Thursday, August 18, 2005

I am here...

When i just reached here, i was in disbelief... Couldn't believe i finally made it here, after struggling through the whole process of application and scholarship application and then the actual loooooooong journey across half the globe!

Even after being here for 3 days, the fact "i've reached cornell, a university in USA" hasn't exactly sinked in yet still..

Everything is moving slowly right now... well, this pre-orientation is really meant for us to settle down and overcome jet lag so the programme lineup is not very hiong yet... back in the dorm, i have been doing everything leisurely... picking clothes, sorting clothes into "to be washed" and "to be worn again", bathing, packing (or rather unpacking as well), laundry (err... up to now still postponing it though :P).... well, all the misc stuff... i dunno if it's just tt i dun have motivation to do it faster, or it's really my max speed. if it's the latter, i'm gonna get so screwed when the term actually starts! :S

and because school hasn't really started, i still dun have the feeling tt i have entered a university already! i have been walking ard the campus these few days, admiring and gasping at all the pretty gothic buildings and busy snapping pictures of them! i mean, i feel more like a tourist than a student of this uni lor! hahaha... which is just not right, yeah? :P

Also because this is an orientation program for international students, i have been mixing/seeing koreans, hongkongers, thais etc instead of americans, and i am getting used to it already... Just happened to see a huge group of americans whom i gather are freshmen on another concurrent pre-orientation program today while i was walking... Looking at the sheer number of caucasians who passed by me, i suddenly realised i am in america! i am in an american university! at tt instant, i pictured the prospect of mixing with so many of these caucasians and i worried of the difficulty. oh well, that will come later...

right now, even among this group of 150 international students who participated in the same pre-orientation as me, i could feel i am still reserved about breaking out of my comfort zone. let's just say that motivation and ability is dependent on my remaining energy level. so in the day, i feel i am more proactive in saying hi to new faces; once it gets to the afternoon, fatigue and sianness sets in and i feel lazy and tired to talk to new ppl already. sometimes i think i am so lousy: i came all the way here and yet i am not trying to leave my comfort zone. i have to make a conscious effort to remind myself to be more thick-skinned to go up to new ppl to intro myself. well, it still works... but yet, it is still not a "natural" process for me yet... sighz...

but really, it's so easy to stick with singaporeans... most of us basically just click! bearing in mind tt most of them are guys, i can talk to most of these singaporeans comfortably, hang out with them, joke around with them, and even talking about renting houses next yr like hello on our 3rd day in ithaca! unlike with new friends of other nationalities, where conversations basically end after name, country, college, major are exchanged, and then, names will be forgotten. :P oh well... similar backgrounds and cultures make a big difference, really. who else can understand when i say "sian ah!" or "kena sabo"? i guess, familiarity is the order of the day, huh? it's such a natural instinct in human beings to go with familiarity, after all, "zuo sheng bu ru zuo shu". :)

* 1:03 AM