Tuesday 1.31.2012

Tuesday - What a Great Day!
Our morning started off with an interview at the Kadoorie Institute. We got lost trying to find our way and ended up taking a taxi. Our interview lasted TWO HOURS!!! It was wonderful. We gained some much new information for our research. After our interview, we went to a place that had burgers and coffee. For those who know me well, this means HEAVEN! :D I unfortunately ended up with a vegetarian burger. I thought I was ordering a burger with mushrooms, but instead I got a portobello mushroom burger. It was still really tasty, just not the red meat that I was craving. Then we headed to the Town Centre Library. The other group that works their stole our reservation for a discussion room so we had to work in a common area. We spent the time re-vamping our methodology. Afterwards, I sprinted towards home to pick up my laundry. Then I changed out of my suit and into casual clothes for our dinner. Our advisers took Fatima, Josh, Andy, Alex, Amy, Max and I our for dinner.We went to Crystal Jade. Their specialties are xiao long bao, which are soup dumplings and homemade noodles. Soup dumplings are thin wrappers with a pork ball (typically) and a piece of gelatinized soup broth. When steamed, the gelatin melts and there is LITERALLY soup inside the dumpling. It was sooooooooo good. We ate dim sum style with 6 different dishes and the professors treated us all. Afterwards, I came home and did a little work and wrote to all of you :)

Good night!

Monday 1.20.2013

Katie and I left nice and early on Monday morning. We took several different MTRs and then a taxi to arrive at the Mai Po Nature Reserve. The Mai Po Nature Reserve is in the very northwest region of Hong Kong and borders the Mainland China line. This reserve is now run by the World Wildlife Fund. Our major purposes for this interview was 1) WWF is an NGO and we are interested in gather the perspectives of NGOs in terms of supporting ecotourism and 2) this particular location lays claim to providing ecotourism. The commute was suppose to take about an hour and 40 minutes and we always like to leave time for getting lost and time to arrive 10 minutes early. Katie and I left just after 7:15 am for our 9:30 am interview. To our surprise, we arrived at the reserve a little after 8:30. We sat in the back of a presentation that was being given to a school group. Katie was able to read the slides and give me summaries. I just enjoyed the pictures. Our interview went extremely well. We were able to understand more about the direction Hong Kong has taken and how this reserve has been successful.Our subject offered to give us a free experience through the reserve so we may do that during one of the following weekends. Then I cashed some of my travelers cheques, which are apparently old school nowadays and only very large banks will accept them... Afterwards we ran to the grocery store to grab some lunch and then it was off to the Town Centre Library to meet Amy and Paul. After work, we headed home and I went to bed early.

Sun burns and Rock Climbing

This past weekend (1/28-1/29), my group returned to our island for another overnight of physical observation, interviewing and other data collection. This time, we dragged along our friends as well. 17 of us went to the islands on the 9 am Saturday ferry, 11 of us with the intention of staying overnight and 6 just as day trippers.

They are all such a lively bunch at 9:30 am on a Saturday morning!

Playing with my camera, trying to capture the movement of the water. This is off of the back of the boat, with the white, rough water created my the motor of the boat.

This one I was able to catch some droplets. The shiny thing towards the bottom is the edge of the boat. This was looking over the front, capturing the spraying that was coming from the boat when it bobbed up and down.

When we first arrived, we hit the bathrooms and then checked in at the hostel. This also gave us the opportunity to leave some stuff behind that we wouldn't need while hiking. Once everyone was ready we hit the beach to start our hike around the island. The circumference of the island is about 6 kilometers. Last visit we hiked about 4 of those kilometers but due to weather and being slow (we kept stopping to look at shells, take pictures, take notes, etc.) we did not walk the whole circumference. This visit, we started going around in the opposite direction so that even if we didn't make it all the way around this time, we (my group) would have seen the whole island.
First, we just wandered along the beach on the north side of the island and headed west. We got to climb over rocks, look at shells, the boys skipped rocks in the ocean and collected sea glass. Soon, we encountered an abandoned village. We stopped for a while here to photograph and document the area and Katie casually interviewed tourists in Mandarin or English (depending on their backgrounds and language strengths).

