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Ways of living in this world - what is day to day?

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TST 2019

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Little endings

How come since leaving I have come across with new and new little endings for the same story. The first one was in the form of salad served on the return flight. It tasted exactly like the stuff served in my primary school’s canteen. I did not know which airspace I was currently at but I was certainly heading north and fast.

The crew on the plane spoke Finnish. A little ending, for I’ve been thinking in English for months. I guess I’ll change back now. I wonder how long it will take for that to happen.

Landing and only having a few minutes to say goodbye to my friend whom I had shared the past nine plus months with. Meeting another one at the arrival terminal I had not seen for as long and talking with her like we had last seen each other within the same week. A little ending that left me feeling surreal, ungrounded. It was like being plunged to a reality which had been on pause for me for almost a year, while of course still evolving as fastslow as ever.

Plus 12 degrees felt like freeze to my ears and all the people if did not look the same, in one way or another, did have something I could now recognize as utterly common to my conception, for seeing it in the mirror every day. The quiet train stops were blond, blue and clad in gym wear. A little ending, for I’m blending to the mass again while at the same time paying more attention to it than ever.

After landing in the train I start talking with the lady sitting next to me. I never did that before but now I feel like I have to speak in my mother tongue, maybe just to see if people around me truly understand me. She did but the conversation didn’t make me feel any more grounded. I still didn’t get it, that I was back. She’s a singing teacher, yet we spoke about forestry politics. Finland was playing for world championship in ice hockey that night. That unified the whole train, people updated each other every few minutes, cheered together. Finland’s team won but I can’t recall if I made it home before that. I just remember thinking how weird behaviour it was – you know, communicating with strangers in a shared public space within this culture.

I took away the cotton tops from my makeup bag which also strangely felt like an end to a travel – not an end to a stage of life in another country. I put the cotton tops in a cabinet in my bathroom, closed it and looked at my reflection in the mirror on the other side of the cabinet door. Do I look different?

I received my transcript record in mail months after returning to Finland. A proof, a little ending for academic period. Months of work and tens of encounters with new people represented by a few grades on an A4.

After returning to Finland.

Return, not “visit” or even “go”. I wonder if I ever end up back to Hong Kong, do I go there or do I return there.

All of these things were bittersweet, strange in their familiarity.

I didn’t cry when leaving Hong Kong, nor after arriving to Finland. I expected to cry. In which of the situations, I couldn’t say.

There were good things too.

My dad was waiting for me at the final station of my journey. I didn’t even make it out of the train before he was there extending his hands to take my bags. He had my belongings and he had made me feel a bit at home already before my feet touched the same ground as his on the platform. I remember taking that step down from the train. Do you remember with clarity any literal, physical steps you have taken during your life?

I didn’t remember green can be this…green. It’s vibrant and present everywhere. The sky feels like its closer here, closer to the ground without skyscrapers pushing it back. I sat in the train for hours after landing and just took it all in with greedy eyes. It’s beautiful here. Here. I’m here.

It’s also very quiet. I forgot quiet in Hong Kong, it seems like.

Quiet.

q

u

i

e

t

Quiet is a good thing, you see.

 Welcome home.

To one of them, all of this means.

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Travel Essentials

One of the ridiculous materialistic things I wanted to gather while in Hong Kong was the perfect travellers kit. You know; back bag, suitcase, luggage tags, luggage belts, refillable bottles for shampoo etc in carry on flight limits. Packing cubes maybe? Certainly, those thin bags to put your shoes in to protect everything else from their possible dirt. Travel friendly make up kit.

Ha ha ha.

Not going as planned.

Lets break this apart to force me to not only realize I don’t actually travel that much and that I have been okay so far without any of this nonsense.

I have a perfect back bag. I love it, bought it before coming to Hong Kong. Good for a weekend trip, not longer and presentable even in a city. Check.

Suitcase? I lent it from my mom. It’s ugly but convenient. Lightweight and big and something I will probably appreciate later – not mine. Which means when not travelling it will not be mine to storage into my very limited number of square meters. I have a suitcase to use. I’m not going to buy another one here, no way.

Luggage tags? I bought one for 10 HKD. It’s as fake as they come and will probably break the first time I get around using it. I certainly didn’t bother putting it on my suitcase when I went to Japan. Or China. Yeah. It’s super cute though.

