The International Orientation Week was an interesting one...
The week mainly consisted of group meetings and information sessions - hence helping us international students get settled.
In our smaller groups I got split up from the Scottish girls and the other people I had already met. I was put in the 'Tornadoes' group! One of the other girls I met was in the 'Stairs' group..."This can't be a real group," she joked. We laughed...it did seem like a bit of a weird concept. Everyone else was in groups that were named in reference to Kansas and KU. It was like they had ran out of more obvious references like 'Tornadoes' and 'Jayhawks' that they came up with 'Steps'. Turns out though...KU does have a lot of stairs! Kansas is a pretty flat state, but they decide to build the University of Kansas on a hill so you have to walk up and down hills to get to classes. Convenient.
The good thing about the hills though were the views! You could see almost the whole university from the Hashinger Halls of residence. Beautiful place.
However, the hills were a bit of a nuisance when walking around campus in 100F heat. Which we did when we had our first official Campus Tour. I met a girl from Ghana who was really nice. She had lived in the States for a couple of years and so her English was perfect - although she did have difficulty understanding me with the accent and everything. Nearly most of my group had difficulty understanding me as they were mainly Asian. The tour was cool was absolutely exhausting with the heat and the hills! Hill yes...it was.
Then I had my first visit to the Kansas Union for an intro-meeting. I could not believe it was a student's union. Not only did it have five floors - it had a bowling alley, food court with a pizza hut, its own bookstore, a newsagent, smoothie place (which I went to a lot), coffee shop and then lots of conference/meeting rooms. I could not believe it! Stirling Union has a couple of pubs, restaurant and...that's about it I think.
The introduction meeting was rather interesting...they did the obvious stuff and explained the orientation week etc. But then they asked us all to stand up when our country was called out...I was curious whether they would say Scotland or Britain, but it turns out they divided all the British countries. There were tons of students from China. England had a good few. One girl from Ireland and one girl from Sweden. As soon as they called out Scotland I stood up like the proud Scot I am...it turned out there was only four of us - me and the girls I had already met. Then the KU Student Volunteers sang the Rock Chalk Chant...I think we were all a bit creeped out, it sounded a bit like a death march. (I'm only joking it was a pretty cool tune).That night we had our first visit to Downtown Lawrence on Massachusetts St as we got a free dinner sponsored by US Bank. Me and the Scottish girls stuck together...there were a lot of options of places to eat so we tried to decide. In the end we went to El Mezcal - a Mexican place with humungous portions. None of us could finish it.
The sun was setting and we chilled out with our free food, it was a lovely night. As you do, the conversation turned to alcohol. None of us were 21 at the time and we wondered whether we'd be able to get it. The waiters at the restaurant were very nice, realized we were foreign and asked where we were from. We were also asked what language we speak in Scotland.
It was pretty funny, but it was the first of a stupid series of questions I would get asked whilst living in the US. It was funny at first but soon it got really irritating...
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