 Traipsing over the rocks.

 Erosion

 Gorgeous View

 Yet again

 This use to be a hostel in its hey day.

 This house was recently abandoned, and is still owned and maintained.

 Andy and me walking along the beach.

 Gal and Greg attempting to lift a rock... Needless to say, they couldn't

After visiting the abandoned village, we continued along the beach and wrapped around the east side of the island. I ventured out on to some rocks, trying to not slip and fall! We got some really beautiful pictures and took some group photos as well.

 This is Amy as we approach a very small cave.

 This is Dylan inside the cave. Gallagher was also in there. That was about all that could fit. Afterwards, Dylan managed to climb out through that tiny opening...

 This was the view as we rounded the north east side of the island and started to walk the 500 meters south to the other side.

 Ground level picture with my camera on the rocks.

 View looking out to the open ocean. Way way out there (in the east direction) is the rest of Hong Kong.

 This is beautiful. Lots of rocks. To the right are some signs that indicate the different rules and regulations on the island with a map and other such things.

 Again, really cool erosion. Not sure yet how this happens but it is really cool.

 Looking to the south. We trekked down this way towards the southern facing beaches.

 I climbed down towards the ocean on some rocks and took this one looking up at everyone else.

 Beautiful rocks with some small waves crashing on them.

 This is me after I climbed out across a bunch more rock jetties. It was pretty cool to be standing out on one lone rock, surrounded by water and looking back towards the island. Luckily the tide wasn't coming in otherwise I may have been trapped!

 Reason 3,482 that our island is awesome. Check out this awesome layered, sedimentary rock! So cool! I probably should have been a geologist... Good thing I picked out a more relevant masters option...

 This is after I climbed back up to the island and watched other people approach. If you look off into the distance on the left, you can see the rock jetty that I climbed out onto.

 Oh hey Mainland China! Nice to see you.

 Gal being an emotional ponderer and Dylan being a quizzical genius...

 Greg decided to plank the rocks...

 Gal wanted to one-up Greg by doing some acrobatic move...

 Go ECOTOURISM!!! My amazing team. Paul didn't wear a shirt all day... We all laughed at him the next day when his entire upper body was beat red.

 Gal tried to climb up the vertical wall and then pull Greg down off the ledge. Greg, surprisingly, didn't budge.

This is the group that came over on the 9:00 am Saturday ferry. Pretty awesome group :D

 Gal pretending to be Forrest Gump.

 Another view looking East

I am an amazing photographer...

 WOAH MY CAMERA HAS A WIDE-VIEW SETTING! Very exciting thing to discover

 Josh gazing longingly towards Hong Kong.

 Looking Eastward across the south side of the island.

 SUPER AWESOME GEOLOGICAL FEATURES!!!

 Beautiful, clear water!!!

 Yay rocks! At one time way back when, this was one solid piece of land.

 Paul kinda looks like he is levitating... In reality he is just rock climbing...

 Charlie is a witch! Flying on his broom...

 This is Gal, planking...

 Some ginger lovin' - Andy and Chelsea

 Paul scooting up a crack...

 Charlie free climbing... (Note: Paul climbs everyday as a hobby and has equipment, etc.; Charlie just decided to go for it...)

