Kate Bailey Tonkin reflects on finding calm in the unpredictability of life abroad.
Hong Kong has a funny way of reminding you that control is mostly an illusion. Sometimes that reminder arrives in the form of a typhoon – Typhoon Ragasa, as it was this month – the strongest storm on the planet this year, with hurricane-force winds that shook my student accommodation building. Other times, it’s quieter: a fever that won’t break, a call that ends a long-distance relationship, or a quiz you realise you forgot to study for. The city hums on regardless, neon lights flickering through the rain, as if to say: I’m still here.
In the past few weeks, I’ve learned that surviving abroad isn’t about constant discovery so much as endurance. Mid-Autumn lanterns sway above my head in the streets, and friends gather along Victoria Harbour to watch the National Day fireworks. I find myself watching from the edge – intrigued, but slightly outside of it all.
When I first arrived, everything was novel: buzzing rooftop bars, journeys on the MTR – Hong Kong’s subway – that actually went somewhere (unlike some other subways I know…), and Instagram group chats constantly lighting up my phone with new names and plans. Now, a few weeks in, the pace has changed. Social life on exchange comes in waves – rushing, then receding. The initial buzz of a new place slowly fades into something quieter and lonelier, and there’s a realisation that life abroad isn’t an escape from life itself. I told my mum on the phone one night that for the first time in my life, I truly understood that wherever I went, there I was.
Illness arrived soon after that: a fever that left me hallucinating that the curtains were moving in two different A&E waiting rooms in the space of 48 hours. The first hospital felt like an NHS fever dream (almost literally); the second, a private one where the hospital was cleaner, calmer, and significantly more expensive. Everything was a blur of paperwork, insurance, and tests until I was finally diagnosed with a strep infection and scarlet fever — the kind of ailment you assume is reserved for frail Victorian children. It really stripped away whatever glamour being abroad is supposed to have, leaving behind exhaustion and the yearning for someone who knows how to make you feel better when you’re not okay.
Hong Kong doesn’t slow down for you, or in fact for anyone. It’s fast, dense, and unapologetic, and in some ways, that’s actually comforting. You learn to keep up with the aunties rushing for the MTR escalators, to find the quiet benches in the park, to let things — or people — go. I’ve started noticing the slower rhythms beneath the chaos: the old men doing tai chi in playgrounds at midnight, the stillness of the university library broken only by the click-clack of keys, the way rain sounds against the air-con units outside my window. These moments keep me grounded when the rest of life feels almost untranslatable.
Midterms are rolling in like another kind of storm — the kind you can’t shelter from this time. I’ve been studying mostly in my room, watching the sun drape itself lazily across the hills outside over the course of the day. Academic life here can be intense, especially in deadline season. There’s no room for excuses; you either keep up, or you fall behind. But somewhere between the hundreds of pages of reading, I’ve found a sense of calm — a routine, even a kind of familiarity. Some days in Hong Kong, I still feel like a tourist in my own life, an outsider; others, I forget I’m not from here at all.
When the typhoon passed, the city dried off in a day. Fallen trees were cleared from the roads, street vendors reopened their stalls, and the air smelled fresh. I came to Hong Kong expecting to learn about a new country, but instead, I’m learning how to live with uncertainty and how to start again in a place that sometimes feels like it moves more quickly than you can keep up with. Maybe that’s the real lesson of studying abroad: you don’t come back with stories of constant adventure. You come back having weathered something bigger than yourself.
