My First Thoughts on College... and an update

This is the first email I sent to everyone documenting my college experience. I really should have posted this first, but ah well. Better late than never, right? Tomorrow I'm going to hear the Dalai Lama speak after he gets awarded by the President. There'll be a lot of people there but it should be fun. Besides, we got excused from class to go to it! Other than that, I'm just studying for my World Politcs mid-term on Friday. Oh, and I got a B+ on my first College Writing essay! Yahoo!

I'd better get back to studying. Have a great week, all! I'll post pictures on Friday or later this weekend!

Love, Kaia


Hi Everyone!

I am finally situated in my new dorm with my awesome roommate who's Iranian
American and is from Connecticut. Her name is Shirin. She's super nice and
very easy to live with, not to mention that she has many similar favorites like
me. Shirin, another girl in our Bio class and a few doors down from us, and I are
going to have a musicals movie night because we love them so much. It should be
great.

So, anyway, I live on the first floor of Letts Hall, which is right across the street
from the entrance to Anderson Hall (Letts and Anderson are actually connected, but
double doors and different colored trim divide us). I'm in a special Biology
class that is part of University College (UC), a special program that has hands-on,
community-oriented classes which are taught by the heads of the departments. Each
class live near each other and have a sophomore Program Associate (PA - like a mentor)
who will be in the class and on all of the field trips with them.

So, I live next door to Stephen Kos, our PA, who is awesome, super cool, and really
nice. He let us have a dance party in his room last night =), and jokes around
with us constantly. The other UC Bio kids(there are 14 of us) all live in the rooms
around me. There is Andrew, Jaques, Shaun, Kudzai (from Zimbabwe - he hasn't
arrived yet so we don't know what he's like), Shirin, Shannon, Jenn, Khileen,
Katie, Katrina, Omomoble (she's from Nigeria - we call her Mobes because her
name is really difficult to pronounce, and I know I spelled it wrong. I try to call
her by her full name, the 'O' is silent), Blair, Xinyi ("shin-yea",
she's from China and is sometimes hard to understand/hard for her to understand
us, but she's really sweet and outgoing and loves teaching us things about China),
and me. We're almost always together and are like one big happy family. We've
adopted a few others who like to hang out with us but aren't in UC Bio. We
just pretend they are. =)

As part of our UC Bio course, we are doing the Freshmen Service Experience which
means we're doing three days of community service together. There are around
500 freshmen working in groups at around 40 different locations and organizations
in D.C. We're working at the National Breast Cancer Coalition. They are the
main Breast Cancer government influence and organization and do an amazing amount
of stuff ranging from educating survivors so that they may sit at the table with
scientists to discuss which treatments should be funded to influencing congress
and the senate to give breast cancer research more money or to make sure everyone
has access to breast cancer tests and treatment through Medicaid. (Sorry, that was
a bit long winded and quite the run-on.) We basically work at the main office and
are doing things such as data input, folder stuffing, shredding, binder consolidation
and organization, and calling. It seems like menial stuff but we know it's
stuff that needs to be done. We just all agree that we would never want to work
in an office. =) Today was only our first day, but we did get a lot done.
I'm heading the binder consolidation and organization and really with that the
board meeting members in 1994 were much more organized as I've been struggling
to put their meeting minutes and agendas in order (or even to find them)! Anywho,
they're really nice people and we have a blast anyway.

Thus far I have met two other people from Portland and they know of quite a few
more so there might be 12 of us from Oregon. We'll have to start an Oregonians
club. =) Or at least a support group.

I start classes on Monday and will be taking "Leadership Gateway," "World
Politics," Biology, Spanish Intermediate, and College Writing. The book we
have to read for college writing is called "The Ponds of Kalambayi" and
is really good. I'm only on chapter 2, but the author, Mike Tidwell is coming
on Thursday, I think, to talk about it so I'm going to try to finish it before
then.

Well, I'd best be getting off to the book and then bed. I have a bit of a sore
throat but am taking vitamins, Airborne, and going to bed early so no worries.

Hope you all have a great week! I sure will!!

Love, Kaia