 Gal's very manly frappe

Really cool temple-y thing next to our hostel. (I say temply thing cause its not actually a temple, it just looks like one)

After lunch, we chilled out by the beach for the afternoon. I collected some more sea glass and took a nap. I also put a jelly fish on Greg's shoulder and he FREAKED OUT!!! It was pretty funny. And for those of you that are thinking, "Hey, thats mean..." he put one on my arm while I was sleeping. I was just returning the favor. The boys also built a sand castle and made a sign that said 'WPI Hong Kong 2012' on one side and 'To Defeat the Huns' on the other side. Tyler found a Tiffany's ring on the beach in the rocks. It looks real. He is going to have it appraised. He was gonna see if one of the girls wanted it but its for a tiny Asian finger (like mom... it would have been to small for you...) and didn't even fir on my pinky. After this, we brought the 6 day trippers to the ferry pier to send them off and then we picked up Becca and Wyatt who opted to sleep in and take the 3:30 pm ferry. After that, we dropped their things at the hostel and crossed the island to catch the sunset. No captions for the following pictures (all sunset) but I played with my camera settings during this. Unfortunate side note: I slipped on an algae covered rock and dented my camera :( LUCKILY, it still functions quite well. The camera isn't too bad, and I had to make a split second decision of hitting the middle of my back with the edge of a rock or try and catch myself with the hand that the camera was in. Even though the camera got dented, I think I made the right choice. I have enough back problems!

 As mentioned, these are all sunset pictures. The order presented is the order they were taken. The varying light levels are due to vairations in my camera settings. Also, they were taken at different points along the island. This last picture was the last we saw of the sun before it got lost in the smog of Hong Kong. It was rather unfortunate to not see the entire sunset. SIlly pollution...

This is kinda hard to see but it is the algae on my shoe from me slipping...
After the sunset, we went back to the hostel for dinner. We barbequed (camping style) with sticks and all sorts of meat and vegetables and corn and bread :) It was so delicious!!! After dinner, we walked down to the beach and hung out for a few hours singing songs and having fun.

Here I was just playing with my camera some more, taking some night shots across the ocean towards Shenzen, China. After this, I headed to bed.

The next morning the girls got to sleep in until 9:30 am and probably would have slept later if the boys hadn't been roudy in their room next door. For breakfast, we had egg sandwiches and milk tea.  After breakfast, we counted the people coming off the morning ferry. Then we headed across the island in the other direction (heading East first) to show our friends the other inhabited village and try to find the other temple on the island. 

 It is a bit hard to see with this picture, but there are THREE ferries at the pier. Can you say over capacity?!? I think we may have found one of the problems that our project will address...

 Oh Andy... Also he claimed this was how he was going to bath himself. Not quite sure how since there is not water on the island...

 This boat was inland, BEHIND a bridge that it couldn't pass under. Clearly it is used very often.

 This is Paul's modeling shot...

 PUPPYYYYYYYYYYYYY!!! This was the police puppy. He went on rounds with the police officers and was pretty much just awesome :D

 This is me, petting the puppy

 Katie getting directions and interviewing a local.

 ANOTHER PUPPY!!!!!!!!!!!! I wanted to kidnap him <3 He was with a tour group

 THIS IS A PUPPY THAT LIVES ON THE ISLAND!!! He is in his house. Last time, he came on the ferry with us. He is so cute and seems very friendly.

This is the island reservoir. Can't you see its bountiful supply of water? I don't know why there is no water available on the island...

 After the village adventure, we decided to try and find the elusive cave that was on some, but no all of the maps. We knew it could not be reached from the trail (which on the southside of the island is elevated, so we decided to climb down the cliffs and walk along the rocks to find it. This is me climbing down after Tyler. Becca and Wyatt are already at the bottom.

 We made it!

 Fun to climb around. The water makes the rocks SUPER slippery though.

 Tyler being all pensive

 barnacles on the side of a rock

 sea urchins

 We found it!!! Although high tide seemed to prevent the access to it...

 At lunch, Paul (a.k.a. the seagull) decided to eat the fish... the whole fish...

 Katie coming down the pier to board the ferry.

 Andy says "Peace" Tung Ping Chau.

And thus ends our adventurous weekend. When I got home I realized I had a pretty nice sun burn. We all did! We weren't expecting it because there is no sun in Hong Kong due to smog and stuff. We were all taken by surprise and LOVING the sun while we were there.