Farewell Reception and the Weather

Last Monday night, OMIP hosted a Farwell Reception for all Inbound Exchange students. It provided a good opportunity to see a lot of the local and other international students once more before going our separate ways (even though I still have two weeks left). I am surprised at how many international students I don’t see. The first few weeks, I saw these kids multiple times a day, and now I’m lucky if I see them once every two weeks. School makes our lives so complicated.

A few students shared pictures and videos as well as speeches about their time here at Lingnan. It was great to hear other students’ experiences.

Lex, Kat and I at the Farewell Reception

In addition, OMIP does this cool thing called “Gold Books.” Each school it has a partnership with has a book and exchange students are encouraged to share their experiences and comments in the book. So Anna, Tim and I all shared our experiences and placed them in HWS’ Gold Book.

It’s been cooling down here, but by cooling down, I mean it’s still 70 degrees, but to the local students, and many internationals, it’s freezing. And okay, today it was around 60 and I was a little cold, but still, it’s NOTHING compared to winter in Geneva. So at the reception, I was wearing shorts and a t-shirt and the Vice President of Academic Affairs (?) comes over and starts talking with us. He was taken aback by the fact that I was in shorts still, and asked where I was from. “Boston” I replied. He just laughed.

Just today (Wednesday, December 8) I have seen so many winter coats. It’s ridiculous. I seriously wonder what the exchange students think when they come to HWS. 

International Day

 Last week was Lingnan and OMIP’s famous “International Day” where international students are able to share their culture with the local students and school. The international students were able to share different types of food along with pictures and various performances with the student body. The Wing On Plaza (kind of like Lingnan’s cement ‘quad-like’ area) was packed with booths, chairs and people celebrating the day. 

I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to attend because I had classes scheduled during the celebration, as it went from 5-7pm and I’m in class on Wednesday from 3:30-8:30 so I didn’t help with the preparations. But I got out of my first class a little earlier and then got caught up in helping the American booth serving food. The American booth served sloppy Joes, coleslaw and some cake. We ran out before the celebration was over but those who were able to grab some of the food seemed to enjoy it, so that was good. 

 

I was able to walk around and visit a few other booths- The French kids made crepes, the Swiss kids made cheese fondue, the Germans served beer, and I forget what the Koreans made but they also quickly ran out. 

A girl from America and another guy did a swing dance performance, some students from Bangladesh performance a native dance, and the Korean students mixed different ‘K-Pop’ (Korean-pop) songs and  choreographed a great dance. 

It was a great night filled with international cuisine, performances and people!

Lost in Translation

{So I know you’re expecting another post about Thailand, and that’s coming- tomorrow though, sorry- this was just an aggravating experience today}

Last Spring, HWS required students going abroad to attend orientation meetings to prepare us for our time abroad. During our ‘Passport to Success’ meeting we were told we may encounter language problems in the classroom as English isn’t the students’ native language. One horror story stuck out in my mind: In one girl’s class, a Chinese student wasn’t understanding a specific concept that professor was explaining in English and asked for it to be explained in Cantonese; the professor asked if anybody minded and the girl didn’t raise her hand. As a result, the rest of the semester, the class was taught in Cantonese. ‘Okay, I could handle that,’ I thought to myself after hearing the story, just raise your hand.

If only life was that easy.

I mentioned a while ago that my Media Ethics professor is Chinese and frequently switched between Cantonese and English, and I figured she was doing this to explain the concept in Cantonese for the Chinese students. So along with another international student, Camilla, from Denmark, I sit through the class usually dazing in and out. But over the past month and a half, the classes have gotten worse- as in there’s more and more Cantonese and less and less English. Yesterday, as Camilla and I were leaving the class we just looked at each other and agreed that that class was aggravating, because we didn’t understand much.

Then today, we had tutorial at 8:30 this morning. {I don’t think I’ve explained tutorials—they’re supplemental to the lectures and are mainly for discussions and presentations. For Media Ethics, the tutorial meets every other week for 2 hours.} So I woke up at 7:30, head to the library to do the reading for the tutorial, only to find the library was closed, so I chilled in the 24-hour computer lab until 8:30 (thankfully, turns out I didn’t even need to do the reading because it wasn’t even mentioned in the tutorial).

