I arrived Wednesday night and my housemate Kristina picked me up from the airport, and this was the first time I had seen here since we met in March at the interview at Brandeis and it was sooo good to see her again. We drove around (getting a little lost here an there) saw davis square and Waltham and by the time we got home, we were so hot- it was in the 90s or so, so we decided to get fans at the 24 hr CVS. Our first investment for our apartment!
Then we hung out on Thursday getting groceries, new beds since our apt is unfurnished and running around getting to know the area. Kristina is from San Diego and did a cross country trip with her older brother from NYC who is an actor and they had a blast in the car, which I am super glad especially since she has it with her now and it makes life that much easier. Then we met up at a mexican (I know its hard to compare to CA mexican food but it wasn't horrible I suppose) place called Margaritas for dinner with some Americans in our program- John, Travis, and Lauren. They are great and surprisingly there are already about 6 people from CA in the program out of about 25 Americans while the other 80 or so are International.
Then orientation began on Friday and we met everyone in the morning and took our lovely student ID card pics- its soooo good to be a student again, I just missed that. We had a welcome speech by the founder and director of the program Larry Simon who is an awesome older jewish gentleman (yes, Brandeis is historically jewish but the graduate school program at the Heller school is nonsecular and actually a lot of people are muslim in it!). He gave some great advice and guidance for this upcoming year and each day my goals and work path motivation are renewed being with such likeminded people! Everyone in the program- people from Ghana, Jamaica, the Congo and Gambia, the Phiipines, Cambodia, Uzbekistan, Mexico, Vietnam, the US, and India are so interesting, just to be surrounded by such great cultures and people- it will be hard to get to know everyone but I definitely want to. It's natural for me to group together with all too similar individuals so I look forward to branching out and learning as much as I can about other people.
The second day of orientation was good too. We did an NGO creation project based on my groups skills (there is going to be a ton of group work in the next year since development is so much about relationships and working together) and then we also did a case study analysis of a development project and are getting into some good surface level issues this week. We met our Advisors and also were spoken to by second year students in the SID (Sustainable International Development program- my program) about advice for this year and they were a funny, close, corky group which made me look forward to growing and learning with my classmates- who range from me, most likely the youngest, to 45 or so in age.
Tonight we have a program party with teh second years full of fun and dancing and chatting where everyone will be wearing their traditional dress- which for me is jeans and a shirt and a bunch of jewelry!
Classes start the 26th and thats when it all begins!!!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment