Day 1 of Classes

I’m in my room when I hear some sort of chanting/screaming outside my door. I’m pretty confused until they knock on my door and fill me in; their chants are to gain support for some sort of hostel council.  Only one group is running, though… Apparently, if they don’t get enough votes than the previous year’s council has to come back. One of the girls informed me that they will be giving out free food everyday for breakfast, so I’m pretty excited about that. I was also able to try some tofu soup that they were giving out, which was surprisingly sweet and delicious!

I would like to point out that the other girls gave the peace signs first, and I followed suit.

I had my first day of classes today. I was frustrated when the tutor (what we would call a TA) was speaking in Cantonese to one of my classes. If the class says it will be taught in English only, I think that it should be taught in English only. International kids are at a disadvantage so I really find it unfair. I was also surprised when I asked one of my engineering professors a question. It was a simple question about the time a building would close, yet it was extremely difficult to convey what I was asking. Even if canteen (cafeteria) workers can’t speak English well, I expected professors to be fluent. Other than that, I don’t have much to say about my actual classes yet since I have no idea what I’m going to end up taking. A past Notre Dame student who went here told me that it’s comical how much the students are in the library. Evidently, they even nap there. Needless to say I’m trying to enroll in as few engineering as possible (two). Ideally, I’ll end up with classes only on Monday through Wednesday so that I can travel more as well.

I also continue to learn that everything here is Sara sized. The desks in the lecture for one of my engineering classes were tiny. Any type of athlete at a normal American college would have great difficulty fitting in them. This is just like the buses that we take everywhere; for the same size bus as an American coach, instead of 2 seats on each side of the aisle, there are 2 seats on 1 side and 3 seats on the other. Normal sized guys have to squeeze into the seats. Thank goodness I’m a small asian.