Quickie of the day

A quick re-cap of some of my thoughts and experiences from my first day of orientation at school:

Today was an orientation specifically for international students. To be honest, the first thought that crossed my mind….”SO MANY WHITE PEOPLE”. It’s true. There weren’t that many people of colour at all. Maybe if you’re a caucasian person you might think it is a strange thing to notice, but as a non white person, it’s definitely something that I’ve always immediately noticed. But that topic is for another blog post. Nonetheless, there are ALOT of international students from all over the word! Over 200!

We were received with a mini feast of fresh fruit juices, yogurt, cookies, fruit, and a lot more. During our mini-tour of campus, I noticed there are a lot of facilities that are open for student use. Cool! We can take all sorts of classes for free,  like spinning, and salsa, and guitar. My skill level is going to be like level 1000 by the time I finish here let me tell you.

Also during the mini tour, we were told that there are these mini multi-connected golf carts that can pick you up and take you to different places. It’s like those things you ride when you get a tour of Hollywood studios [I’ve never been on any of those Hollywood tours, but  whatever ok]. I wish UBC had something like that, as TEC is considered big, but you still need to walk quite a bit at UBC too! I am lazy, what can I say. Not only are there these mini open air busses, there are bikes that you can use as you wish. There are no locks on anything on these bikes and I thought that was strange because wouldn’t they be stolen in like a week? Well, this is the interesting part:

Are you ready? Wait for it…..

Anybody who wants to enter onto or leave the campus needs a keypass. The school in it’s entirety is gated off from the general public.  The school is a private school, so there are a few things like that that are just new to me. Another example: there are random anti-doping tests taken at school. Medical officers will drop by random classrooms at random times and you need to be tested to see if there are any illegal drugs in your system. If there are…there are definitely consequences. Different right?

Anyways, I am exhausted, and it’s a 35min walk to get to school so I’m off to bed. Hopefully soon I will tell you more about my host family, and the living situation at home, which by the way, has been going very well so far.

Thanks for reading!

Yours truly

Saki