All these randomly written things were randomly remembered, of random big old memories.
Too many people...
"Hi, I'm Vuvu from Vietnam."
Two orientations, 3 classes, 300 people and 300 times. That's probably the number of times I've repeated this sentence over and over. I've said it so many times that it's probably hard to point out a single person I haven't told him/her so. Now to think about it, it was probably a wise choice to pick a nickname such as "Vuvu", since it should have been much easier for people to remember compared to tons of other names on campus.
Remembering names during orientations at UWC was like... having a quiz: "Hey, wait! Don't tell me yet! I think, your name is...". The next thought would probably be "Damn, he forgot to wear his name tag". That was why Linda tried her best to persuade students to keep wearing their name tags even after orientation. She would be standing in front of the cafeteria with a basket of candies, ready to be given out to "good" people who still wore their name tags at the fourth week at UWC.
Then, having to get to know some two-hundred people at once was even more problematic at UWC. The trouble doubled: you have to remember not only one's name, but also his/her country. That was rather confusing, and people had the tendency to put one person into another country different from his own. Eyad and many thought I was from Cambodia, while most of the Latinos didn't even bother to remember I wasn't from China.
I even got lost at UWC-USA.
I woke up the day after in Denali, and walked downstairs to the backdoor exit. There happened the odd: When I came inside Denali from the front door, it only had two floors; yet for sure Denali looked like it had three floors from the back! Another story, they were playing hide-and-seek in the castle. I was in student center, I walked up stair, and I was still at the ground (while I thought I should have been at a second floor). There came the explanation: I never encountered a house with basement in Vietnam.
During my first campus tour at UWC, I was so confused with all of the buildings they showed, then the Cross and the hot spring, which even made it harder to remember places' locations. One year later, I - a tour guide then - enjoyed seeing that confusion on the new-comers' faces. And another year later, I realized the place was actually not as big as I thought. Or maybe, it had shrunk since I had known it better.
Now I have known it so well. Maybe that's why, no more orientation for me.
Dance Fun, Mahii Ve and Random Singing sessions
My roomie said I had no sense of rhythm. Probably that was a joke, with a bit of bitter truth, just like how he told me I had no sense of humor. Yet, little did he know I was so into Dance Fun and Mahii Ve, and that was one of the highlights of on-campus Orientation. I didn't especially like the song, nor the dance. They were okay, but what impressed me was the image of two hundred people trying to dance the same movements of Mahii Ve, the movements that they would still remember several years later. That reminded me of the High School kids in some American movies. Now and then before coming to UWC, I stared at the TV and caught the image of student mass-dancing at US schools, and that looked real fun. I did break my own limit a bit when I did the sexy movements during Mahii Ve, probably the Vietnam authorities and traditions would never want that. But wasn't it what UWC was about? Overcome yourself here and there to try on new things, wasn't it?
Another great moment was the random singing circle in front of Denali and Kili at the orientation in my 2nd year. I felt like, and I could be certain, that was the moment that UWC students were connected the most, united the most, UWCed the most. Wahhhhh, I really loved that.
