Mid-term Reflections

It's a dark and gloomy day here in Minneapolis. My mood isn't much brighter either. But, I'm trying as much as possible to make this blog as un-depressive as possible, so I will not be ranting and raving about my dreary mood here. Instead, let me share a little about my exchange experience so far. (with the amount of time I have, I can only share a small percentage. You should go on an exchange programme to experience the whole thing it yourself.)

School:
It is now week 10 of my school term. Our break week was week 9 and the whole term is 16 weeks. So far I'm doing pretty well for my courses, except for that one Int'l Finance course, which totally sucks. But I'm pretty sure I can scrap a pass out of that course. I just got back my Int'l Econs midterm exam paper today. Did better than I expected, though the one mistake I made was pretty stupid. And now that I've submitted the first draft of my project, I'm pretty optimistic for that course. Intro to Dance is an interesting course. It's more like a international dance history course. Intro to Entrepreneurship is making me quite worried, cos there's still a lot of work to be done for that. Hopefully I'll do well for the test next week, then I would have secured 40% of my grades.

Not school:
Of course, this is the interesting part of an exchange right? I'm sure you are not really interested in what I'm doing in school and how I'm doing and what I'm learning in school, right? If I were you, I wouldn't very much be either. So let me start with my spring break.

I traveled to Boston, Washington D.C., Orlando and Miami. And now I'm back in cold, dreary Minneapolis. Actually the weather's quite warm today, around 7'C, and I really don't mind spending this few months in Minneapolis. Winter's been pretty interesting. This winter we've been through the warmest winter, the coldest winter (with temperatures below 0 degree F for about 80 hours), and the worst snow storm in 15 years or so. Pretty interesting eh? Such things will never happen in Singapore.

An important lesson I learnt is the use of a weather forecast. I mean, in Singapore, why the heck to you need a weather forecast, it's never accurate anyway. It predicts rain when it doesn't rain, and vice versa. Here, weather forecast and weather channels are very important. There's a huge difference between -10'C and 0'C, and the amount of clothes you'll have to wear. So yes, I need to constantly update myself about the weather.

But I digressed. I was about to talk about spring break, wasn't I? Eh, well, if you were expecting me to update you about my spring break, I'm sorry to disappoint. I'll probably do that later with all the photos, so that you'll have a better idea what I saw and went through.

As this is a mid-term reflection, kinda like mid-term evaluation forms that SMU always gives, I will just reflect about how I've been feeling so far, in general. This gives me a chance to come back to this entry next time in future to see how I felt at different points of my exchange. Obviously, there are ups and downs. Right now, I'm really enjoying this whole experience. School's not so stressful and more fun cos I know I'm learning not for grades but cos it's interesting, which is what learning should be. Of course workload's heavy, but playload's pretty heavy too. Haha. There's pretty much constant activity every weekend, even week nights. Lots of free movies in school. The Prestige and Casino Royale, so far. Outdoor activities coming up in April. Horse-back riding, rock climbing and canoing. Maybe going up Duluth. Indoor activities coming up too. Shopping. Haha. Life's pretty exciting.

Of course I miss some things too. Conveniences. I miss food a lot, especially mama's cooking. Indonesian food is very difficult to find. Chinese food's still much easier. I miss my bolster. Haha. Pple here don't use that. I wonder why? I miss doing sports. I'm growing fat, btw. Maybe you'll see that in the pictures I post from spring break. Sigh. I miss my friends, my family. (This one cannot not say right? hehe) Miss being able to talk face to face, instead of with my fingers.

And I just found out that I'll be going back in about 80 days. Sigh. So soon. So many things, so little time. Will there ever be enough time in life?

Gina