Language Groups

Within a day of starting school the "I have so much to do" feeling has returned...How quickly I forget vacation!

The good news is that my new classes are really interesting to me: International Political Analysis, Macro, Strategies for Asia Pacific, Executing Strategy, Negotiation (and the Art of Communication over a weekend at the end of the month). I guess that's why they're called "electives." Macro and the politics class are actually core courses, but they're good ones.

Being back at school is actually super weird. We have something like 280 people in our promotion who are in Singapore, but only about 100 are people I know from Singapore (if even that many) - meaning I don't know about 2/3 of the people in my classes, PLUS all of the 170 or so new P1s. The moral of the story is that just as I got comfortable...I went back and I feel like there are so few familiar faces! Soon enough they will be familiar, so I'm not too worried. It is sort of weird, though, that people can just switch campuses for two months, back and forth. Bizarre concept.

Today I re-noticed something that I saw a bit in P1 and P2. People who speak the same language tend to hang out together. This is not a big revelation, I know. I see Italians hanging with Italians - sitting together in class, chatting after class, going for dinner, etc. The Greeks are with the Greeks, the Israelis with the Israelis. This is all good and well, and totally expected. The part that is interesting to me, is that since the language of the school is English, and everyone speaks English, the Americans don't do this. Certainly they didn't in the Singapore group, and it doesn't appear that they did in Fonty either. I don't think there is a group of Americans that hang out. I also don't think there is a group of Brits that hang out. Not sure what to make of this, but it's interesting.

In other news my cat is going crazy running all over the apartment and making whining sounds, and Matt took me out to dinner for my birthday. We ate a lot, and it was good.

Matt went to work today at 7 as usual, and he was there until 8:30, and then he went back from 10 until 4am! His group is doing a virtual marketing tour for American clients. I'm not a fan. I don't think I'll see him until Friday. I don't know how he's going to stay awake for three nights of this!! It's like consulting or something!