Luggage belts? I bought one before crossing a single border, before even leaving my study city months before departure. Another one I got as a gift. It’s probably older than me. Works, I mean - it’s a belt. Lets be honest, I will probably replace that one with a new one, I have seen a dozen amazing designs here. Not that I need two, much less three. Guilty pleasures.

Refillable bottles. I bought two before leaving, have never before owned those. Never wanted nor needed those. I bought three new ones here because the first ones are awful. They are so hard you can’t squeeze them to get all of the product out and so small you can’t really dig it out either. That’s what I have been doing anyway. Scraping the bottom with one finger. Yes, I’m still using the cleanser from the travel sized bottle, the one I filled almost five months ago.

Packing cubes? Cute and soooooo tempting. I have been able to resist so far because I believe in rolling my clothes when packing. This faith is still holding strong.

Shoe bags? Those could actually be a good idea. I just end up trying to find plastic bags which are big enough and not broken to do the job. I could be more environmentally friendly and buy one of those. I still haven’t though and most of my traveling here is probably done already. For the futureeeeee….

Travel friendly make up kit? HAHAHAHAHAAAHAHAHAHAH.

I went to Japan and took a brow pencil and a powder with me. I think I used them once or twice during the ten days I spent there. And when I went to mainland China? I didn’t bother taking anything at all and in no circumstance while there did I wish I had taken them with me. I’m quite happy with my simple make up collection. It serves me well if I go out and want to play make up artist before or if there is a fancier event and I want to cover my dark under eyes. But when it comes to traveling, I am far too preoccupied by the possible inconvenience of smudging or what not. I won’t use it even if I carry it with me. For me travel friendly make up kit doesn’t exist. Which doesn’t mean I haven’t bought a new makeup bag because it so conveniently can fit all my make-up WHICH I WILL NOT TAKE WITH ME as well as my hairbrush and some toiletries.

Conclusion? 

I lost the conclusion. And the plan.

 Me, my state of mind and my luggage will be a mess anyway.

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Bride’s pool waterfall

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Eight Days in China

So – I visited mainland China during the semester break! Right at the start of 2019.

My way took me from Hong Kong through Shenzhen to Guilin, Zhangjiajie, Guangzhou and eventually back to Hong Kong.

I was terrified of the first train trip. Not because it was on the brand-new high-speed train but because I was traveling alone to this city in China, my sim card working-not-working and trusting to meet my friend at the end point station. I don’t really know why I was so stressed. I just was. Everything went fine. I found my friend and we found our hostel.

The man who sat next to me in the train during this first part of the journey made me feel uncomfortable at first. He was big, dressed as what I can only describe as street-posh, he wouldn’t stop moving on the seat and around the train and he was loud. He had one of those weird prepped meals you put some kind of liquid in and the resulting steam escaping the lid makes you weary of explosion. And he was clearly surprised to see me in the dominantly Chinese populated train. But, by the end of my journey I was actually pretty happy with my sitting companion lottery. As large as his persona seemed he was also very considerate towards the other occupants of our train carriage, me included, even if that showcased in a loud and restless manner. We hunted together for the electricity outlets of the train and when I got off at my stop, I was granted a friendly smile from behind a cigarette.

Guilin itself in early January was rainy and miserable. Even so my eyes were glued to the train window the moment Shenzhen was left behind and I was basically starstruck the moment the first mountains came to view. We visited amazing pagodas and reed flute caves. Guilin was the first step for freezing rain and dream-like sceneries as cliché as it sounds.

The real dream was Zhangjiajie. It was also the stage of my body’s betrayal since the humid zero degrees felt as biting as minus twenty at home. Hong Kong had grilled and melted me into thinking this was anything out of ordinary.

There was a bit of snow on the ground in the city. Going up the mountains in the forest park everything was covered by snow and most of all ice. We could pick out ice from the trees in the shape of the leaves, shake the branches to make them sing and I got to see my travel partner’s reaction to the snow. She was a lot more respectful and wearier towards it than I was. She is not used to that amount of snow and I haven’t felt the need for carefulness like that as long as I can remember. We both got to be excited like small children, she discovering something new and me getting an old play mate back.

We ended up buying snow grips for our shoes. I was reluctant at first not seeing them as necessary, too proud to bow to the ice. I still think I would have been okay without them but my goodness did they make the travel easier.

