Hong Kong(crete)'s Crowded Streets

{The "glitter" that I woke up to everyday during my first week in Hong Kong}

My first week in Hong Kong was... difficult, to say the least. The first couple of nights were sleepless ones where I found myself quietly crying as my thoughts often wandered back to my family and friends back home in Canada. I was feeling quite homesick, and there was nothing that my fiancé (who I moved here with) could say or do, as much as he tried, to make the sadness go away. It was hard to adjust to life here, especially since we arrived without some essentials that I was so used to having back in Ottawa: working cellphones with data, access to wifi at home (the apartment we stayed in did not have internet), a well-stocked fridge, cable for the television, etc... It seems like I am whining (talk about first world problems...), but those missing things only emphasised the fact that I was no longer at home. I felt no comfort being so far away from everything and everyone that I knew and held dear to me. Add to all of this the extreme heat/humidity (I do not do well in heat), and you've got an often teary-eyed and cranky Canadian feeling lost in Hong Kong(crete). 

I first came upon the term "Hong Kongcrete" while reading more about my new home. My "research" (yep, I Wiki'ed it) brought me upon the following phrase: The traveller weary of its crowded streets may be tempted to describe it as Hong Kongcrete.  Within a couple of days, I was definitely weary of the crowds. I would describe myself as a very fast-paced walker (get outta my way!) but found it quite challenging (re: impossible) to keep my usual lightning-speed pace when met with throngs of people in the streets. It was with my own experience walking around Mong Kok (the most densely populated area in Hong Kong) that I truly understood the name "Hong Kongcrete".

Although I am admittedly still not a fan of the crowds, there was that bit of glitter in Hong Kong that made all of my frustrations about living here seem so futile (see picture above). The view that I had the privilege of waking up to everyday during my first week as a resident of the Pearl of the Orient was the glitter that made me feel that everything is going to be okay. The view had a calming effect which helped to remind me that my fiancé and I will be moving into our own apartment soon enough, where we will be able to stock the fridge (finally! so I can start cooking!), be able to stop living out of our suitcases (it's the worst), and officially settle in to our new routines (we are both Master's students). There is hope that I will make it through the heat (winter has to come around at some point, right?) and I know that I will just become another person in the crowds that I so loathed, at first - a bonafide resident of Hong Kong, my new home.