Fall 2019 First Impressions
The fall 2019 semester is off to a great start. Now that the Global UGRAD students have had the chance to settle into their new homes for the next few months, here is a glance at some students’ first impressions!
Daniil Gurgurov, Moldova, Murray State University: I have lived on campus for three weeks already and I have only positive impressions about it. There are a lot of events going on. I never have time to just sit in my room and do nothing. I try to go everywhere. My favorite thing about my community is the fact that everybody is very welcoming, both students and university staff. I made lots of friends from all over the world. That’s a good thing because I am building my life connections and networking. I am doing my best to communicate with people as much as I can. In fact, communication is all we need (as it turned out). The most surprising thing that I have noticed is that there is a large number of churches and I am amazed with their differences from ours. There’s one more thing I’d like to share with you. As all people are nice to you here, it’s a bit difficult to understand their real attitude to me. You never know what they think of you. But this fact helps me to be as friendly as they are and teaches me to be a good person.
Baltazar Anay Raymundo, Guatemala, Troy University: The professors are prepared to teach, for example in my class our teacher has different methods to explain topics that help students to understand and learn. The classes are fun. There are necessary facilities for classes, like internet, video projectors, and other tools. The teachers and students have everything and do not need anything. I’m surprised that there are very few students per classroom, in my class there are 10. It is very great to learn like this. I also like the diversity of food, we can select what we want, and everything we want to drink is available. There are many student organizations and I like to participate in several relating to religion, culture, or different games. I feel I have a lot of freedom and I like the diversity of students from different countries. I speak with them and learn some of their languages, like Arabic, Chinese, Korean, and Hindi.
Heyyang Yang, China, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville (SIUE): I have already been here in America for nearly one month. Everything is great for me! My favorite thing about my host institution, SIUE, is the environment. SIUE is located in a natural forest reserve and there are lots of trees and flowers inside and surrounding the campus and dorms. Every day I take a walk after dinner to these forests. I meet lots of animals: the squirrels, the deer, the geese, and the skunks! They are not afraid of me, they just stare at me curiously.