My First Day of School

While you all were sleeping, I was at school. I had two classes today: Technology & World Change and Malay Language. I think both are going to be good classes.

In TWC (like all classes at SMU) we have to do group work, except in this class the professor made us draw numbers so we were randomly assigned groups. This was good news for me because that way I didn't have that awkward "Can I be in your group?" issue. In any case, my group consists of me and 4 guys. All four of them are very kind and friendly, and seemingly laid back. I learned today that boys in universities are older than the girls because boys have to do 2 and half years of compulsory military service right after high school. So all the guys in the group are (I think) 22 to 23 years old, so they are a little more mature. I think it will be a good group; I just definitely stand out. Hah, me and 4 Asian boys. Not to mention we drew the topic "Nanotechnology" for our project, but the boys want to change it to "Weapons Technology" - which makes me find the situation even more amusing.

In Malay, I think my name was the first name my professor learned. He's a crazy old man that kept talking about how he's 60 years old. He kept singling me out, but not in a critical or negative way. He just cracks a lot of jokes and enjoys making class fun. I think he's going to be a good language teacher, because he does his best to relate things to other languages; like when he was describing adjective placement (as in, adjectives after nouns, not nouns after adjective like in English) he was like "Ok, Jordan, do you know Spanish? (YES! This is something I can talk about!!!) Ok so using the example 'White House' tell us how to say 'house' (casa!!!!) ok and how do you say 'white' (blanca!!!!!). Ok class so you see, Spanish is like Malay - adjective after the noun." He also gets everyone in the class to speak and answer questions, which is so critical to being a good teacher. Anyways, he's jovial and fun, so I knew he wasn't being malicious when he called me out one time and said "Now Jordan, just because you're a foreigner doesn't mean I have to pass you" and he proceeded to tell a story about a French student last term that only answered 2 questions on the final correctly and then complained about not passing. So, I have to at least try in this class (yeah, right, like that was going to be a problem...I might have the freedom to play but I'm too much of a perfectionist to not try to do well...and besides it's a language class and I really like those).

And, finally, at the end of a long day of class (each class was 3 hours long!) I went across the street to the food court and had fried carrot cake (nothing like the carrot cake that we eat in the US) for dinner, as well as some fresh, blended-before-my-very-eyes kiwi juice. Except it was only after I drank the whole glass that I remembered what eating more than one kiwi at a time does to my digestive track.....hmm, at least I have a room to myself....

Over and out, it's monsooning outside.