college life

The past week, we stayed in a boys' dorm at a rural university. The wifi required registration, and we weren't able to communicate well enough to buy it, or something. The computer lab is only open for a few hours a day, pretty much exactly when other things were scheduled for us. Colleges are different in different countries (lots more rules here with dress code and separate areas for guys and girls, for example), but the students are basically the same (guys skateboarding down the hall and scattering when a staff member shows up, for example).

Internationals are extremely uncommon visitors at this campus, which makes for lots and lots of stares (and a rather lengthy autograph session at a primary school). One thing I've found that gets laughs is to ask people where they are from before they can ask me; and also catching people who sneak photos of us, and then posing for a better one. All the students and the faculty are very friendly, from free food and drink to guided tours. At one point, we were interviewed with a microphone for the assembled first year students.

Friday night, we were invited by our neighbor to a drama that he was going to be in, so we show up and slowly realize that it is an event for the female students. We started to leave, thinking that we had been "punk'd," but the people putting on the show convinced us to stay, then gave us the big comfy chairs in the very front of the hall and inserted a "very warm welcome" to us, by name, in the program. Afterwards, we even got a meal. The program was several dramas about foreigners invading and locals overcoming and about college life. They were not in English, but it was really funny anyway. My favorite was the slow motion fight scene, in which the neighbor who invited us took part.

It was super fun hanging out with everybody, and we had some pretty serious ultimate games, sometimes despite rain or at least mud.