The Beginning of O-Week!

Someone once described Hong Kong to me as a series of shopping malls, connected by subway stops. This is, essentially, a true description - after only a couple weeks here, I can name a mall at practically every main subway stop. Now, in general, I object to this, since shopping really isn't my thing, and the air conditioning is seemingly out of control. However, I've found my new favorite restaurant in Hong Kong - I can already tell I'm going to be a weekly regular! This oh-so-wonderful place, Crystal Jade, is, furthermore, a chain. AND it's cheap. I know. It does not get better than that. There are locations in basically every mall, which means it's all over the city (I've gone twice in the last four days). Yessss! They do these awesome soup dumplings, which look like regular dumplings, but have broth inside, around the meat. If you don't know about this soup, it can be a bit of a surprise when you bite into it! Also, there's this lo mian soup, Szechuan style, which is basically spicy and peanut-y goodness. It's actually my new favorite food.

(After the jump: pictures! Food! Yeah!)

Anyway, the afternoon before I discovered this wonderful place, Roy, Frances, and I grabbed some expensive dim sum at a tea house (the tea was delicious!) and then we were off to the MUSEUM OF SCIENCE! Yay! It was actually pretty cool, and awesomely interactive! Here's Roy and Frances, trying to do a circuit! On the other side is the blurb from the Parts of a Pig Quiz (which we utterly failed - did you know that pig cartilage is in your average ice cream? Gross!). There was a really cool Biodiversity in China special exhibition, with lots of stuffed animals. I saw a red panda for the first time (kinda looks like a reddish-brown raccoon-bear?), and I'm looking forward to seeing live ones at Ocean Park sometime! It was also kind of a sad exhibition, since most of the animals were endangered/threatened/in serious danger of extinction. :( Anyway, here are a few snapshots from the last few days...

 
Left: Me in a submarine, yay! (Museum of Science, ftw)
Right: So...Roy and I wandered about Silvercord mall for awhile, waiting for Frances. We found this awesome store, which sold wacky clothes (terrycloth rompers, anyone? Especially Elise? ^_^) and things we would never buy. However, props for the design on the store! (I'm all about the food, man!) You can see that giant soup spoon, and that big white bag in the back? Yeah, that's a giant banh bao, which you can actually walk inside (that's where they sell their bags, shoes, and panda towels). How cool is that?!?


Left: My friends took me to a place called pho tai, which I guess is the best Viet place in HK. It's pretty decent - a street café, as far as they go. Cheap, okay...meh. It's only marginally better than the stuff we make for Pho Night. Also, nearly everyone eats pho tai here (pho with raw beef) instead of pho bo or even pho ga.
Right: The IFC (International Finance Centre), which is in Central, near where our bus drops off. This was taken from the rooftop plaza, which is pretty beautiful. All the rain we've had has simply pushed away the air pollution for now, so everything is quite lovely - Central looks over the water. :)

Well, that's all for now - I've been so busy! Up at 6, in bed at 1...I'm going to have to become addicted to caffeine, I see! I promise, my next post will be on the awesomeness of Summerbridge/Breakthrough Collaborative, once I get all my thoughts together and meet my students! I'm off to do Lesson Plans now! Yay!