You would think that the frozen mountain sides were the most dangerous part of the trip to Zhangjiajie. Nope. It turned out to be walking on a tiny street between two buildings. Reconstruction of sorts was going on in the top floor of one of them and a thick log the length of my shin fell down from one of the construction workers, somehow only hitting my hip and leg. It doesn’t sound that dramatic, but less than ten centimeters to the right and it would have landed straight at the back of my head and probably done some real damage. Me and my friend both jumped in fright. I stared at the log for a moment not really understanding what just happened while my friend seemed a lot more shaken and worried. I don’t really know weather this makes me lucky or unlucky.

The mountains hid a lot of beautiful things and one of the treasures we stumbled upon on the frozen staircases on our way down the mountainside were two Germans. Of course it would be Germans, they are everywhere. In any case, we made friends in an unexpected place and ventured down the mountain together. We had dinner together later in the village and hiked the next day together. A few weeks later we met up again in Hong Kong. World seems small in precious moments like that.

Our hostel in Zhangjiajie looked great at first glance. It was freezing. There was a crack between the door and the frame and the heater could do very little to battle that. It was the first time I saw a heated mattress and it was our only salvation.

My friend’s parents took us for dinner several times for which I am very, very grateful. They made me feel welcomed and I probably weirded them out a bit on few instances. In a funny way, its fine. They took us to have duck and fish, I got exited over straw mushrooms (which is still one of the most amazing things I encountered in China). One of the restaurants had concrete walls, floors and ceilings. It was just as cold as outside so we got a pot with embers under our table to warm us up, the heat getting trapped under the table cloth. It’s probably common there, I wouldn’t know but it was so cool. My father would have liked it. Also, when my friend’s father saw my travel adapter, he looked at it like it was an unseen creature of some sort. The expression he directed at me when I explained what it is was pretty amazing. To be fair the adapter is ugly and huge.

The last night I got to spend at my friend’s relatives’ place. There was a bike in the kitchen, home-cooked breakfast, chickens and rats in the garden. We shared a mattress on the floor of the concrete house in the area littered by other concrete homes, fields of flowers and strawberries. We were in Guangzhou but not in the heart of the city. My friend took me for a walk around the area and the fields and it felt precious to be welcomed to some of her childhood memories there, no matter how few and conflicted they were. We walked on a sand road between two strawberry fields and a few scooters and bikes went by. I got stared at again but somehow it felt more surprised than curious. Like they acknowledged I had ended up at the place too but instead of intrusive curiosity it felt like a shrug.

Returning to Hong Kong was an exhausted delight I felt already at the border control. I loved the trip but I am to some extent a “home mouse” as it is said in Finnish. It means I enjoy spending time at home, need it to recharge. That’s what Hong Kong was, and in Hong Kong, Kowloon, the 12 square meters of a room in 17th floor of which half was mine. On many occasions I felt China was lovely, lively – I want to say comfortable and understandable but the meanings of those words do not quite catch the meanings I am after. It felt like I could be happy there. Yet while feeling that I felt more connected to Finland, like I could live happily in China for quite a while, if I knew I was to eventually return specifically to the dark and cold winter nights of my homeland.

When I returned to Hong Kong my new roommate had already moved in. There was surprise and…quite clear disappointment on her face when she stood in the doorway and looked at me. It was because I was not Chinese as she had hoped as I learned soon after. From the note I left saying I was in china she had made conclusions and was excited to get to practice her Putonghua. I got to practice my English instead.

China had been loud, large, stressful, mesmerizingly beautiful and interesting and friendly in ways I was not used to. It was spitting in trains, avoiding scooters left and right, getting a lot of attention just for existing there. It was cup noodles, language difficulties, runny noses, friendship and living in a moment. Out of all the places I visited and am yet to write about China became my favourite place even though it was easily the hardest one too as an experience for the language and culture differences.

Differences, never barriers.

For language is a tool like scooters and law systems. It can make life easier or harder. I have faced greater differences with English speakers than with the train dude in china. There’s more to connection than words and fluency, is one thing I have learned again and again. I still have to keep learning it.

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Pardon?

I know and understand every word you used but what on earth are you saying? 

 I got to try peas that a classmate brought with her as snacks. Some kind of Japanese peas, she tried to explain. Sweet, strong flavor, wet and borderline sticky.

I tried to explain to her the difference to the most typical peas in Finland. That did not go well.

