Residential College

I've been assigned to Morningside College!

I'm really happy about this because I requested Morningside as my residential college (on the college request form we all had to fill out). There were several reasons for this.

#1: Having only being completed in 2010, Morningside is the newest college. It has the newest facilities. It has the newest bathrooms. Enough said.
#2: The Master of the College is a Nobel laureate. It seems to be quite an academic college, and seeing as I'm there to study, this vibe should help keep me on the straight and narrow.
#3: One of the resident tutors is an ethnomusicologist. Enough said. (OK, maybe not enough said, but in my experience ethnomusicologists are never boring. Tal Kravitz's guest lecture at my university last year was brilliant and brilliantly funny. e.g. when an audience member tried to play the theramin, he comments "Its like making love to Shostakovich"). The other resident tutors seem really cool too.
#4: The college insists on mandatory participation in three communal dinners per week. Now this might sound like a drawback but I think it is a bonus. Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday nights (school nights) I don't have to think about cooking, and I have recently found out that there are vegetarian options available for every meal. I also like the chance of having a meal with someone you might not otherwise talk to, and no doubt there will be no shortage of interesting dinner conversation!

I am yet to find many pictures of the dorms at Morningside, seeing as most of the blogs of the international students I have found were living in the I-House.

and #5: I don't have to walk up these stairs every moring, as Morningside is closer to the main campus.

Money

Scholarship money received!!!
That's all.

How To Complete The Documents For A Semester-Long Exchange Program IN TWO DAYS

The dreaded checklist.

I had five working days to get all these forms returned to HK. Australia Post Express Courier International Prepaid envelopes take 2-4 working days to arrive, and you can track the progress of your mail. It only took 2 days for my forms to arrive in HK, and the envelope cost a little over $40. This page has more info about Express Courier International products. Hopefully the notes below will help other students prepare their CUHK documents in the day or two you have before they must be sent!

Note #1
For Australian readers, the photo required for your Hong Kong Student Visa IS A DIFFERENT SIZE to our regular passport size photos. Unless you want to risk your visa being delayed (not good when it is less than four weeks from your start date and you have been advised that a visa takes 6-8 weeks to process) then go to a photographer. In Adelaide, the lovely people at Camera House in the Central Markets know what they are doing. (Did you know that for an Indian Visa/passport they require a 5cm x 5cm square photo? The people at Camera House did!)

Note #2
The Health History form. Ugh. I was not comfortable with some of the questions (specifically ones asking about my menstruation cycle! Just... ew) so the people at Adelaide Abroad asked CUHK if it was OK to not answer some of the questions. CUHK replied that the information on the form was only for the physicians at the University Health Services. I am yet to go to a doctor's surgery for the first time and NOT be made to fill in a medical form on the spot, so for me, I feel more comfortable disclosing things on the day rather than have them on file.

Note #3
Payment. Point 6 of the form declares:

Check with your bank and open a foreign currency (Hong Kong Dollar) bank account that can be linked with your credit card payment, if necessary.

This is NOT necessary for pretty much all Australian credit cards/Visa Debit/Mastercard Debit. Normally your bank just changes you a small conversion fee (normally a percentage of the total transaction e.g. 4%) when you pay for goods in a foreign currency. If unsure, just go in to a branch and check with them.

Good luck to all future CUHK IASP exchange students! After this process I think we should all be recognised with a bachelors degree in paperwork. Yes?