Sofie Jakobsson Exchange at HKBU Fall Semester 2016

Exchange Report – Baptist University

During the fall semester 2016 I studied abroad in Hong Kong, at Hong Kong Baptist University. Hong Kong was my first choice since I had been abroad once before, in and I loved studying in Asia. Moreover, I had been to Hong Kong twice before and I liked the pulse and the contrasts, from high skyscrapers to beautiful nature easily accessed by the MTR. When I got accepted to HKBU the student coordinators quickly contacted me and they provided me with information regarding the application process and housing, they also assisted in applying for a student visa and everything was well arranged by HKBU.

Campus/housing information I was lucky to get housing on campus, there are four different student residence halls with different “themes” located in two towers on the campus area. I lived in Cai hall and I do NOT recommend that. If you don’t choose a hall yourself, you get assigned to any of the halls and I regret that I did not do research before I applied to the halls. Cai is the “social” hall so all the local students stayed up every single night, screaming and playing loud music which made it difficult for us exchange students to sleep at night. I had friends living in the other halls and they did not have the same problem, I think Zhou hall is the calmest one. The room I stayed in was 16m2 and I shared the room with another exchange student. It was fine but do not expect anything fancy. The kitchen was a mess but since food is cheap we ate all of our meals out anyways so it did not matter that much.

First days in HK When I landed in Hong Kong, some exchange coordinators picked me and some other exchange students up and drove us to school and later that day they brought us to a mall to buy bed linen and other necessary stuff. The first couple of weeks we had orientation days where we got to meet all other exchange students, do some sightseeing and we got a lot of information regarding how to pick courses etc. We had applied for courses before we arrived in Hong Kong but the first couple of weeks there was an “add/drop” period where we were allowed to change courses. I took a beginners class in mandarin and my teacher Fiona was great, however I had studied mandarin before and some exchange students dropped the course because we had assignments every week. I also took public speaking, applied social psychology in organisations and social communication. I do NOT recommend applied social psychology, we had loads of assignments and the teacher was a bit unfair and sometimes mean.

Sofie Jakobsson Exchange at HKBU Fall Semester 2016

Things to do in Hong Kong One of the best things with studying in Hong Kong is the proximity to other countries and I travelled a lot during the semester. I went to Singapore, Thailand, , Taiwan, The Philippines, Cambodia, Vietnam and Japan and I can highly recommend going to Japan (Tokyo). My schedule was great for travelling – I only had classes Monday-Wednesday and could travel Wednesday-Sunday. When I wasn’t travelling or studying, I explored Hong Kong with my friends and we did a lot of hikes, the nature in Hong Kong is amazing and some of the hikes we did are Dragon’s back, the infinity pool hike and a waterfall hike in Sai Kung. On Wednesdays it is ladies night and free drinks for girls, and on weekends we mostly partied in LKF. One Wednesday nights it is often horse racing at Happy Valley Racecourse too and it is so much fun even if you do not like horses.

Food When it comes to food, it is cheap to eat on campus but the food isn’t the best in the canteen close to the residence halls, neither in the canteen on the fifth floor in the AAB building. On campus me and my friends mostly ate at , Pacific ( chain) or at the old campus where there is a really good fast food chain called Ebeneezers where you can buy wraps, pizza, Indian food, falafel etc. for 30-40sek. Off campus we often ate at Sushi One, which is a sushi chain with the best sushi ever, and half the price of the sushi after 6pm. We ate a lot of dim sum also at One Dim Sum located in Prince Edward, and , the world’s cheapest Michelin restaurant. When we missed western food we often went to Cali-Mex for tacos, or IKEA.

Weather When we came to Hong Kong in August the weather was really hot but we had rain every day for about three weeks. After that, we had sunny warm weather almost the whole semester with temperatures around 30 degrees September and October, 25 degrees in November and 20-25 degrees in December. Although it is warm outside, it is always freezing inside and I always brought a sweater to class.

To sum up, I had an amazing semester abroad and I am really glad that I chose HK!

If you have any questions, feel free to contact me on [email protected]