Winter Holidays

This year was the first year I spent my winter holidays away from home. Being Asian, my family and I aren't huge Christmas and New Years celebration types of people.

Back home my friends and I would get together for a nice dinner and exchange gifts. Christmas and New Years morning I'd have Dim Sum with the family and go to a relatives house to play all day and night.

For Christmas Eve this year I was able to spend it with a group of local Hong Kong friends that lived on the same hall and floor as I. We went into Macao on the afternoon of the 23rd and came out around evening time on the 24th. We visited many must-see attractions such as the Ruins of St. Paul, Senado Square, The Venetian, and ate Portuguese egg tarts. I didn't know what to expect before going to Macau because I didn't do any prior research. Some things that I was surprised to see were it's walk ways and buildings. The city's architecture resembled  those that you'd see in Europe, probably because of the Portuguese influence on the land. Something that blew my mind was Macau is extremely small, we pretty much walked from one attraction to the other because the locations were so close it was actually possible.

Sadly our second and last day in Macau was cut a little short because we had to rush back to school for our Hall's Christmas Party. The party consisted of mainly local students that are very active in hall life. First we played some games, had a live band perform a little, danced, ate, and took a bunch of pictures at the end.

On Christmas day, I went out with a friend to eat Dim Sum (as does all Chinese families on Christmas morning) and walked around Mong Kok through out the night. Many people in Hong Kong don't really celebrate Christmas because it is more of a western thing than eastern.

This year's New Years was very special to most Chinese people because this year we went from 2013 to 2014. In Chinese the numbers 1314 sounds like 一生一世 meaning "a lifetime" or "for life." On New Years many Hong Kong people will go out to the harbor area where they are able to countdown and see the fireworks at midnight or go to different shopping malls for shows and performances. Hong Kong is already very crowded on a normal basses, but during New Years it's ten times worst because not a lot of people like to stay home.

I personally don't like crowds so I decided to stay home and spend New Years with the other students who also wanted to stay in. From the 12th floor of our hall and on TV we were able to see the fireworks that were being displayed at the harbor. Personally I've seen a lot of Fourth of July firework displays at Ala Moana beach and I felt they were much nicer than the ones at Victoria Harbor. During Fourth of July they would have the ones that looked like planets and the galaxy but the ones here in Hong Kong were mainly the plain ones that expanded from small to big.

Never the less I'm sure the atmosphere and fireworks was something definitely worth seeing, especially for exchange students like myself. I had a couple friends that asked if I wanted to join them but I declined because I felt the company was what was most important. That night I had dinner with great company, wrote new years cards to everyone on our floor, and played cards till 2014.