This week’s post will be a relatively short one due to exams.
Today both the Language Intensive (LI) students and the Contemporary Issues (CI) students have exams.
For me, being a CI student, today marks the end of our first ‘block’ of courses.
I just completed my Government and Politics of China course, and after the weekend I will start my Chinese Economy course.
A few weeks ago, my roommate came up to me and said, “Hey, do you want to go to Brussels next weekend?”
I said, “Yeah, let’s do it.”
And off we went to one of the quaintest places I have ever visited. Brussels looked nothing like London or Barcelona. Perhaps it was the neoclassical architecture mixed with regal gold-painted fonts on shop windows, or maybe it was the cute little lace and artisan tapestry shops, but there was something about this place that was just quintessentially European.
Never in a million years would I have thought that I would ever hear the words New Jersey and cool in the same sentence. It must be a million and one years because it has happened. I am into my second week of classes and tutorials are in effect. What are tutorials you ask? They usually happen after a lecture, and it is basically the lecturer, yourself, along with a small group of people breaking down the information that you have learned in the lecture. My tutorial for my Cultural Studies class has about 25 people.
It was just this week that I realized that I may finally have to step out of vacation mode for a while. While the work is still not quite as difficult as at Purdue, and I don’t have to stay up until 2:30 finishing my structures homework, I’m currently struggling with the fact that I have a 2,500 word paper due tomorrow (not a usual assignment for an engineering student). In fact, I’m procrastinating right now, taking a break from discussing remote sensing technologies in forestry.
So I heard Auckland is the city of volcanoes. A friend and I took a trip to Mt Eden~ only a 20 walk from my flat~ and walking up the massive hills that is Auckland, I commented that the ”Mount” must not be very big since we couldn’t see it… However, I was surprised when we got to the top that we were exposed to magnificent, 360 degree views of Auckland, the surrounding water, and the mass of islands in the distance.
Berliners love dogs. To a dog enthusiast like me, it is particularly fun to see that dogs are allowed almost everywhere here – stores, buses, cafes, the metro…I rarely see them on a leash, even the big ones, as they are all incredibly well-behaved. It gives Berlin a bit of a more relaxed vibe, as it suggests that people think it is important to take it easy every now and then by going on a casual stroll with their four-legged friends.
