I've had one class so far. It was 3 hours long. Luckily we got a break to go stretch for 10 minutes in the middle of it. The class structure is basically the exact same as a class at SUU would be, lectures, group presentations, quizzes, expensive textbook. Except the expensive textbook seems expensive because it's 250 HK$, but in the US that is only $32, which is relatively cheap. Here is the weird part about class at CityU... I walk in and see a cluster of Chinese students that all know each other and are sitting near each other so I sit relatively close to them but not too close that I will invade their space. I mean I wanted to make friends, but how do I jump in on a conversation when it is in Chinese? So then 2 other exchange students come in and they sit by me because we are all white and speak English so naturally we flock together. They were both from SF State in California, how ironic that we would all be Americans... anyways. The teacher was nice and she started going over the syllabus (so typical, teacher's always do that... as if we are university students that can't read it ourselves). After she had been talking for approximately 8 minutes the whole classroom was chattering to themselves. Way rude, not even paying attention to what she was saying and slowly getting louder and louder so that it was eventually to the point that I could barely hear what she was saying and she had a microphone and I was at the front of the classroom. She kind of tried to get their attention but she didn't try too hard, it was making me way uncomfortable. THEN she gets to the point in her lecture when she asks for discussion and comments from the class and all of the sudden everyone is dead silent. We're talking you could hear crickets chirping a mile away. So I ended up answering the question. I wasn't even sure of the answer but when we sat in silence waiting for 45 seconds I had some time to think about it and I came up with a logical comment. Then she asked the next question and once again... silence. So the other exchange student next to me eventually answered the question. The teacher eventually even made the point apparently in America it was normal to answer a question when it was asked and in Hong Kong making comments in class was abnormal. She kept asking the Chinese students to comment so then I felt like I shouldn't answer questions, but after a full minute of pondering a way simple point I couldn't take the silence anymore and I would have to raise my hand. It was the absolute weirdest phenomenon. At SUU I barely ever raise my hand in class to make comments because someone else always beats me to it, but here I have all the time I need to come up with the best comment I can. I'm so grateful for class discussions at SUU--I had no idea it could be so difficult for some people to share their comments. I have two more classes today so we'll see how they go.
In the meantime here are some pictures of the CityU campus. It's no SUU, but I found a fish pond that I absolutely love to hang out by.
The whole school is in two buildings with 5 floors in one and 6 floors in the other. In the academic building all the classrooms are on the same floor and there are different zones for different colors so once you get to your color you just find the number of your classroom. I like it a lot.
This is kind of random, but I met a French kid named Pierre yesterday and he was telling me all about how he shaves the top half of his legs but not the bottom, it was way way weird. I attempted to take a picture but he wasn't very cooperative so you can't tell very well.
One last thing, this is a picture of the octopus sushi I ate for dinner last night. Yum Yum in my tum tum. Just kidding I didn't like the octopus ones that much they were sort of rubbery. The salmon sushi was delicious though. At the grocery store it goes on sale every night because they make it fresh in the mornings so I can have delicious sushi for cheap every day if I want.
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