Aug 17
Breakfast at Appel's and later we had our College visits. We walked down to the Ag Quad (short-form for Agriculture Quad), where we finally got to meet Tamara Durham, the tireless exchange coordinator. Turns out that most, if not all the exchange students who went for PREPARE are enrolled in College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS). The funny thing was there wasn't any briefing for the normal freshies, who were only like 6 or 7, but the 15 of us on exchange had this 45 min session with Tamara. Think the upperclassman who was guiding was a little bewildered too. Well we were basically told to have fun here, take anything (any subject) we want, if we can't get what we want, flaunt our exchange student status. "Oh but I'm only going to be here for one semester so could you please please please let me into your class?" Quote from Tamara.

Met up with sibling group for lunch at Collegetown. Good thing we moved fast. We were able to get seats at Asian Noodle House. Some who came along later just had to keep on walking to find another restaurant. I had 2 spring rolls for lunch cos I still wasn't hungry (must have overate for breakfast) but the servings there are huge. Even the big China guy couldn't finish his plate of rice. Oh and the teriyaki chicken noodles in the menu actually referred to char siew. Well it looked like char siew. Wonder if it's possible to make char siew with chicken meat. Ivan was really really nice. He paid for our meals. Wow, now I really owe him one.

Next up was a series of boring talks: a health talk and a police talk. Upperclassmen advised us to go for the police one, so we ponteng the health talk, went for the police talk and fell asleep during the police talk. Oh it wasn't that bad, it was just that I've only slept 5 hours each night for the past 3 nights, so I'm always damn sleepy in the day. Probably still jet-lagged. I DID learn that there are these lamp posts with blue lights where you can call for an escort to bring you back to hall when it's late at night. There is a small phone booth at the lamp post, kinda like the CTE tunnel SOS phone, and 2 ppl, 1 guy and 1 girl, will come escort you. Not bad at all.

At night we had International Dinner at Williard Straight Hall. It was suppose to start at 630, but dear dear Jowyn overslept, leaving Cherlyn, Yingyi (our Singapore neighbour) and I waiting for them for a good half-an-hour. (Think Denise eventually went to knock on her door). Oh oops seems like I forgot to mention that Cherlyn and I are in Balch, but Denise and Jowyn are living in Holland International Living Centre (HILC), which is further up north on the map. So we trot down to Williard Straight, got food but no seats heh. Well we eventually got seats right in front hee. Some of the items were pretty interesting, like one guy sang a Josh Groban song, another group sang La Bamba with guitar accompaniement (pardon the spelling), and this double-jointed guy did amazing things with his arms, I can't describe. But perhaps the most entertaining item was this lip-synching act performed by a group of upperclassmen:

It isn't too clear, but from left: Kris, Andrew and Jeremy. I don't know who the 2 girls in the background are though... Oh we had chocolate fondue too:

That's the chocolate fountain. So sinful. Hee.

Aug 18

It's the last day of PREPARE. Had breakfast at yet another unearthly location but we were late in the end. This time, Jowyn didn't even turn up with Denise. She was that late.

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When you see the funny curly thingys, it's time for another installment of Jing Yin's amazing ability. This time, yours truly actually tripped while going UP the steps. Not down, mind you, but up. How can that ever happen you may ask. Well it sure does, cos anything's possible when Jing Yin's around. Yup this time, I had a nice big bruise on my left knee. Oh and if you're concerned about the bruise on my left foot, it's recovering nicely, so thank you. Back to the mains.

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There were a series of talks after that which we again didn't attend cos we aren't freshmen. So we went to settle yet some more admin stuff, but luckily that didn't take a long time. We explored the engineering building on our way back and look wat we found:

Look at that, way cool! I think the engineering students made it from scratch.

We departed for the Robert H. Treman State Park at 1130 for the closing BBQ. We were in the first bus (the second departed sch at 1230), so we went to explore the park first while waiting for the food to be delivered. Here's some nice scenery shots:

The pic on the right shows part of the pool that people swim in. I'm not too sure whether it's natural or man-made, but it looks nice anyway.

Now for a really funny shot:

The see-saw is actually quite high, so it's really scary to be on top. Luckily for me, I'm heavier than Jowyn haha.

We went back to the main gathering area and joined in a game of frisbee. I'm starting to think that I'm getting addicted to it ha. The BBQ lunch turned out to be catered. We were served grilled kebabs. I guess that's what they meant by BBQ lunch. Which is well good in a way cos the BBQ pits in the park are really small and not in a very sanitary condition. We then took a really large group photo, which I don't have unfortunately, and went back to school. This marked the end of PREPARE officially.