill.

I love living on campus to the point where I am starting to wonder if there is something wrong with me because I feel like I should be feeling home sick. Lets arbitrarily analyze this with a +/- scale and see if I am being blinded by my freedom from commuting (and freedom in general) or if this really as wonderful as it feels.

  • 15 minute walk to school vs 1 hour transit? No brainer. +10
  • Not having the worry about staying at school extra late doing projects (which is surprisingly common here) and then waiting for the bus in the rain. +5
  • No longer having ask if I can go out (I have “Asian parents.”) +7  Though still getting checked up on over the phone. -2
  • Haven’t had a decent home cooked meal in a month. -4
  • Eating out at unique places all the time. Only +4 because then you realize it gets expensive and you start saving by going to some not so good for you places *cough*McDonalds*cough*
  • Big Mac meals and McNugget meals here are only $2.50 here! +0… It’s McDonalds.
  • The stove here is actually a hot plate. Only -1 because I don’t cook here.
  • Another -1 because I don’t cook.
  • Weekly dessert night for Hall 2!!! Only +1 …because I have gotten fatter =I
  • Unhealthy changes in appetite due to lack of affordable quality portioned correctly food on campus. -6
  • When your food gets stolen or destroyed in the tiny common fridge. -4 because then you’ll never put anything in it again.
  • Another -2 for the sheer lack of space in that fridge.
  • Having an awesome room mate who likes the stuff you like and has similar sleeping patterns. Neutral. Because it could have easily been the opposite. But +2 because she is just that awesome.
  • Hard time getting alone time to be depressed and moody. -5
  • Easy time to find someone to hang out with. +4
  • Learning about other cultures because res is so diverse. +6
  • The sharpest rise in number of Facebook friends (and real friends of course ;)) I will probably ever have. +1
  • The hall committee banging on doors every night trying to solicit votes. -1
  • Living independently for the first time can be really taxing on your self control. Neutral. It’s good preparation for life?
  • There are no dorm parties here but there is the nightly drinking and hanging out on the lawn. +2
  • I can’t sing as loudly as I want to my music of questionable taste. -3
  • That moment when you realize you don’t have basic supplies such as an umbrella, toilet paper or a blanket for the changing weather. -2 because then you realize those things are super cheap in Hong Kong.
Grand score: +11
Yes res life. You are that awesome.
^View from my hall of Hall 4 and 5 and the direction of the school.

I can’t decide.

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I’m sitting in my dorm in Hong Kong thinking of posting and staring out the window at the hazy sky that reminds me very much of Vancouver.  You know, the gray-about-to-rain looking kind of skies.  I can’t decide what to write about.  Challenges of healthy living at dorms?  School stuff? The exchange student partying habits?  Extracurricular activities?  Budgeting? Homesickness? I can’t decide.

I made a friend here who is from HEC in Quebec.  He says it must be a Vancouverite thing, the indecision. You know those times when you hang out with a bunch of people but no one wants to make a decision on what to do?  I have a friend from home who is taking a semester off in HK and when we all hung out, he said it’s not indecision, it’s being considerate.  I think it’s just personal indecision on my part.  Is indifference the same as indecision or just an excuse for it?

People who return from exchange often say they learned so much about themselves and the world.  For me, even though it’s only been a month, it’s the meeting people all the time factor that is affecting me most.  You can’t call up your best friends to go out when you’re lonely or rely on someone to be on MSN to fill your social gap (time differences boo.)  The business student teachings also kick in and tell me to go out there and “network.”  Get bored, meet people more often than I would at home, and then I’m plunged into the awesome cosmo of knowledge and insight that is the bigger world.

I met up with an “acquaintance-friend” (those people who you would say are your friends but you don’t know them all that well) who quit school to move back to Hong Kong and work in his family’s business. I learned he is very ambitious. When I hear about what he has been doing and what he wants to do it makes me wonder if I should be ambitious too and build great dreams risking failure or just be calm and content and stable?  At times I wonder if there is even a decision there.  I guess it’s more like I don’t have a picture for my future. Like its an empty frame hanging in white space.  Maybe I’m uninspired.  I love ambitious people, I always learn so much from them.

Go be ambitious, you’re young, just do it.
(September 12, 2011: Mid-Autumn Festival, Victoria Park)  

Whilst talking to my friend I noticed two feelings that young ambitious people tend to tell me about:

1. We want to do something great and we know that we can, we just don’t know what it is yet.

2. We either hold fears that someday we will be [age] and we won’t be where we want to be or we are already feeling like we are not the person who we thought we would be by now.

Do you think this is universal? It is striking how extremely similar my friend’s feelings were to other young ambitious people I know.

“If only I had a dream, then I’d chase it like mad” I would tell myself.  People my age with dreams tell me “if only I knew for sure this is what I want.”  I’d like to hear what someone who knows for sure has to say.

 

Windy days here are wonderful =)

Initial Random Thoughts On Exchange Life and HK

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I have arrived in Hong Kong!  Safely.  Soundly.  And the most foreign feeling of all: independently.  I came here 2 days before residence move-in so I was living in a relative’s empty apartment but now I am at the dorm.

It doesn’t look much different from Canada eh?

 

Anyway, here are some random things I’ve noticed over the past 4 days:

– Cooking for 1 is hard.  Not to mention I can’t cook.  Because I had to buy just enough groceries to last me 2 days but not leave anything behind, I ended up make 3 dishes of pretty much the same thing in different forms.  A failed Omurice that just became rice on an omelet, cantonese tomato fried egg (with green peppers) and everything put together to make fried rice.