I tried to tell her that the texture is almost wooden in the drier Finnish peas. Bad choice of comparison, not only because it is a bad example as I soon came to realize but also because “wooden” did not tell her much.

How is it wooden? Have you tasted wood?

No but the texture is wooden. Dry and the pea breaks similarly as a log of wood does under pressure.

Yes. From here it is still possible to go downhill.

I have done forestry work. I have used an ax, I know what it feels like when wood breaks under the pressure you cause, how the wood typically breaks and what the newly discovered surface feels to touch.

My classmate is from mainland China and has not ever used an ax. The idea of wood probably does not make her reminiscent the strong smell of freshly cut trees or wet logs, smell of a motor saw, splinters and dust in the air so thick you can kind of taste the wood.

As bad as my example was it was the first to come to my mind. It was kind of refreshing to realize how useless it truly was. The utter confusion on her face was quite precious and this was not the only one of our misunderstandings and complete failures to understand each other during that class. I’m probably a bit of a weirdo in her eyes now. That’s fine though. At the end of it we were smiling and greatly amused by each other.

I still don’t know whether I like those peas or not but I think she will sit next to me on the next lecture too so its fine.

24.01.2019

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Mom, I’m home!

I’m hanging out with people and their mothers. I’m not jealous. I’m not.

I kind of am but in a weird way. I see how they almost transform. Smile a bit wider, act a bit more relaxed. I have seen that before within Finland too, a change like that when people get to connect with their families and past. I don’t really wish my parents to come here. I miss myself back in Finland instead.

I get to smile. I got to see what several of my friends are like with their family. That’s something that disappeared after high school, so I try to treasure this glimpse to what they are.

I visited a lobby in a fancy hotel. It has an amazing view over Hong Kong and is free to access to anyone. The entire floor is there for the purpose of working as frames for the windows overlooking the city from the 46th floor. Hong Kong is a massively crowded place where every square meter is precious and where land is made there where it doesn’t exist. That floor of the lobby has incredibly high ceilings and it is incredibly empty. Just how hollow can wealth really be? There’re a few potted plants in the golden dollhouse and a lonely piano playing in one of the corners. The keyboard is alive but no one sits there playing it.

Cows and skydivers on a mountaintop. Amazing. It was a hard hike. I was totally spent at the end of it but it was worth it and beyond. We got to walk surrounded by bamboos, in a mist so thick it was hard to see a person five meters ahead of you. When we got to the top there were almost twenty skydivers performing their art while cows were sneaking to the bags and a tent of innocent leisure seekers relaxing and watching the show.

I was really happy on my birthday celebrating it with my friends. We went out to eat and for desserts too, of course. After that we headed to a harbor where we spoke about sweet little things I do not wish to write here. We played tag and danced in front of the cultural centre of Hong Kong, probably looking crazy and scaring the locals with our antics. I got a dog figurine as a birthday present from my group of friends. The dog has bird-feet. It’s perfect but we couldn’t agree on whether to call her Clock or Domino. Rest of the suggestions shall remain unstated. I got to hear the happy birthday song in Finnish, English, French, German, Swedish, Korean, Japanese, Cantonese, Mandarin…I’m not sure if I forget something. We are not that big of a group but it’s amazing how far a collective knowledge of young minds from across the globe brings so many languages within our reach. Thank you, girls!

I got splinters to my fingers from my chopsticks. That’s got the be a goal of some sort.

Distance is forgettable. The differences are not, even when I don’t consciously think about them. It feels like I build unnecessary barriers and obstacles for myself because of this. Its also in conflict with the idea of building a life here which I have tried to live by since day one. I don’t think this as a temporary solution, something that just waits to turn back to “normal”. This is my life now, this is the new normal.

And then traitorously I realize thinking “Would I really use these sandals in Finland?” or “Well I will have more space for this stuff back at home.”. I try not to think like this because “back at home” is still at least half a year away. That is a sad thought. It is also a weird one since I wanted away from there, I will get to go back there and being here is a privilege (even when it sucks). I want to get as much out of this exchange as possible. I want this to be home now.

(I got around finishing this part in January even though all of this happened in November. It is home now. I know exactly when it happened too, or when I first became aware of it. It was on a really windy and late evening around mid-December. I was walking alone back to the university from MTR station. Nothing great or out of ordinary happened. I just realized that I had the same feeling of familiarity and peace that I had in my study city in Finland. I had a place to call home, I was familiar enough with that part of the city, I had my routines and a sense of independence. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that I know this city or culture. I’m only saying I know this neighborhood and this lifestyle well enough to feel at home. It’s a scary and beautiful feeling.)

