ISU Journals continues to Wallace. I stop short of giving my exact room address here; purely out of common sense. Wallace, for those giving that blank face, is my dorm. Wallace Tower itself probably can be ranked among the tallest 3 buildings in all of Ames - and even from the 4th floor I can see for miles on end. Such is the flatness and expansivness of Ames town. From the 10th floor, you literally could see the whole town on a clear day.
I will liken it here to the Sears tower in Chicago.
Wallace is not perfect - its probably one of the most expensive options of accommodation (in fact, I think it is the most expensive). But you get what you pay for - a super single room.
[imgs room]
The room is large enough for 2 people to live comfortably, and its practically self-sustainable with its microfridge and sofa-bed. In fact, rearranging the furniture just a little and you could come to an arrangement where you would never need to get out of bed.
I'm not that lazy.
Or maybe I'm just too lazy to move my microfridge and table next to the bed.
I did get a surprise on the first day - my community advisor (CA) i.e. the guy who is supposed to be in charge of my floor, is gay. And quite openly so. Surprisingly coming to America has made me slightly less homophobic. Or maybe the gay people I know in Singapore don't give a good overall impression of gay people. Then again, the sample size is quite small, as far as openly gay people in Singapore are considered.
Big difference from Singapore culture - social policing. Huge difference, I think. It seems that you could actually do anything here and it seems that people don't really judge you for it. I don't know - maybe its a different sort of judging, but you don't get the same sort of stares for being different as you do in Singapore.
Friends
Wallace is, for some reason, filled with exchange students. In fact, exchange students are split between Wallace Hall and Frederikson Court (Freddy Court). Not entirely sure why, though. Perhaps that's just the way ISU arranged it.
I remember back in Singapore I used to wonder why the exchange students tended to hang out with each other; even if they were from different countries. As always, it helped being on the other side of the question.
Reason 1: That's just the way the host university does it. More out of convenience than anything, I think exchange students arrive earlier to school than their local counterparts. So naturally the first people that the exchange students meet are the other exchange students. Primacy Effect, maybe?
Reason 2: Cliques. Quite naturally, no matter where you go in the world, social structure follows that there should exist cliques of people. Its not easy for an exchange student to break into the already-formed cliques that exist.
Of course, after that there's alcohol and there's common interest to help act as "social lubricant", but before that it is energetically more stable for the incoming exchange students to nucleate into groups of their own.
Forgive the nerd-speak.
Reason 3: Common situation. This, is obvious. Every exchange student at least has common ground that they can empathise with each other about. At least at the most fundamental level they each understand the concept of being away from all their friends for a while, understand the concept of feeling homesick and alone, and understand the pains of trying to contact their friends back home but usually to no avail thanks to this phenomenon known as time difference. Time difference, some people understand it more than others. I think it doesn't get much worse than Iowa-Singapore time difference. 12hours is kinda as bad as it gets.
I hesitate to elaborate further on my friends here - but rest assured, I have some. Probably the obvious downside is that none of them (for the reasons stated above) are actually American.
Before I left I was concerned that I'd be the only Singaporean in all of Ames. The brilliant scheme to combat this concern was to be Malaysian for half a year. Also helped that I have pretended to be Malaysian for some time already. But that's another story altogether.
Anyway, so I was definitely happy on the first day when I saw a whole bunch of Malaysians walking around, registering at he University.
Too many, in fact. Turns out that the Malaysian government has some sort of agreement with some US universities, including Iowa State, which allows Malaysian students to transfer to these US Universities halfway through their course. Not entirely sure of the specifics of the course, and not particularly interested either.
There are, in fact, two other Singaporean exchange students. There are two students from NTU - but one of them is Malaysian. The other Singaporean is studying - where else? - in Australia, and is on exchange here too.
In fact, the other two NTU students (Raymund and Wei Han) are actually Materials Engineers; in fact, the only other Material Science Students on exchange here. Perhaps Singapore is seen as a good place as far as Material Science is concerned.
But to be fair, I think the Materials Science department here is quite good - but this will be covered more in detail later.
Sadly, however, they stay far away in Freddy Court on the other side of campus so, while the two of them hang out together often, I only see them for class.
Grace, on the other hand, lives closer - on my floor in fact. She's studying in Australia but on exchange here, as I mentioned earlier on.
Also on my floor are Laurenn (from France) and Tero (from Finland). And being on the same floor as someone definitely allows you to get closer to them. I think I've learnt more about French and Finnish culture from this 2 months than I'd have cared to find out for my past 23 years. Also I'm trying to learn French and Finnish. I'm making slightly more progress with Finnish; that doesn't really make sense because Finnish is that much harder than English or French. But at the time of writing, I know how to say "Hi, what's up?" and "Fine, thank you", as well as count till 7 in Finnish. Oh yes, "Goodnight", and "Good Morning" and "Good Evening" too...
I think the whole Tero and the Finnish issue needs a whole post to elaborate; and I'll see if I ever get to it. Actually, Laurenn also probably needs a whole post. But again, I reckon I shouldn't post too much about my friends here.
Also there's Val, from upstairs. From Malaysia, but studying in Australia. She loves to cook; and probably is doing the wrong course (Food Science, rather than Culinary Arts). Then there're two Korean girls (Diana and Julia) from other floors in the building.
The problem with coming up with this post this late into term - its been about 4 weeks into term by now - is that I can't really remember how I met them. Apart from Tero. I know that I'm probably the first person to speak Finnish to Tero - I said "Kiitos" to him (Thank You) on the first day I met him. Still, should admit that that was the ONLY Finnish word (learnt from Matti, an exchange student to NUS last year) that I knew at that time.
But its a way to stand out of the crowd to a Finn. I really need to put more on the Finnish Alliance later.
*
I can't forget the people that I first hung out when I was at Ames.
When I first arrived in Ames, the school put us in temporary housing at one of the motels in Ames. Unfortunately, there wasn't very much space in the motels, and we had to share 4 people in a room. It wasn't that comfortable, but it also meant that you had to share a bed with a complete stranger.
Fortunately, the guys I stayed with for those few days were cool. Igor and Sebastian stay in Freddy Court, so naturally I don't see them that much, apart from the fortnightly/weekly games of racquetball. By the way, Igor is from Brazil, despite his name suggesting an Eastern European origin. Sebastian, less surprisingly, is from Germany.
Chris, on the other hand, stays at Wallace. For the first few weeks, I was hanging out with the Commonwealth people - rather, Chris, Roseanna, Phoebe from England and Lindell from Australia. Over time, however, that group dissolved a bit - due to a combination of factors that include boyfriends, girlfriends, and school.
to be continued...
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