Friday 30 September 2011

How To Die Whilst Scuba Diving

    I guess tis that time of the week again, and my what an interesting week we've had here at LPC. So radies and rentelmens listen up etc!

    So the weekend was purdy good, Saturday consisted of a coral monitoring medical exam in downtown Jordan which was pretty tucked away so with the help and company of Chloe Lau we made it to the eighth floor to be measured, weighed, told that our ears were dirty and that there was no way we'd be able to equalise so to go and buy ear cleaning stuff, and we may or may not have been instructed to pee on a stick. Congratulations are in order for Halfdan who navigated his way there sans local help and also to Dilene who was the only one of us with clean ears.

    After that I went in search of ear cleaning stuff with Dilene and Khet, and after coming across some real dodge semi tradtitional chinese medicine shops full of jars of shark fins and shredded shrimp bone marrow etc we decided to wait until we got back to the pharmacy back in Wu Kai Sha.

    When we got back home (I've started calling campus that now, and sub consciously too), Dilene and I went to explore the beach and attempt to study. I drew some mandarin ab characters in the sand but mostly the study part was reduced to gossipping until we realised that the masses of shells around where we were sitting were actually hermit crabs. Muchos gross.

    Then dinner. My daily life in this place now revolves around mealtimes. 6 o clock is easily the most anticipated thing for me around here. I've not even yet been deterred by the fact that it's generally just rice and some bony meat. That said, I got tempura veg today which was nom. Actually, I got tuna pasta bake too! Hmm, today was an exception food wise. Oooh and we got jelly too! It may have had the consistency of soggy soap but it was still pretty good.

    Sunday was triathlon day! Kinda wish I'd done the individual one now but I did enter the team event as the swimmer, with Liz doing the cycle (we thought we'd fullfill the dutch stereotype), and Maxim running. As with all other LPC events there was lots of dancing on the pool side and twas a fairly good atmosphere for an early Sunday morning! PLUS they had bananas in the canteen. Heellloooo banana honey toasted sandwich(es...). The experience was only topped by finding out on Wednesday that we'd won. Yadda yadda it wasn't competitive yadda yadda...but y'all know it so was.

Mise, Maxim and Liz. Rawr.

    After all that strenuous work there were 5 hours of scuba diving theory. 
To summarize:  
  • If you hold your breath your lungs will explode and YOU WILL DIE
  • If you don't equalise the pressure between your ears and your inner ear and sinuses YOU WILL DIE
  • If you attempt to sit through 5 hours of scuba diving theory without allowing yourself to have small naps/ become hysterical YOU WILL DIE
    The week was pretty intense too. Starting Monday night we had an hour of uber man style lion dance training. This time Savitri upped the ante to 5 minutes of squatting and a good aul lot of planking too. Twas eh good fun too?? Classes went grand (not gonna lie I aced me mandarin ab test booyakkasha), and although chemistry was a killer I answered all the questions on the test we had this morning. That don't mean by any means that I got any of them right, mind you.

    Thursday was typhoon day. Now before I start praising the heavens for this gust of wondrous wind, I'd like to express my deepest sorrow for those who were killed by the same typhoon Nesat in the Philipines and to all those whose homes were destroyed. Fortunatley for us, it didn't get too bad up in the New Territories aside from some bikes wrapped around trees and said trees no longer residing in the ground. Tragedies aside, however, one can imagine the excitement that a Typhoon 8 signal can bring to a campus full of extremely tired IB students. I watched half of Moulin Rouge with Olivia, hung in the block four day room, experienced typhoon weather at its best up on the roof, attempted to study for chemistry and spread the goodwill message of HAPPY TYPHOON DAY! Made a change from the days of Loreto Convent KK when snow days were only implemented after attendance levels dropped to below 10 per year, and even then were granted grudgingly.

    Friday was a full day of classes for yours truly, but now I'm free we have HOLIDAYS! Until next Thursday. And so I'm casually popping over to Mainland China to visit Mia's house in Zhu Hai for a few days. As ya do like. Now when I say casually, I hope none of you ever have to experience the hassle of trying to organise 12 visas for China in 4 days. I'd rather not elaborate.

