End of Week 1

Thursday morning I surprisingly knew all of the vocabulary that had been out of reach in my panic the night before. I had my first 3 hour long chemistry lab session at eight. Turns out I ended up with a T.A. (Rika) who can't get out a coherent sentence. I'm not sure if she had an accent or a speech impediment, but it kind of sounded like she was talking through a mouthful of marshmallows. When one student asked her whether we turn in assignments to her or the professor she felt the matter was cleared up (after several minutes of confused conversation) when she stated that she was not Professor Exon then turned away to help someone else. The student who asked the question stood dumbfounded for several minutes before slowly returning to his work. Rika then attempted to show us how to light a Bunsen burner but only succeeded in filling the room with methane. The lab lasted less than 30 min so I got out 2 hours early.

I spent my extra time sitting outside the chemistry building people-watching and making sure I knew my Korean vocab. Across the street a student showed up with a "Free Hug" sign and across from him stood an older gentleman wearing a "Trust Jesus Christ" sandwich board handing out pamphlets. Sadly neither seemed to be getting much business. Once I was in chemistry I figured out that the class is going to be a review of the past 3 years. At least all of the homework will be easy, but lectures are pretty boring when there is no hope of actually gaining any new information. I heard mention on the streets of an honors chem class. I wish I had known about it earlier because it sounds like it could be a little more interesting.

When I turned in my homework in Korean the instructor said I was smart and gave me a pen (because I was the only one that had put spaces between the words for the writing assignment). My quiz didn't go to bad. It turned out I had studied the wrong list of words, but I still knew most of the words from the correct list.

On my way to swimming I realized that an unfortunate side-effect of once again wearing a backpack is that the weight seems to have caused me to shrink several inches. My pants now drag along the ground resulting in a very annoying scratching sound with every step. Turns out swimming makes me want to kill myself (which the workout nearly accomplished on its own). We had a sub and before we were even half-way through the class I was worried about not having enough strength/energy to prevent myself from drowning and I had been asked by the teacher to move to a slower lane. It was quite demoralizing, but I pushed on and made it through without requiring CPR or lifeguard assistance (though I think the lifeguard was keeping an eye on me due to my gasping and sputtering). When the regular teacher returned for the class on Tuesday we were informed that the sub had thought we were a different class and had administered a workout much more difficult than anything we would ever have to do again (a fact that several students would sadly never know seeing as they had withdrawn immediately after the first class).

Once classes were done I went to hang out with my new friends. We went to dinner, got free cake and watched the Boondock Saints. It was a nice relaxing way to wind down from a busy day (and I wasn't even attacked by shadowy figures on the way back to my apartment).