04S77!

Friday, September 15, 2006

hey guys!

it's now 7 am in chicago and im physically suffering cause of the damn weather over here. it's very cool and windy in chicago,and im so NOT adapting to it here. together with a heavy international students orientation schedule, I got a viral infection and have to go to the hospital later. wth.

Chicago is a pretty nice place, especially downtown chicago, which is one of the most active financial centres in the States after New York. Downtown Chicago has all the beautiful skyscrapers, but sometimes it can look a bit drab because of the very thick mist and fog. Lake Michigan, which separates Illinois, the state where the city of chicago is, and Michicagn, is really very beautiful as well. It's called a lake, but it reminds me of the sea in east coast park. That's how big the lake is!

my school is really very very beautiful. i dont know how to overemphasize that. it looks like the schools filmed in Harry Potter, meaning we have a lot of stone and brick buildings, and the interior of the buildings is very awesome too, with fireplaces, ornate wall carvings and paintings. It's almost like my school came from old world britain, which makes sense because my senior told me that part of the architecture was modelled after Oxford University's.

BUT...

chicago is mainly a black city. I didnt know this until i actually stepped foot here. i thought it wld be a regualr american city but i was proven wrong. i think the demographics is sthg like 60% blacks, and a very high proportion of latinos as well. Im not trying to be racist here but sometimes i can be quite intimidated when the majority of the people you encounter are well, blacks. Im not saying they are all dangerous and everything; in fact blacks are extremely freindly. But the male ones can be really scary sometimes. for the past 2 days that i have been here, i have been harrassed by blacks AT LEAST once a day. They stalk you, ask you for money, and if you dont give it to them, they block your way. that's how scary it is.

yesterday, i crazily decided to go to chinatown with just another female friend of mine to do my cell phone by train and bus. It totally freaked me out. in retrospect it's really dumb of us to wander out on our own when we dont really know the way and when chicago is well, so not very safe. we took a bus to an area called Garfield (haha i didnt know before this that garfield is actually a PLACE in chicago. thought it referred to some fat cat) which our seniors warned us NOT to go cause it's a place populated by blacks. then from grafield, we took a train down to chinatown to do our phones. the trains are very sad. they remind me of the KTM trains from malaysia, just that they are in much worse a state.

and there was someting else that i realised when i came over to chicago. that singaporeans like to put on a damn irritating ang moh accent when they speak to other international students and americans! it gives me goosebumps when singaporeans not ang moh act ang moh, cause there's a subtle difference btwn speaking proper english and speaking english with a western acent. havin a western accent doesnt automatically mean that you are spekaing proper english. it's like, sometimes, their grammar is wrong, but still they try to put up a phony western accent. it gets hard of the ears after some time. im still speaking singlish over here though, and my international Orientaion aide keeps making fun of that. when he speaks to me, he does a lot of "las" and "lors" as well. haha. im trying to figure out how i shld speak to my professors and regular americans. cos apprently they think i speak too quickly and i havent gotten rid of those las and lors.

im pretty good freinds with a korean girl now! im going to pick up korean in chicago, so she will be able to help me! unfortunately, amongst the international freshmen, i have yet to spot any korean hunks yet, which is really sad :p. hhaa but my friend said more will be coming for the actual orientation itself so i will go people watching soon!

im quite excited about school starting, cos i think the modules are truly quite fun to take. hope i dont change my tune when school really starts. cos seniors said that chicago is really an extremely academic oriented school, which is kind of atypical of american schools.

ok im going to end here, cause i have to go back to bed and pretend to sleep or else my mum will kill me to know that i got up and msn-ed instead of resting before we got to the hospital later. hope you guys are having fun in school as well; all the best!

cgm

04s77 fell asleep@8:06 PM