What is it like?

I didn’t forget about my blog, I swear.
School started a month ago, I already had 3 midterms, life here begins to feel like a routine rather than a bunch of weird experiences fired at me at the speed of light  and my room has fully become a personal place (read: messy). I don’t do a lot besides studying, hanging out with some friends and watching Netflix or YouTube, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t have some weird, funny or interesting moments to share with you all.

Thinking in Dutch

This is something I’ve been avoiding as much as possible. It gets me “out of the flow”, making it a lot harder to construct a proper English sentence than it should be. But there are times where I either had to force myself to think in English (e.g. when counting something) or where I just couldn’t help myself (e.g. while playing the guitar). You probably don’t deem this as surprising as I do, but I was actually pretty stunned when I noticed the first time after playing the guitar that I was thinking in Dutch again instead of English, while I had been thinking in English all day.

The English system

O sweet metric system, how I miss you. This is one of the things that made my blood run cold even before coming here, because it’s something that you use all the time without noticing. When talking about my old school: “I always rode my bike, because it wasn’t far from where I lived, only 6.5 km 4 miles”, when talking about the weather: “in Belgium we had this really intense heatwave this summer. With temperatures over 37°C 98°F”, etc… Though, one of my lowest (and most stupid) moments was probably when I went to the gym for the first time.
I kind of like running (this might come as a surprise to a lot of people because I only discovered this last summer), so one of the first things I did was use the treadmill. As I was raising the speed, I noticed that at 5km/h I already had to start running. I wasn’t as concerned as I probably should have been, because in the weeks leading up to my departure I didn’t have time nor energy to keep working on my fitness, so  I figured I should probably just take it slowly. It wasn’t until 20 minutes later (still running) that I finally figured out that the speed indicated on the treadmill wasn’t indicated in km/h, but in mph (miles per hour). So I had actually been running for 20 minutes at 8 km/h. If I wouldn’t have been as exhausted as I was at that moment, I probably would have burst out laughing (and then, everyone would have thought I was insane, so thank God for my poor fitness).

International students

One of the greatest thing about university is probably the diversity (even in a city like San Bernardino 7% of the students are international students). During orientation I met a lot of people from all around the world and that resulted (and still results) in a lot of interesting conversations. Though my favorite moments are probably those moments where we’re all trying to figure out the English language.
A couple of days ago, for example, I was having dinner with some of my friends and for some reason the word “plump” was used, but no one was really sure about how to pronounce it (some even had never heard the word before). What resulted was four (young) adults repeating the word “plump” over and over again with slightly different articulation and pronunciation. 

Person A: "Plump."
Person B: "Plum?"

Person C: "No, plum-p."

Person B"O, plump"

Person D: "Wait, plump or plump?"

Person C: "Plump, I think."

Person D: "Okay, plump."

Person A and B: "Plump."
If someone was eavesdropping, they must have thought we were crazy.

Grades

Probably the most scary word for any student, but here in “The Land of the Free” they actually have a pretty interesting grading system. First of all, the score on the final isn’t the only score that determines your grade. The homework, tests and midterms during the quarter all count towards your final grade (comparable to the system in secondary school in Belgium).
But that’s not the weirdest part. You can earn more than 100% on some tests (depending on your professor). This happened to me on one of my midterms and at first I was certain it was a mistake, so I asked my professor and he assured me that I did in fact have a 110%. I am pretty sure I pulled the weirdest face, luckily he was polite enough not to laugh at me.

So, you might have been wondering whether or not I’ve been enjoying myself so far and to that I can wholeheartedly say: yes. Even though I might have been spending a lot of my time in the library studying (it is university after all!) and had some difficulties expressing myself in a language that is not my own, there are so many moments that have made every single minute worth it so far.

 -N