(I didn’t only eat 3 meals in two days, my uncle bought me lunch)

Why did I cook at all?  Just to experience this aspect of independent living.

– Living alone is shocking lonely the first night.  After dinner I just sat there looking at my dishes and empty room thinking wow… so this is what it is like… it kinda sucks. Even if I’m not talking, it’s nice to know someone is there.  Note to self: get roommate if I move out.

 

– WiFi is extremely easy to find in HK.  Starbucks, McDonalds, the library, the park, the bus… yes.  The bus. =o

– I’ve been taking UBC’s course registration system and way finding website for granted.  I wish it was like that here.  You don’t know what you have until it’s gone right?

– Hong Kong is not the same city in the day time as it is in the night time.  That has got to be one of the most lovable things about this place.  That and the fact things are super cheap and there is no tax or tipping customs.

– Two things I was looking forward to about exchanging here: 1) escaping the gloomy rainy winter in Vancouver and 2) not having the walk that hill I walk every morning to get to the skytrain.  I wish I checked the topography of this place so I could know what I was getting myself into.  I didn’t know this area was so mountainous, it’s a good recipe with the 30+ degree weather and 85% humidity.  Good there there was a shuttle bus for luggage.  Here is a picture of the view from my room:

Those large apartments are not dorms, just rich neighbours. Check out their pool…

No joke.

– About living on campus: so far it feels like living in an apartment near school with a perpetual mini clubs day with 1 booth in the lobby.  My roommate hasn’t moved in yet.  So I guess more on this later.  Hong Kong is so hot and I am too cheap to spend too much on AC, I really only come here to sleep and use my computer.

– First tastes of how school here is likely to be very different:  There was a welcoming ceremony yesterday and they gave us graduation style robe/gowns to wear as we put our right hands up and took a pledge.  That was the 1st time I felt extremely foreign here.  The 2nd time was when I was ordering food at a local restaurant but I couldn’t because the menu was Chinese only and the only word I could read was cow.

 

I notice I haven’t mentioned much about the city life yet.  I don’t know why but I don’t really know what to say about it yet…

I also notice I don’t have a picture of the actual school yet either haha.  I’ll try to get one.

 

Ok I have to grab some breakfast and prepare before more orientation.  I’ll try to make a more organized, and less full of random everything under the sun post next time.  Let me know if there is anything you’d like me to talk about about going on exchange or Hong Kong.  Or if you have any recommendations of stuff I should check out!

“It’s not like we’re going clubbing, we’re going on the bus!!”

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was what my friend said when talking about the new UPass system and how we have to carry two “IDs” (the pass and our UBC card.)  Whilst making the following face:

Ok, not actually but everyone loves internet memes.

Quick update on my life, guess where I am!

 

 

If you guessed YVR then you are absolutely correct and amazing at remembering minute details.

I am about 2 hours away from boarding my flight to Beijing, then Hong Kong to endevour in my next “great adventure” of university life.  Exchange.  It may seem like nothing to those of you who came all the way to Vancouver and are fighting it out on their own right now but for me, someone with overprotective parents who don’t think I could survive for even two weeks on my own, this is a challenge I’ve been dreaming of since senior year in high school.

 

I don’t have anything too insightful to say right now but I wanted to make an in the moment post.  So for the sake of that I will tell you of my in the moment feeling: sleepy, and wondering why I am not as excited as I thought I would be right now.  But that’s the curious thing about trips, some how when I’m planning and signing up everything is delightful and as it draws close, it just feels unreal so I’m not as excited.  Anyone else get that?

Maybe it’s my friend’s mentality about trips passing over to me.  “You’re not going for sure until you land.”

Things I Wish I knew About Exchange Earlier That Wouldn’t Have Changed My Decision But Would Have Been Nice To Know:

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1. Unless you make special arrangements, you have to pay for a full course load.  In other words, 5 courses.  You can take less courses but you have to pay for 5.

2. Just because UBC has given you the go-ahead to your school of choice, you still need to apply to the actual school as an exchange student.  (I knew it was too easy!)

3. I forget the number, and it may only be a Sauder thing, but there is a limit on the number of courses you can take that are the equivalents to your core courses. Ie. You need A202, B204 and C203 to be promoted to 4th year, you are only allowed to take 2/3 abroad.

4. You might not know what you are taking on exchange until after your course registration dates at UBC. So if spots in your faculty are competitive, plan ahead and make some extra worklists.

5. Even is you are rejected by your 1st choice, have your 2nd and 3rd choice of schools fill up, there is still hope.  I am going to my 4th choice! =D City University of Hong Kong (which was actually my original 2nd choice until I changed all my plans 2 days before the forms were due)

6. Student residence in other countries may be cheaper than you think.  If money is something holding you back from exchange, remember that your tuition is the same, less in a sense because you won’t be paying for things like a UPass, so the only difference is your living expenses, unless you are already paying for them.  (Considering we are in Vancouver, chances are you will be saving money.)
*side excursions to nearby countries not included

7. All Go Global students get a scholarship of up to $1000 per term! (and a bunch of other possibilities)

Random money tip: when applying for a visa, those photobooths in the mall (not sticker photo) will work and you will save about 20 bucks.  But unless you are drop dead gorgeous, your picture will probably look ugly. Photobooth pictures do not qualify for passport renewal pictures, visas only.