Much grá, Hannah x

That'd be mise and my boat tickets to Zhu Hai





Thursday 22 September 2011

MondayTuesdayBlurBlurBlur

It be Friday and the dawn of another weekend here at LPC (Plans include shopping avec the Dutchie, gotta get a scuba diving medical exam, do some scuba diving theory, compete in a triathlon, praps organize a brit pud party in my room - I've the banana custard and angel delight all ready to go).


S'yeah since last Friday I've been having some fairly hectic times! Strange to think I've nearly been here three weeks, I bet they've got the Christmas ads out at home already! nb. find out when Late Late Toy Show is on.


At the weekend I had lion dance training - meself and my "head" Jennifer were majaaahly epic at it. Like srsly. Although after 3 minutes of squatting it can be fairly hard to move yourself around for the next few days. Tar éis é sin I went to the student kitchen to make me some brownies for Cafe (sorry to patronize but I shall explain the italics down below). Thing is the student kitchen ovens are crummy so twas gooey and burnt at the same time but after a godlike rescue operation they seemed to go down pretty well? Then a bitta shopping in Ma On Shan with mammy Aine whereby she introduced me to mango ice cream gunk with warm gelatinous rice balls NOMNOMNOM.


Sunday I felt kinda crummy so I did feck all but twas grand anyway, went swimming dans la piscine and did a nice bitta of mooching. Even got oatmeal and banoffee pie for brunch scrummeroni.


Monday classes began but guess who had her first three blocks off? Yeeeeeeeaaaahh buddyyy that'd be me. So potentially had a lie in until 11:05 but instead awoke at 5:20 to make long distance skype call (time difference Y U SUCK SO BAD). Twas a grand aul chinwag for so early and I went back to bed afterwards so I cannae complain too much. Monday afternoon I went to the post office to post letters 1 and 2, ran back for a police talk (basically you get the death penalty for spitting and you shouldn't take ecstacy at "wave" parties - bring on the lulz). After that I went post officing again to accompany Liz to send her letter 1 and again pure shprinted back for coral monitoring service meeting. Then dinner (prolly some bony thing with overcooked veggies and congealed rice) and then my creative Quan Cai PHOTOGRAPHYYYY. Thing is, I've to take a decent picture by Monday week so that's a wickle bit stressful I'll admit. Theme is "Faces of LPC" and I've had a couple of ideas but one of those includes taking pictures of people brushing their teeth in the mirror before morning block but summat in my mind tells me that people may not appreciate that too much.


Tuesday blurblurblur, prolly had chem and lost.all will to live, then went to Ma On Shan with Liz on the MTR sent letters 3 & 4, trawled the wet market for freakayy stuff and bought custard bun type thing.


Wednesday blurblurblur, went to Ma On Shan again with Liz and finally changed some money and then it was a Hannah went to the shop and bought: grapes, pineapple, bananas, custard powder, rainbow cookies, oreos, cream soda etc etc etc.


Thursday soul was annihilated by chem. Broke into emergency choccy supplies.


Friday? Well that's only beginning.


Dear James' mom - Hello! He's being very well behaved as far as I can tell and I hope you can get some useful titbits or anecdotes from my blog!




GLOSSARY


Cream soda: vanilla flavoured nectar of life
Rainbow cookies: sugary wonder biscuits
MTR: Luas but HK style (aka well managed infrastructure)
Quan Cai: Kinda like Gaisce type things (we've to do a campus service, a community service, an action and a creative yokeymaboggy)
Coral monitoring: scuba diving, but whist, keep it on the DL and stick to coral monitoring. This would be me community service
Ma On Shan: closest shopping centre, s'about 10 mins away by MTR
Cafe: Me campus service - every so often we run a kind of variety show and sell cookies and shtuff that we make


Soz if a lot of my explaining HK terms requires Irish terms, but I'm afraid my audience is primarily as Eireann! All questions welcome, as always me e-mail is hannahhmae27@hotmail.com and addy is *deep breath*


Hannah Read
Room 204
Block 2
Li Po Chun UWC
10 Lok Wo Sha Lane
Sai Sha Road
Ma On Shan
Sha Tin
New Territories
Hong Kong SAR
The linn snamha and block 2 in the background


This has been Hannahbum, until next week peeps! x

Friday 16 September 2011

(Dis)Orientation Week

I have just established that my blog is back working. I'm feckin elated. Those of you who had to experience my distraught ranting will know that blogger failed me on numerous occasions (and also that I was too much of a total twat to save a copy of my literary wonders). Those of you who narrowly avoided this rage, know that you are very, very lucky.