The bank keeps sending me text messages in Chinese.

November 2018

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Its facing the north too.

These moments seem to be quite few and far between but I got a “wow” moment today. By this I mean “wow, I’m actually in Hong Kong and its far and different and beautiful”. It usually happens when I’m close to nature and not in the heart of the city. I visited Ngong Ping in Lantau Island. The place is known for its big Buddha statue. As impressive as the statue was I spent more time facing away from it just letting the monument serve as a center point for a breath-taking view around it. The statue is high up on a mountain and by climbing up to it you can see the surrounding mountains get graced by clouds and see the sea on the other side. Day to day life doesn’t necessarily keep reminding me that I’m really far away from home. Those sceneries do and they make me grateful that I have come across the globe to experience this.

The Tian Tan Buddha faces north watching over Hong Kong. That piece of information stuck to me. I find it really interesting how people give different kind of meanings to the cardinal points. In Finland in my experience people seem to notify west for sunsets and north for the Northern star without it giving that much impact on anything but myths, songs and picnic locations.

My skin has gotten a lot worse than it usually is in Finland. I have pimples on parts of my face which I don’t remember having them ever before. Maybe it’s the humidity settling on my skin, or pollution, the changes to the food I eat or maybe just the sunscreen I’m not used to bathing in. I don’t know what it is but its annoying and so far, a more thorough skincare routine has not changed anything. Grrrrr.

I know its paint but there is a red disfigured hand print in the staircase somewhere between floors 12 and 17. It does look like someone was forced on their hands and knees down on the stairs because of blood loss.

Kazakhstan seems to be taking over the courtyard. And they are having a blast while doing it. There are also Swedes and Germans roaming in hoards but they don’t stand a chance.

21.10.2018 – 24.10.2018

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How do I ask for your hours?

All advertisements popping up on my computer are in Chinese. I even get ads for uber even though as much as I know it is illegal in Hong Kong.

I have visited Seoul, south Korea and Shenzhen, mainland China. I was a visitor or a foreigner in one and an alien in the other according to official immigration documentation. Words have power even when you are not using your first language. This time it was highly amusing but should I live my life beyond that border it might start bothering me. So might the tunes of Seoul’s metro. It is cute how the arriving train is welcomed by an actual fanfare recording; why not give this ordinary but essential service some recognition. As amazing as it has been to get to visit other countries it was also a pleasant surprise how I have felt relief and a sense of security when coming back to Hong Kong. It feels like returning if not to the norm then it does feel like returning one version of a home; even when my home is a small, shared and humid room which looks like an inside of a cardboard shoebox. I also felt privileged, really, when I got to pass through immigration points as a resident of Hong Kong (even though I keep getting stuck there – no one seems to like my passport).

I have been here for more than a month now and have yet to feel homesick. I haven’t felt restless the way I had started to feel in my home city in Finland, restless with the need to see what else the world has to offer. There is no melancholy waiting of getting to go back. Instead I have started to look for internships in other places around the world. I don’t wait to leave Hong Kong behind even though I cannot see myself building a future here. I find myself hesitant to look for returning flights to Finland because that would set me and this place a deadline. I am afraid things will change. Maybe I will want to use every single day I am possibly allowed to stay here or maybe I do get another country to head to. Buying an expensive plane ticket back home will feel like an end of a story I am not ready to face. I might not find my place here but the place I left in Finland might not fit me anymore either. I might be different, people around me might be different or they might not be there at all. It is all a one big “if” which has found its form for me in a plane ticket.

I do not believe I would be too sad to leave this city when most of the people I will learn to associate with it will be leaving too – this place will be full of memories but hollow at the same time when I finally board a plane with no intention of prolonging my visa. I am worried I might never want to go back and worried which  place it will be I would not wish to return to.

I wish to connect with places but in the end it always rather seems to be the people of the place which bring the meaning. It shouldn’t be surprising but somehow it is. I have started to get to know this petite and bubbly girl who is like a fairy flying through the campus grounds excited about everything. There is a security lady in our building greeting me with a smile when I come back to the residence and I find myself giving her a genuine smile every time – just for her, not any of the security personnel. I am participating on hikes to get to experience many sides of Hong Kong but already there are people I look forward to seeing on the hike as much as I look forward to the actual experience and views. These people with many others are becoming Hong Kong to me, piece by piece. They are the landscape, buildings and noises here blurring millions of others to the background.

