The difficulties of assimilation

I feel it is important to open a dialogue on what study abroad students do and what the purpose of studying in another place. Please reply with your thoughts, whether you’ve studied abroad or are yet to go. I’ve spent a lot of time pondering these ideas before coming to Hong Kong and now I’ve found myself increasingly concerned with the question everyone must answer for himself: where do I belong?

The question is not about finding a location, but a social circle, a hobby, a routine, your everyday self. To begin I shall discuss the idea and expectations of exchange students from my own experience. Of course in some ways they relate specifically to Hong Kong and Asia, but I believe many things I address are commonalities of the study abroad experience. Also, keep in mind I must generalize to some degree, and there are exceptions.

What do you think of exchange students?

Before I came to Hong Kong I noticed that they are very much a clique in Missouri Southern. I talk to several of them, and they are generally friendly, but why is it that people from Denmark (or any other country) hang out with people from Africa, Chile, France, China, etc. (you get my point) instead of being absorbed into other social circles? I thought the purpose of studying abroad was to gain an understanding of a different place with different customs by putting yourself in a new and sometimes uncomfortable situation. In part, I attribute the lack of assimilation to the idea that most people take the path of least resistance. After all, we exchange students, while we may have very little in common with each other before meeting in our respective schools, now are in the same situation. We are in a new place and don’t know anyone. We band together. Would the same people be friends if you removed the common factor of both being study abroad students? Now I may come off as critical, but I’m in this situation now where a majority of the friends I spend much time with are fellow exchange students. Some of them are even fellow Americans. I don’t mean to imply that I don’t like my friends here, contrarily, I consider myself privileged to have met them. Some days I just feel that maybe I’m not truly a part of the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

Talking to local students, I’ve gotten the impression of their expectations of exchange students. They expect them to not study very hard, to not assimilate, to party every night, to spend weekends traveling and sightseeing and so forth. In all honestly, they are usually not too far from being correct, but of course there are exceptions. A few experiences have led me to these conclusions. There is a downtown bar district called Lan Kwai Fong, and it is crowded with foreigners of all types: middle-aged, rich white businessmen, international students, and tourists. The local students expect me to frequent Lan Kwai Fong. Another experience involved me attending the Astronomy club meeting. I was the only exchange student there, as the meeting was being conducted in Cantonese. As soon as I entered I was already drawing stares. A girl in front of me kept me slightly informed as to what was going on. The event was a question and answer session, so I kept my hand up for quite a while. Finally, when I was allowed to ask my question about what the club does, students were laughing at me. I asked the person next to me about it. She said that it is very uncommon for exchange students to attend any club meetings.

The specific difficulties for me as I try to fit in as a local student are multiple. Foremost is the language barrier. Although nearly every student here knows English, they prefer speaking in Cantonese. So it is hard to start a conversation without having to play the role of ignorant exchange student. Also, the social structure here is different. The social network seems to be dominated by the subject of study. Most local students will spend time with the other students they share most of their classes with, or the students that they attended their orientation camps with. Another bothersome difference stems from the work ethic here. It seems so many students will spend 10 hours per day with school work, projects, presentations, and pre-professional student organizations. The result is students having large networks of friends that they say “hello” to in passing, but know very little about.

While I’ve focused predominantly on the social obstacles, I still have met many friendly local students. I’ve just encountered more resistance than I expected. I keep calling the locals to come on an adventure with me, and every once in a while they don’t have projects or meetings. I’m just doing what I can to keep from falling entirely into exchange student sub-culture. I also want to encourage others to remain aware and actively choose your experiences abroad.

Hong Kong post 1

Hello,

First off, I'd should let you all know I'm alive and well. It's been just over a month since I arrived and I could already write volumes on everything I've come across, experienced, overheard, been told, and read. I'm as busy as I've ever been in my life and I go to bed every night wanting to do more the next day.

There is no easy starting point, so I'll aim for a brief overview of life during the past month for me. I made it to Hong Kong on the night of January 2 and was essentially dropped off at my building with a room key. I was itching to go out, but just wandered around my building in disbelief of everything. At first it was only the exchange students on campus, so we got to know each other a bit and took care of errands and paperwork for the first couple days, trying to learn how to get around. Then everything blew up at once: school started and exploring commenced.

School
I'm taking classes all across disciplines; anthropology, government and public administration, puthongua (chinese language), environmental science, economics, too much. The work is heavy, or maybe it just seems so because I can hardly squeeze the time for schoolwork/readings/studying into the schedule packed with extracurriculars on weekdays and exloring on the weekends. I just now made the time to blog because I had a 45 minute presentation about asian international relations I've been reading for when I had spare time. My Chinese teacher is good and I'm learing, but progress is slow in chinese language. I must also mention my anthropology class called "Globalization and Culture," because it is, so far, the best class I've ever had. The professor is great and the topic is of such interest to me.

Campus life














Well, the campus is beautiful and there are always strange events going on (ex. fashion show or hiphop dancers in the middle of the school day). My roommate is cool, as are the rest of the guys I've met on my floor. They are all local students. Sometimes we play videogames together or cardgames. There are so many campus clubs and organizations to join. I'm working on getting into the astronomy club, and I've already done two broadcasts on the student radio station with a student from the US and an exchange student from Mexico.

