Meeting new people has been very easy so far. I do not know exactly how many incoming exchange students we are but at one orientation session, that we were all in there, I counted more than one hundred. The university has been organizing several events for all of us so that we all get to know each other. There have been also some outside of the university events, as for example a rooftop party last Saturday only for incoming international students, so if anyone wants to meet new people is truly very easy. I came to HKU with a group from Northeastern and so far we have been going to most of the plans together, but in case I would have come alone, there would not have been any problem to make a new group of friends to go to different plans as most exchange students came alone and are in the same plan.
Locals are very nice and easy to interact with as well but, as I expected, they have their own social groups with local friends. This is totally understandable as they have been here their entire life. Local students can be very helpful. I always ask them questions about the university or tips to move around this huge metropolis and so far they have always helped and seems like they do it with pleasure. Interestingly, sometimes when they see me lost they get close to ask me if there is any way they can help. This always happens when I am at the bus station looking at the map for more than four minutes. At my dorm most of my neighbors are locals and this is very positive as whenever I have a doubt I can ask anyone around.
My dorm (Lee Hysan Hall) is very nice. It is part of a huge dorm complex called 6 Sasson Road, because of its location, where there are three dorms (Wei Lun Hall, R.C. Lee Hall and Lee Hysan Hall) that look exactly the same. Each dorm has sixteen floors with around twenty rooms each, half of them of single rooms and the other half of doubles. Each floor has two bathrooms–which are very clean as a cleaning lady comes everyday–with two showers and two toilets. There is also a common area per floor with a television with a PS4 (I suppose a student brought it), a sofa, a table with four chairs a very small kitchen with only one burner and two fridges significantly spacious. My room, which is a double, has all the necessary: two desks, two closets, two beds, a fan on the ceiling of my room and an AC, which works on a prepaid system. The cushion is terrible. It is extremely thin so it creates backache. I had to buy sort of a cushion protector from Ikea to stop the pain as it was very intense. The best of the room is the view as we have it to the ocean and since we are in a hill we can see very far from here. All the friends I have from other dorms have told me that theirs matches with the description of Lee Hysan Hall, so all the dorms are pretty much the same across the university.
Lee Hysan Hall, and the other two dorms in 6 Sasson Road previously mentioned, have three weaknesses compared to other dorms. The dorm is not on campus so we have to take the shuttle or take a public bus to get to the university, there is not subway station around and the only dining hall there is only offers food that is very local and repetitive. As I mentioned before, it offers an incredible view and the dorm overall is in good conditions, but it has those weaknesses that I consider important to mention. That being said, the neighbors are very respectful with the noise and so far they have been very clean. There are not RAs in any of the floors. The only control I have seen is at the main entry to the dorm, where there is a person that looks who comes in and who comes out. If that person does not recognize who is coming in, he or she asks for the dorm identification. There is a very friendly environment on the dorms. Locals constantly play Chinese board games until very late on the common area.
I would truly recommend staying on the dorms for anyone coming rather than finding an off campus apartment. Off campus locations are very expensive–similar prices to off campus Boston’s prices–and you do not get to live the full experience of going abroad. Besides, dorms are significantly cheap if we compare it to dorms across different campus across the United States. The entire semester, which lasts for five months, is costing me $HKD 8,770, which is around US$ 1,100. Even though some dorms are not on campus, as it is my case, every five minutes there are buses that go to the university and it takes only ten minutes once you are in it to get to the main campus. And regarding the food, there is an easy solution: cooking. There is a supermarket five minutes from here on bus where starting tomorrow I will buy my own food. This is an advice I followed from another exchange student who has been struggling with the food as well. So despite the problems there might be, there are solutions and there is not any big issue that should make anyone consider living off campus rather than the dorms.
