Up till now

Hello Everyone! So I have completely waited a week to write this post even though I have had plenty to write. I don't have too much time right now because I am in between classes and packing and doing homework and all before I leave for Thailand!!!

Update on Classes: I still dislike them (hate might be appropriate, although passionate..I really really am not liking them right now). I don't know what it is but I just miss my OSU classes a lot these days. Maybe its the teaching style, maybe its the fact that I know that if I was at OSU right now I would be doing a lot better in my classes. I hope, if I happen to do poorly (Read: I don not achieve what the standards I set for myself) that, if a company sees this that the recruiter won't assume that I slacked off while studying abroad because thats surely not whats going on (or is it? hmm. I should figure that out).

Halloween: Halloweeen weekend was nuts here!
Thursday: Sumana's hall was turned into a haunted dorm type thing with each floor having creepiness as you come out of the elevator and then their laundry room/common room was turned into a haunted house! I typically hate those types of things but I definitely had a blast (made possible by the fact that Evan had a foam stick of sorts and would wack everything he possibly could before entering an area...hilarious!) And I also got to hang out with Evan's roommate from Kenya and met his friends from Sweden, India and Tanzania. They were really cool though the guy from Sweden was kind of a jerk. But oh well, ya can't win 'em all.

Friday: Evan and I went down to the Temple Street Market (close to the Jordan MTR Station) and we looked around. We both were trying to find some good souvenirs for our friends (Read: BARGAINING) but we didn't find all that much and people didn't seem too interested in bargaining. Probably because we both were starting really low to guage what we could get stuff at. I wasn't feeling so hot that weekend but on Saturday, we decided to call it a night at around 10:45 and head back.

Saturday: I was feeling kind of sick and I slept a lot on Saturday but in the evening, I decided that its only halloween once and what are the odds that I will be in Hong Kong on Halloween again. So I got myself out of my room, got ready and Sumana, Ben and I went over to LKF to see what the big deal was. It was PACKED. We exited the station and there were thousands upon thousands of people smashed into this little area. There were police all around and we were "herded, like cattle" in this long, elaborate maze type of thing into LKF area. I guess, in recent years, people have died from being trampled on just because there are so many people in the area. It was really crazy though because we were taken away from Lan Kwai Fong and then back and then up the hill a little and then away again and then up a hill and then back and we were finally in LKF. There were cameras EVERYWHERE. It was paparazzi times a million. I couldn't tell if these were actual photographers from newspapers and the like or just a bunch of people lined up at random points to attack unsuspecting people dressed up in costume. Nuts. We didn't spend a whole lot of time in LKF people watching like we wanted to. But there were just too many people to just hang out in. We made our way back down to the station and headed to TST to get FRESH JUICE (YUMM) and then went back to campus.

Since Halloween, nothing too special has been going on. I was sick for most of the week with a cold and kind of a fever (not really though) and then on Thursday I went to go talk with my psychology professor to talk about the class and see exactly how she got into psych. I was really interested in that because Psych, generally, isn't that common in Asia (its a growing field) and she entered about 15-20 years ago. Definitely interesting to talk to her. She told me that since she came from a poor family the fact that she got into a University made her parents extremely honored so they didn't quite know what she was studying there. She had some people ask her the age old, "What are you going to do with a Psychology degree" but for the most part she didn't have too much trouble because her parents didn't quite get it. I talked with her about my plans about I/O Psychology and we talked about bi-culturalism (she was really interested in my life history), arranged marriages, etc and then talked about how the whole PhD thing is kind of limiting in a way. She advised me to maybe get my Masters in I/O and then do a PhD on the side later. I definitely came out of that meeting a little confused about what I should be doing with my life. I think I will definitely have to address that when I get back to the US and talk, face to face, with a psych advisor.

One day, In Globablization studies, we had a discussion about western marketing and how it was spreading and..well, mainly about Globalization and Cultures. I am just gonna share a couple snippets of what some locals said.
1. People talked about how McDonalds is HUGE and goes absolutely everywhere but they try and adapt to what the local culture would like
2. Maybe the fact that McDonald's goes into places is a kind of good thing because it helps the local population adapt to what is "polite behavior" as in queuing in lines in stores, restaurant places, ticketing, etc.
3. This one guy talked about how US movies are soo incredibly widespread. He talked about how in the 90s- hollywood went on a "saving the world" spree. He added, that this might be because the US wants to be seen as #1.
4. Hollywood special effects are unparalleled (?).
5. English is the most widespread language. May be helping the decline and extinction of other languages.

I think thats all I have written down from that class. There were a couple more things that were interesting but I think I just got too caught up in the discussion.

This past saturday, the 7th!: I went with my friend Chris to go look at T-shirts to maybe have printed for Buckeyemela/Srujan (April 9-10, MARK YOUR CALENDARS). The quality looked good and everything seemed really clean and all. It looks like I would probably be able to get the shirts for close to 4 USD per shirt but I think the shipping might be too astronomical to make this feasible...

Monday: Sumana and I went into town to get some errands done. We went into Chungking Mansions, where they have a LOT of foreign currency exchanges (the best rates I have seen so far for both Buying and Selling USD) and a lot of little Indian stalls and such. We definitely didn't stay very long because we kept being stared at. It wasn't the little old ladies that were staring either, it was creepy men that would just stop talking and stuff and leer. It was really gross and we got out of there as fast as we could (I only wanted a Samosa and I didn't get that because we felt so uncomfortable). We talked about that on the way home and we couldn't come up with a really strong reason why this was happening (or if this was in our head) but the consensus was that if we were by ourselves we would not have felt safe and that in itself indicates that maybe it was not in our heads.

Tuesday: STEELERS BEAT THE BRONCOS! WOOOHOO! Now we just have to take out the Bengals and win atleast one agains the Ravens. :) GO STEELERS. I really miss football Sundays.

Either way...this week has gone SUPER fast. I am going to THAILAND tomorrow and I am really excited (mostly about riding an elephant) and I absolutely cannot wait to get there. Its going to be awesome. :)

I'll be back on Monday and from then on I will be in Hong Kong, exploring on the weekends and catching up/learning everything/getting ready for finals on the weekdays.

Have a fabulous weekend. Take Care. Miss you all!