10/1/18 – Realizing Relationships

Today was particularly jam-packed, all with good things. Our lecture on Hong Kong’s political system was interesting and informative, and afterwards we had our discussion over a huge table of dim sum at Lingnan’s Chinese restaurant. Not only was the food delicious (the pork buns might have been the best thing I’ve eaten in this country to date, but maybe I was just hungry), but the company was as well. I felt like for the first time the Williams and Lingnan students were able to really click as a big singular group. We flowed smoothly between eating, joking, and talking about the lecture, and the vibe felt much more like a group of friends enjoying a meal together than two groups of students completing an assignment. With every day, it gets easier to talk with the Lingnan students, and I find myself not only having more fun, but learning more about them as people and, through them, about Hong Kong as a city. While I don’t want to discount the many meaningful one-on-one and small-group interactions that have taken place in the last week between the Americans and the Chinese, I was still pleased with the way we meshed as an entire group over lunch today. The afternoon only brought more of the same, as the 8 Williams students and Professor Yu explored a bunch of places around the New Territories, from a traditional Hakka walled village to the gorgeous Hong Kong Wetland Park, and ate dinner at a top-notch Shanghainese restaurant in Yuen Long. Not only was I happy to start branching out in terms of our cuisine, I also felt that our Williams group really began to form those sorts of bonds that only shared travel can foster. Creating strong personal connections with people from different backgrounds (such as people from different countries, obviously, but also fellow Williams students with different experiences and outlooks) is one of the most, if not the most, rewarding parts of travel for me, and so I was extremely pleased that today seemed to mark a milestone in that development.