I feel a bit disconnected from Finland. I still miss, think and treasure the people back at home but notice myself prioritizing the people here instead when it comes to time and attention given. Guilt for this is present even though I doubt people are judging me for it. I still feel my place to be more secure among them than among the people here but the guilt of not calling home is overrun by the pull to connect with people here instead. I am also struggling with trying to remind myself that people are free to make their decision whether they want to invest time on someone who will be gone in a year or not. That the only choice I can do for the matter is to ask and let them decide instead of “letting them be” in their regular circles. I want to mingle and assimilate but at the same time I don’t want to intrude and push myself on anyone.

There’s a person here who is so good at small talk I find myself suspicious of him. Maybe I’m just taking the meaning of an introvert to a whole new level. Sure, lets talk. See if I crash and burn.

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I give up with the weeks.

The typhoon is over. According to the general opinion in media it was the strongest Hong Kong has faced since the records began. I was lucky enough to be and mostly feel safe during the whole ordeal. Our building was swaying which was for me the most nerve-wrecking and off-putting thing. The rain was beating to the windows with intensity I could not have imagined before seeing it. Besides the acts of nature, I was also surprised about acts of my own and some of my friends’ who were stuck in the same building. I feel like I shouldn’t say “stuck” since in the end we were voluntarily staying safe instead of being forced to do anything. In any case I was surprised how quickly people, me, became restless with the knowledge we can’t and shouldn’t exit the building. It’s a big building. I have stayed in a 12 square meter room for more than two full days before without feeling any need to leave, content with my own company. Now I had twenty floors and hundreds of people with me but the restlessness was building fast. Maybe it was just the loss of a choice whether to leave or not.

Language barrier hasn’t been, well, a barrier in a sense I expected it to be. Everyone has been so readily helping me to communicate that getting my point across hasn’t been an issue even once. If someone doesn’t speak English they reach out for someone who can. So practical things are not the problem but rather the emotional ones, reading into the communication beyond language. Just because both parties can speak English quite well doesn’t mean that you are not a burden to them or at least feel like one. No matter how good the language skills are the first language will always be easier and more approachable. I can understand that. Understanding someone’s point however doesn’t mean you have to like it or that you could control your emotions about it.

It shouldn’t matter if I am an only exchange student on a class or in a group formed for an assignment. It shouldn’t but it does because the feeling of becoming a burden to the others creeps in easier even when you know there is nothing you can do about it. Most likely the others don’t think anything of it, after all we are in a university with a large selection of courses with English as the medium of instruction. This doesn’t mean that I’m not hyper aware of my minority status on those moments.

People are nice. They do not mind using English. Some are shy to use it which makes me less approachable as a group partner. As polite as people are you can quite clearly tell if they are not interested to interact with you outside the classroom and outside the subject you are studying about. I get it. I’m a risk investment for social life since I will leave in a semester or two and communication is unavoidably harder with me sometimes. I understand, I do. But.

Ignorance is bliss, I have heard someone has uttered in a burst of wisdom.

My intension is not to complain in hopes of a change. This is just something to get used to. There is also the silver lining for this too. People come to me when I really need it. I can see how other faces of minority have become so welcoming with just this loose connection. There is some kind of unity between exchange students even though I can’t remember your name or even your face. We have met, really? Cool, where are you from again?

The best part I think is when the barrier isn’t there when you expect it. When someone looks at you, smiles at you and keeps the conversation going even after the class or translation moment has ended. Some people see you instead of a task. It doesn’t mean you have to become friends on the spot or ever. But it feels like they are more present and interested instead of dismissive in their politeness.

In those moments there is no wall but instead a shared space. It’s quite amazing really, to get to appreciate those moments.

18.09.2018

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Week two. Kinda my name.

It’s the second week. My adapter is spewing sparks – at least it still does its job. My armor to survive this environment is developing piece by piece. Now I own both sandals and an UV-umbrella. I’ve been introduced to the concept of tea time and to the mindset which deems two kilometers as too long of a distance to cover by foot. It’s an unwritten rule and a fact that you shall not pronounce anyone’s name correctly and shall not get your name pronounced correctly by others. The only exception are the people who share your cultural background including your first language. They would pronounce it correctly should they remember it to start with – at this point they are still mostly surprised you understand their curses. Don’t worry. I don’t remember you either, westerner.