Now as expressed in blog the first, this blog was to keep y'all updated with tales from An tSín. Well táim anseo anois I guess, so brace yerselves!

I'm now nearing the end of week two. Week one was (dis)Orientation Week. Direct quote from first night's journal entry: "Too scared to go brush my teeth". There were alcohol awareness sessions (discussing alcohol in relation to cultural background - the words "I'm from Ireland" were enough to send the whole room into fits of laughter), camping (boat to hostel, complete with alternative dance/play, bbq pits, 4 hour hike, mega mega bugs such as praying mantis of doom, paggle-ing* in the sea, plenty of mozzy bites), pool games (think psycho competitive Hannah playing water polo whilst acquiring impressive burn tan lines and braving wearing a bikini despite high percentage of gorgeous long limbed latinos), infamous morning briefings (whereby I slept), and thai fishcakes (the canteen's shnakey way of fooling us into thinking the food would be daycent).

I don't think I got to bed before 2!

To round it all off, we had ICE (International Cultural Evening - this place is FULL of abbreviations; NACE, ECE, IB, LPC, UWC, CCE, QC, MESA...). This was fairly epic. For *ahem* the irish national dress *ahem* I wore my huuuuurlin socks (with sandals ofc), shamrock shaped sunglasses (ta very much Euro2), green soccer shorts, CELTIC WARRIORS IRELAND shirt boom agus super super dodge rara skirt from the Flea market (ex students leave their stuff eg curtains and first years go mental and buy things such as super dodge rara skirts and cube shaped hello kitty stools...). S'yeah bhí gach duine in their costumes and after dinner we all headed to the courtyard where the second years put on a fairly epic show. Highlight? Brit (plus Aine ofc) contingent's rendition of the Spice Girls. Either that or hip hop lion dance.

This week has been a lot more chill. Classes started, sure it's all going grand wha? With the exception of chemistry, but I've a nice system where Olivia (fellow confused peep) and I run to the common room during our free blocks and cry/do our chemistry homework le chéile. Chinese Ab Initio would be the funniest thing to sit in on. 24 foreigners yelling MA MA MA MA (with perfect tonal pronunciation might I add).

Tuesday was a day off cause of some national holiday so on Monday night a few of us went out for dinner. We went to a mega fishy district, i've never seen so many fish tanks in my entire LIFE crammed with like mega creepy types of fish.

...so naturally we went to an Indian. I got uber spicy potato curry to fit in with my stereotype (irish people only eat spuds, period).

Then for pierside walk watching all them floating lanterns followed by block two roof DMC avec Liz (dutch).

Your nationality becomes your name most of the time! I'm no longer Hannah, I'm Hannah-from-Ireland. More often than not I'm Ireland-from-Hannah though.


My living quarters are summat like this. I've a quarter of a room all to meself, with bed, desk, wardrobe, shelves, drawers. It has since been covered in Ikea produce. I'm practically scandinavian. I'm sure Swedish citizenship is based on your expenditure per annum in Ikea. 


I'll prolly be posting once a week from now on, but me e-mail is hannahmae27@hotmail.com and my addy is

Hannah Read
Room 204
Block 2
Li Po Chun United World College
10 Lok Wo Sha Lane
Sai Sha Road
Ma On Shan
Sha Tin
New Territories
Hong Kong

for those of you who still appreciate the beauty of snail mail.

Apologies for using words such as "super" and "chill". Please beat it out of me over Christmas.



Love to Éire, Hannah x


Me drinking bubble tea. More photos

*intentional misspelling

Testing testing 1-2 1-2

*interference*