Orientation Day!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

    It's orientation day!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I was so much looking forward to new international student orientation in UCD for the past few days. I really wanted to meet other international students and to have some fun together. However, I didn't sleep quite well the night before partly because I was pretty excited about it and partly because I actually took a long catnap that afternoon.

    It turned out that this morning I slept in and missed the first bus to school. And in fact, I told Taimour that I would wake him up at 6.30 a.m. yesterday, but I was embarassed that it was him that woke me up at 7:10 a.m.  So, I have to say my day did not get off to a good start. Yet, everything seemed to go smoothly for the rest of the day. We took the second bus to the campus, and were only ten minutes late to the event, which started at 8:00.Then, we had our breakfast before the school building, 1100 Social Sciences and Humanities. We enjoyed some brownies with a cup of black coffee. At the same time, I got to know many international students; most of them come from China, some from Hong Kong, one from Malaysia(Juin), and interestingly enough, we talked in Chinese for a while.

     The next session began at 9:00. We went into an auditorium and sat there for almost 10 hours, with only a lunch break at noon and snack break later in the afternoon.I learned important information about immigration and visa regulations as well as SISS services. Furthermore, I was much better acquainted with the educational and cultural environment at UC Davis, the town of Davis. BTW, in the end, I made some friends, and among them are Ryo(Japanese) and Marceus (Dutch), with whom I spent some more time chatting. We sort of exchanged our contact information and then we said good-bye.

This picture is taken in the beginning of the orientation. I think the man is the EAP (Education Abroad Program) coordinator...but not quite sure about it... sorry, I wasn't attentive to his introduction.. He welcomed us to UCD, as other speakers later would do, so we were like welcomed more than ten times. He asked us to stand and accept the applause from other students if the slide showed the flag of our country. Lots of people come from China, making up more than sixty percent of the international students there. However, there is only one Pakistan, and that would be my housemate. Cool? Also, there is only one Malaysian (the one I met at breakfast) and one Rwandan. If I remember, there were students from more than 40 countries in the world.

    We're lining up to get pepperoni pizza and some what-ever-it-is pizza for lunch. But  It didn't take long really.

This is another session in the afternoon.She was introducing on- and off-campus internship to us.

The man sitting next to me would be my Japanese friend, Ryo. (深澤亮) He is from Tohoko University in Hoshu. He is going to stay in Davis for two quarters. He is a fourth-year Chemistry major. I was quite shocked when he spoke Chinese. He told me back in Japanese, some professor would deliver their lectures in Chinese. And that probably explains it.

Ryo was teaching Japanese to Taimour and me, and Taimour taught us Urdu, which is the official language of Pakistan. We had some fun time together.