Class started and two students present on the topic of censorship and press freedom. Their presentation was in English and I had no problem understanding them. It wasn’t until the last 4 or 5 slides when things started to go downhill. They were using a local example and only had a Chinese text of it. The teacher, Lisa, tried to translate it for Camilla and I but then other students were getting confused, so she tried to explain it for them in Cantonese. At this point it was like 9:45am and we decided to take a quick 5-minute break. During the break though we put our chairs in a circle so we could have a discussion.  Haha. Discussion.

For the rest of the class, the professor talked in Cantonese. She translated maybe 3-4 times but as I’ve learned in this class as well as my Non-Fiction Film class, so much gets lost in translation. And then the students would talk and it would be in Cantonese, and then the professor would respond again in Cantonese. At one point the professor turns to Camilla and I and asked what we thought. Um. I have no idea what you’re talking about. “Umm. I’m a little confused in the translation,” Camilla said and I kinda just repeated her question to see if I understood her. And then it was back to Cantonese.

Well, to say the least, Camilla and I were aggravated by 10:30. Since we had another class together at 11:30 we went to the Canteen for breakfast and talked about how we could fix this. We realized the problem was mainly the language and how Lisa wasn’t forcing the students to talk in English, especially since she wasn’t always talking in English- if she’s not, why should they? So we decided to go see her later in the day during her office hours and bring it to her attention and then I was also going to email OMIP (Lingnan’s study abroad office) as well as CGE (HWS’ Center for Global Ed) just to bring it to their attention.

Long story short, Camilla took a water break during our next class and ran into Lisa; apparently Lisa had sent us an email and wanted to get together with us for a chat- we decided to meet once our class was over.

Well during our meeting, we brought up our concern-about the lack of English. And, well, Lisa talked about censorship and press freedom for an hour. That’s right. An hour. Because she thought (or at least I think she thought) we didn’t understand the presentation/topic. So by the end of our meeting we still don’t think she knows how to solve the problem of how to make the kids speak English- her solution is having us come talk with her separately so we get a better understanding of the material (except that’s not the problem). We were still rather aggravated and annoyed by the end of our little chat.

So I’m still going to email OMIP and CGE just so they know; maybe they’ll even bring it to Lisa’s attention/remind her that classes need to be taught in English, because that’s what we were told when we signed up for this program.

So cross your fingers that I don’t have to sit through another class next week of mainly Cantonese!

Mid-Autumn Festival

This past week marked the Mid-Autumn Festival, which celebrates the harvest and the brightest moon of the year. It was celebrated on Wednesday night (Sept 22) and Thursday was the ‘day following Mid-Autumn Festival’ so we didn’t have classes. I lucked out because Thursday is one of my busy days with 4 classes/tutorials and none of them met. J Unfortunately though I had a late class Wednesday night from 5:30-8:30pm, but we got out a little before 7pm. A bunch of exchange kids went into Central/Causeway Bay (?) to see a celebration but I didn’t get out of class in time to make it. L Oh well. I was able to hang out around campus and celebrate here.

On Monday though, OMIP organized a Mid-Autumn Festival Celebration where a bunch of exchange and local students got together in the canteen to celebrate the Festival. There were a bunch of different stations and activities that gave great insight to local celebrations. We were able to try a lot of different foods, including mooncake and different types of fruit. Mooncakes are small little round pastries, with “A thick filling usually made from lotus seed paste is surrounded by a relatively thin (2-3 mm) crust and may contain yolks from salted duck eggs” (Wikipedia). I had heard a lot about them and have seen hundred of advertisements for them in various MTR stations so I was very interested yet hesitant to try them. I had a feeling I wouldn’t like them- something about the egg yolk… But I tried it and woah. It was so sweet and was not for me. Not too many exchange kids seemed to like them, but I hear there are a lot of different types so I am going to search for some other kinds and give them a shot.

Some food- meat on a stick, hot dogs and some other things that I don't know what they are...

The mooncake is right in the center, with Starfruit to the left and Pomelo to the right

Some other activates included playing local board games and making lanterns. I played the Chinese version of Chutes and Ladders and won! As a prize, I got the board game.

Chinese Chutes and Ladders

Lantern making

The night as a whole reminded me of Casino Night at CBC; lots of tables set up around the room and you could go to the different activities as you pleased. It was a great chance to participate in local celebrations while learning about the Mid-Autumn Festival.