NI - GZ Erasmus 2014: Week 1 – Orientation and the Hallions

With our travels over, it was finally time to knuckle down into some hard work we arose early on the Monday morning and walked to meet our year head - Sylvia - a lovely woman with excellent English who came bearing the fantastic news that this was 'orientation week', our timetables were still under construction and that we were to use this week to "get to know Guangzhou"... not sure if she knows we've been here for a month!

Anyway, with that in mind, we decided to try and find the most productive ways to spend our free time. For me, this included playing my trusty ukulele, giving my room a more homely feel (making a mess) and bettering my skills in my newfound sport – BADMINTON - Lloyd is better…for now. We have also taken to the local cuisine and become best friends with the noodle maker on our street corner, who we have named – Noodle Guy – we’re so original.

New Pastimes

Team Noodle

Later in the week, we had the pleasure of meeting two of our international buddies - Tony and FeiFei. Both of them are majoring in English and translation so it was fantastic to have them around. They took us to a local museum and wowed us with their simultaneous translation skills, to an old temple, in which the locals asked for our picture (white people are basically celebrities) and finally, out for a traditional Chinese dinner; we ordered our food ourselves, looking to show off how cultured we are, this was met by laughs on their part as apparently it was a "Typical Western order"...apparently eating in a Chinese doesn't make you cultured. Meeting these two made me really appreciate the buddy program back home and emphasised how important it is - when you're out of your comfort zone and your home language, it really makes all the difference!

FeiFei and Tony

"Can we have a picture with you?!"

We finally hit the weekend after an 'intense' week of induction and readied ourselves for the arrival of Ester, Olivia and Charlotte - 3 of the 4 Stran students studying in Hong Kong, as such, they were dubbed "The Hong Kong Hallions".

Our intention for the weekend was to give them 'The real China experience' as Hong Kong is quite westernised. This began by Lloyd convincing Olivia to eat a chicken foot by telling her we all have done it and he spent a lot of money to get it. Neither of these points are true. Sorry Olivia.

The weekend was full of activities including a trip up the Canton tower, a river cruise and my personal favourite - a trip to the zoo/safari park!

It was great to see people from back home, even just to talk to other people who understand what "sweltered" and "scundered" mean. They also came bearing Irish stew...if I wasn't so darn manly, the tears of joy would have flowed -. amazing. Can't wait to see them in Hong Kong soon!

Some pictures below for your viewing pleasure.