The stores have great music playing in them. I’d really like to dance but I get enough stares as it is.

Never in my life have I been offered help by so many strangers.

Which side of the sidewalk am I supposed to walk on? You too seem confused, dear local, but I’m the one who feels like I’m on your way.

I had a lesson of English listening comprehension. I had a map on which I had to draw the correct path according to what I hear. I’m the only exchange student in the class. In Finland we drive on the right side of the street. In every turnabout on the map I “drove” in the wrong direction.  So there’s that.

There was a huge pile of dragon fruits in the market. I bought one for the first time in my life only to realise I have no idea how to approach this creature especially since I don’t currently own a knife of any sort. I did get it handled with two friends. Thankfully they were there to share the fruit since I didn’t actually like it that much. It was like a mixture of a kiwifruit and a radish.

I was having lunch when a random man, a local I suppose, stopped to say that I use chopsticks like a real Chinese person. Or at least that’s what I think I heard. He was gone before I even understood what was happening. If indeed it was a compliment of my technique – thanks. Although clearly it escaped your notice how ridiculously hard I grip them.

We played hide and seek with my floormates and a group from one another floor. We had ten different floors of the building as our playground. It was an experience for sure! A lot of running in stairs, whispering and shouting. I can’t speak Cantonese so I was quite out of it most of the time but I had a really nice local babysitter to run around and whisper with me.

Remember I said I have an UV-umbrella? I got it a few days ago and broke it today. One of the parts snapped in the wind. There is a typhoon warning for the upcoming weekend and I’m already not handling it correctly. This kind of wind will probably be like the experience of the humidity here – impossible to imagine before you get to face it. 

12.09.2018

[paperplanesfromfinland-blog]

It took me two days to find a teacup. The local students are screaming outside. I would scream with them if I knew how and what.

[paperplanesfromfinland-blog]

Week one. Her name is Melon(i).

I have been living in Hong Kong for a week now. Crazy, it feels like I have been here a lot longer than that even though my studies haven’t really even started yet.  The study exchange is already breaking those expectations I had about moving to another country and starting a semester in a new university. I haven’t felt miserable, I haven’t missed home yet and I also haven’t encountered the “honeymoon” phase I was warned about. This would mean a period of glorious feelings of happiness and excitement only to fall flat when I realised the day to day life will be more or less the same no matter where in this globe I reside. None of these are present, it’s been…a surprisingly (sweaty, frustrating and in the end) stable start.

Of course, there are differences. The weather was like a punch in the face – the heat and the humidity. Instead of heating system you are paying for air conditioning.  When you are in a bathroom the doors open towards you instead of opening outside – I wonder when this will register to my muscle memory. For now, I struggle to try pushing my doors open and trying to lift the noodles with chopsticks from the soup. The group of older Chinese women at the same table will smile at my rusty eating manners but the humour is of a friendly kind. I smile back at them.

People approach me offering help without me asking for it which is a difference also, a really welcome one. I wonder just how lost I must look like from time to time. Not only do other people approach me more but I also find myself approaching strangers more and with an ease that has been foreign to me before. This I hope will last – it would be an amazing thing to eventually bring with me back to Finland. People have been amazing. Hopefully I’ll learn from that.

Today I found myself having lunch with a local priest. It was full in the canteen so we shared the table. He was far better in small talk than I was and we had a nice meal together. I got compliments for my usage of the chopsticks, the ladies in the same table still smiling and glancing at us from time to time. I got to use my horrible Chinese skills, got tips about where to visit in Hong Kong and got to listen to this man’s stories. As much as I was given in that moment, time and attention in the forefront, I’d like to think he enjoyed the moment too to some degree at least. I can admit I was quite pleased with myself for getting him to laugh several times, his mouth full of rice.

I haven’t figured out where to find certain kind of batteries, which products in the market are raw and which ready made or where to find an UV umbrella. I bought a stuffed animal instead, now wondering if I should name it after this city or after the Korean ice-cream I had yesterday. I’m learning to adjust to different forms of English, the richness of accents from around the world. I have time. I’ll figure it out in the end. 

This is the start.

04.09.2018