U Dub

Hello from Seattle! After an 12-hour flight, I finally got into the dorm room of McMahon Hall. I managed to pack all my stuff into the big green suitcase at 2am, 10 hours before my flight. After a three-hour nap, I went down to the bus stop nearby to meet Ryan, who would be traveling with me. My home is only 90 minutes away from the Airport, so I don't see the point why I had to go there so early. But the people from Chung Chi College required us to be there before 8:45am, so whatever you say, Chung Chi. After 4 hours of painful wait, we finally got on board!

I am a man of steel, mentally speaking. I could still function without 3 days of sleep, I have a couple highschool folks to prove that: we played Left 4 Dead 2 for 3 days last week, right after my last day in ASM. And then I even went straight to HKUST (only 15 minutes away from my home!) to attend the Google Tech Camp, which was a 5-day program. I finally got some sleep when my whole family got back from Korea on Wednesday and Mom threatened to kill me if I didn't turn off my laptop and get in bed. Therefore, for the 12 hours on the plane, I only napped for like an hour and a half. I tried to keep my eyes shut, but I just couldn't fall asleep. I ended up listening to music and watching movies (The Imitation Game, Big Hero 6 and 22 Jump Street). Sing Sing, another CUHK student I was going along with, was sitting in the the window seat next to me. Thank god I wasn't sitting next to some weirdo. At around 12:40am, I finally landed on the Seattle–Tacoma International Airport. Carmen's parents told me the people would check all my belongings and even require me to take off my shoes. But none of that happened. Nevermind. Before we could realize, the ten of us (including a professor) were squeezing into the small shuttle bus and on my way to UW!

We got to McMahon Hall at 12:00pm. After getting our meal cards and room keys, we went straight to our dorm rooms and drop our stuff. Chester was my roommate. It is quite nice to have someone you've known for 12 hours as your new roommie. And when we thought we could take a rest, I found out the wifi wasn't working in our dorm rooms. We went down and asked the girl in the reception about that, and she told us it was a known issue, we had to use Ethernet cables to connect our laptops to the wall for internet. The only place we could get wifi is the lobby. Damn! After chatting with my parents for a bit and getting some vegetarian advice from Indy, and informing Carmen of my arrival (I had been refusing to tell her when I would be here), the boys from CUHK started their first quest in USA. We walked for 10 minutes to the UW Bookstore with the instruction the girl gave us. It was quite sunny outside, but it was cool! I really like it. After buying the cables, we hurried back to our dorm rooms to sort out our internet problem.

This is where I live now!

The UW Bookstore, where we bought the cables

After a while, we all were kinda hungry. So we went out for food. We went to a burger restaurant called EJ Burgers, and had our first real-deal-American meal. I ordered a Texas Burger and some French fries. I swear I thought the food was only like McDonald's, but bigger. Turned out it was much bigger! We all were kinda worried how much weight we are gonna gain these 2 months.

The place where we are having our first meal!

The menu

The Texas Burger and French Fries I got

Then we checked out that $1 Dollar Store and bought some stuff.

We got back to our dorm rooms at about 5pm, and we finally had the rest we deserved. Chester woke me up at midnight and said he was going for a run. I kinda promised him I would go with him when we were having the jumbo burgers. But well, laziness got me. Since I was awake anyway, I chatted with my parents again, and Mom, once again, threatened me to go to bed. Ha, you wish! When Chester came back, we had our first bonding activity and played PES2015 'til 4am. He finally gave in and fell asleep, when I started writing this blag.