The city
Whoa, there are too many things to cover. I've been to a theme park, temples, street markets of every type, hiking trails, parks, restaurants, monuments, museums, boats, bike trails, churches, skyscrapers, scenic views, malls, a ghetto apartment, a horse race, and other random places. Understanding Hong Kong requires a bit of a history lesson. In short, it was a former British colony, transforming it into the financial center of China, southeast Asia, and even the globe to some extent. The city has nearly 7 million people, all of them living in high-rise apartments. The city divided by Victoria Harbor into Hong Kong Island and Kowloon. The city's area is not so large and public transport is great. The trains are amazing, and there are buses as well, but they are difficult to navigate. There are also surrounding islands with ferry service to see them. I'll avoid covering any place specifically in this post, because I couldn't so them justice in a brief few sentences.

I hope to post bi-weekly, but I keep photos updated often on my photosite: www.flickr.com/photos/birthdaybeard

take care,

tim

I cheated on my blog.

I have been posting on another blog at myspace. If you care to check it out, my site is http://www1.myspace.com/timshelhamer
It can be a bit more course than this so consider yourself forewarned.

download generation

I recently came across a BBC story regarding research on the people downloading music. It backs the noticeable trend of music being less appreciated. It says the high accessibility has reduced music to a commodity. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/4599340.stm

"With the advent of the internet and MP3 players, which play downloaded material, music has become a soundtrack to everyday life, rather than something life-changing and special," said Dr. North, University of Leicester researcher.

I'm probably just the latest critic to say a majority of contemporary music is formulaic banal rubbish. Surely a minority of people from every generation have said so, but truly, music is more commercialized than ever. Give me something creative, don't market to my demographic. Sadly, a vast number of people passively let their taste conform to whatever is fed to them. This effect is present in all forms of media, so it is very relevant.

The next time you buy music, books, or even magazines, ask yourself: Do I want this because I appreciate it or because I'm a consumer?
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"I would love for more people to listen to music as a sole activity. I think it’s a really transformative way that that art form can touch you. Aside from live music, which I think is really important to being human—to be a part of a crowd experiencing music—recorded music is like literature when you allow yourself to sit and listen. I mean, you know. That’s all you did when you were growing up; that’s all you needed to do. You found friends that could sit and be quiet and not f—in’ ruin it; those were your friends, you know? If somebody couldn’t do that, you couldn’t hang out with them. I don’t care how cool they were; they were not cool," Jeff Tweedy of Wilco (Paste Magazine) http://www.pastemagazine.com/action/article?article_id=2421&page=4

lucky findings

I don't think I have collected anything since I was about 10 (rocks oddly enough). I do have neat little box filled with foreign coins, but I don't count that because if they fit in a coin operated washing machine I would no longer have them. I think I am on my way to a new collection: assorted media (books, records, cd's etc.). It must have started with a stolen book. In a vacant classroom last year I noticed a bookshelf with a nice looking, but worn, harcover copy of Great Expectations. I knew I had to take it when I saw it. If I didn't it may never be read again. It's the only thing I can ever remember stealing, and I don't feel guilty about it.

I found myself in a used bookstore looking for nothing specific and came across the complete collection of Edgar Allen Poe's short stories, in a pretty hardcover printed in the 60's. This is October (the best month for Poe I must say), so I had to have the book (don't give me that look, I paid for it). Later that day on one of my rare trips to Walmart (The store I hate), I came across Monty Python's The Life of Brian selling for $7.50. It was well worth it. I'm going record shopping in Springfield tomorrow. I hope my luck holds out.

On the self image presentation and discussion

I don’t recall ever pondering over my own self image. Self image is a topic essential to daily life, although frequently overlooked.

Upon being presented with the challenge of kicking off our class’s semester-long intensive look at self image, I felt a bit uninterested in the chosen topic. I didn’t know what we would talk about, and I was in the first group. As time came closer to present I realized that it actually was a blessing to go first. We had a blank canvas. We could start the topic in a way we would like to see it go.

I previously viewed self image as a one dimensional subject of its own, but in presenting the topic I had to realize that it is a central psychological concept influencing self identity and all social interaction. Essentially, every person is whatever he perceives himself to be. The difficulty in presenting wasn’t to repeat what I had thought about. The challenge was trying to make everyone else think it through for himself. I liked when our group led the discussion because I felt like we helped everyone become a little more involved in speaking about how self image affects things such as friend and family trust, self confidence and eating disorders.

After seeing how the significant the topic is and how the class is reacting in discussion, I’m more interested in the topic and how others in the class perceive it also. I look forward to branching out more into the subtopics and taking the discussion further as the presentations progress.

This is fun.

The gizooglizer is really fun. Thanks for enlightening us Dr. Martinek. Go to www.gizoogle.com and go to the textilizer link to translate. Listen to what Dr. Klute said on her blog (translated).

"For tha purposes of clarificizzles n edifizzle allow me ta offa some perspectizzles or definizzles W-H-to-tha-izzich should influence current n future honors scholars. Dr. Martinek n I often rap `bout students, just as we is aware you rap `bout us n yo brotha professors . Im a bad boy wit a lotta hos."

-Dr. Klute

Would somebody in Eng 111 please translate their ARP before turning it in? please...for me.

-tim