Day Fourteen

Big day today, what with orientation and all.

So class this morning started with an hour long review of the material from the day before. Then there was a half hour long discussion on the best places to eat in downtown Atlanta. A tangent started by the professor no less. Which left us with only an hour and a half to go over the entire day's lecture.

Then the MSA half of the class went to orientation.

It was long, but it was nice to officially meet everyone. There are 34 students in my program: 65% are international (and most of those are from India), it's about 50-50 male to female, the average age is 27, and (apparently) we're the top students in the business department. And from our bios we all like to travel; someone joked that we should all take a trip together to celebrate graduation. I chatted a little with Amanda, she's a Chinese-American from the Atlanta area. (Which reminds me, because people keep asking: Ben is from North Carolina, Alex is originally from Russia but has been in the US since junior high.) Aside from meeting the other students, we got talked to about all the other important start of school type stuff: the technology available to us, financial aid, etc. Here's one of the awesome things: on nights when we have class, we have access to the catering lounge where we can eat for free (well relatively free, considering the cost of the program).

We got our access cards to the building; they give us 24-hour access to the building, access to the study rooms, and access to the sixth floor lounge where the vending machine type snacks and drinks are free. We also got out textbooks:

(The lipstick tube is there to illustrate how thick those books are, though at the angle of the photo you still can't really tell '~'.) 

I left at the same time as some of the other girls and we walked to the train station together (which is only like two blocks from the building). Mari was headed the same direction as me, so we sat together and talked the whole way. She's from Brasilia, Brazil and is one of those people who is really easy to talk to. We talked about where we're from and the transit systems in various places we'd been. It was nice to have someone to talk to on the ride.

Aunt Sarah picked me up at the station and we went to dinner. It was a little Thai place called Rice, located on Canton Street, which is something along the lines of downtown historic Roswell. It's just a couple block stretch of artsy shops and "hole in the wall"-esqe restaurants in old storefronts and remodeled houses.

(That's Rice in the pic.) The atmosphere was great; we sat outside, the weather was great: 87 degrees with just enough of a breeze to keep the air moving. The food was really good, best Pad Thai I've ever had. And it looked amazing too:

Got home around eight thirty. Started and finished my homework. And now that this is done I'm off to bed. Good night!