Crash landing pt II

Feeling more comfortable with my 2012.5 classmates
Listening to my own breathing (how interesting)
It's 2:02 AM, cloudy, and -12' Celsius outside
I'm inside Battell 211

First and foremost, again, I am doing fine. Not superbly, but just okay. Settling in and adjusting to this new American environment is still difficult, and I think it will take me a while to get used to it.

Anyway. My experience of Middlebury started with the Feb (short for February semester) orientation on Thursday (February 5).

It was a jam-packed schedule, but I think the sleep deprivation was worth every moment of it. The experience overall, though very awkward and uncomfortable at times, was really fun. My February class consists of 89 students, of which 2 are international students (that includes me, but excludes 4 other students that are from Canada, because they don't count).

Basically, the orientation was completely led by about 20 sophomore Feb students, and they are an incredible bunch of Americans that are so free to be themselves in front of us first-year freshmen.

Well, since I can't sit and blog forever because I have a response paper to work on (that is due in 8 hours), I will have to give an overlay of some of the more interesting things that happened during orientation or just some plain random things :)

- I am the one of two international students in my class of 89 students. I am South Korean, and the other, Erik, is from a United World College (a.k.a. UWC) in Slovakia.
- There are more Thais in Middlebury than I expected. My mentor is a Thai freshman regular girl, who is from a UWC in Thailand. Her name is Nam or Sai Jai. My other mentor is Medhi, a very cool guy from France, and he is very popular among the international girls.
- I live in a three-floor freshman hall called Battell. Shaped in a capital E, the building is divided into two commons, Cook and Wonnacott, and has a basement where there is a lounge, a kitchen, and a TV room. The third floor is called the Nunnery because only girls live there.
- Middlebury College adopted the commons systems like Yale's. Kids would be in this commons (sort of like a "house" in Harry Potter) for two years or more. There would be residencial advisors, counselors, custodians, and I kid you not, these are really cool people. They're not like the a**holes that many people complain of in other universities.
- Middlebury is so full of nerds, geeks, musicians, linguists, overachievers, underachievers, potential leaders, and great athletes that just being in the school just feels degrading. Some people are just so talented, I sometimes feel like the admissions group made a mistake with my profile.
- The town of Middlebury is about 5-10 minutes' walk from Middlebury College. It has local businesses and one McDonald's. There's TJ Max and Hannafords, etc. They sell skating shoes, ski equipment, everything.
- Vermont is absolutely beautiful. Sometimes, you would be distracted by the entrancing landscape (possibly in almost any season).
- This whole state is green. Middlebury College has set up an initiative to lower carbon emissions to zero by the year 2016. The power plant in the college has zero carbon emissions, because it uses woodchips for power. So amazing.
- The food here is unbelievably great. It's three hundred sixty two times better than any hotel I've ever been to in my life. Probably more, but not less. Really really amazing. Please visit me sometime, and you'll get free meals! You should come here just to have great, free meals :)
- This school is very liberal-minded. There are co-ed bathrooms, which I thought were funny but use all the time.
- Oh, and last but not least, the textbooks are so expensive that I almost cried in the college bookstore.

That's pretty much it. I'm trying to find my card reader that I brought over from Korea.