August 25

So today I got to go to the main campus downtown and file hiring paperwork with HR. That was ... obnoxious. Rickety elevator to the third floor to get to the HR office. Only to learn that they're doing the hiring packets for graduate students at the urban life center. The receptionist gave crappy directions (though to be fair I am unfamiliar with the downtown campus and "turn at building x and it's across from building y" meant absolutely nothing to me), but someone else visiting was able to give me good street name directions. So back to the lobby in the motion sickness inducing elevator. Then walk the five blocks down to the urban life center. Which is also the law building. Only it's only labeled as the law building. Fortunately the guy giving me directions knew that, so I didn't get lost. Another old elevator- why can't I find the stairs in any of these buildings?!? Tangent: I dislike elevators. It's got nothing to do with motion sickness (though I do sometimes have that problem), and everything to do with a fear of it breaking down while I'm in it. As a general rule I'll only take an elevator if I have to go more than four flights of stairs or if I have luggage with me. Only none of the school buildings I've been in so far have findable stairways!!!

Back to the story: I make it to the room where they're processing hiring packets. It takes them an hour to get to me, but less than five minutes to process my paperwork. @_@

So I go back to the awful elevator to get back downstairs; they were doing construction on one of the other elevators in the block- I did not need to see that. 

Here're a couple pics of the maze that is the Five Points Marta station:

A train had just left, that's why it's empty in the photo. Also it's called "Five Points" because it's the station where all five train lines intersect. 

And here's one of the Buckhead station, the one I'm actually familiar with:

This one's a little vague as I'm on the walkway over the freeway looking back towards the station- the Buckhead station is in between the northbound and southbound lanes of the freeway. It makes sense as a place to put the train lines when they have to be above ground, but it's still odd. 

I was early to class, so I hung around in the lounge. Then Jennifer arrived, looking for someone to go up to dinner with, and as she and I were leaving, Ben arrived and he joined us. Today's spaghetti and meatballs was a major improvement over yesterday. There was nowhere to sit so the three of us stood awkwardly in the middle of the room. But the best part was that by the time we were done we had been joined by like ten other students from our program. 

Tuesday's class is Fundamentals of Database Management with Dr. McDonald. That was a weird class. And at 5:30 to 10:00 it was also a long class. He went over the syllabus and lectured a little. There was a lot of class participation. 

We picked our groups for the group project: I'm with Amanda (big surprise, I'm sure), Peiling (who I've talked to occasionally), and Ying/Michelle (who was alone and we needed a fourth; she's Chinese, she picked an American name like Chinese girls like to do, so I am trying to make sure I remember both of them). So in a class that's mostly Indian, the one white girl ended up with three Chinese girls: it's not exactly ironic but it is pretty weird. 

And we had our first project as a group:

I had to take a picture because I knew you wouldn't believe me. ;) We worked together pretty well, and it ended up being nice that they all spoke Chinese, even if I did feel a little left out. [To clarify: Amanda is American of Chinese descent. She speaks Chinese, but she can't read or write it. And the Chinese spoken in the aforementioned project was just enough to help the other two, for whom English is a second language, understand what we were talking about. (PS: this graduate level program is intense in my native language, I can't imagine how much harder it would have to be for those like Peiling and Michelle.)] 

Dr. McDonald also played hangman with one of the students. On the whiteboard. In the middle of the lecture. The photo I took didn't turn out though, so you'll just have to believe that that one happened. ;)

Home at ten thirty and then an hour to write this post. I'm going to crash now. Ttfn!