Big Event in Portland
Hi, everyone! I’m back… So, as I said last time, I am, as of now, going to slowly but surely introduce you to my UNE experience. In this post, I’m going to tell you all about a very recent event I attended, namely the “International, Multicultural and Exchange Student Reception,� organized by USM (University of Southern Maine), in Portland (at its 18th edition, in fact); the whole idea was to get high-school and college international, exchange, or visiting students from all over Maine together, to share impressions, get to know one another, have fun, eat, and win prizes:) Yup, there was a door prize drawing, among other things. And I even won something – a gift certificate consisting in 4 free season passes to USM sport events… which is awesome…except…I hate sports (no offence to anyone) and I am totally clueless to anything and everything sports-related. Well, not everything, I guess; I mean, I do know that soccer involves a ball, hockey involves ice, and other really sophisticated stuff like that :-D Anyway, it’s still winning something:) And another girl, Hannah, won 2 passes for…something…to do with…skiing…I think….anyhow, the idea is that there are a lot of winners at UNE!
this is the certificate  |
guess: which one am I? :)  |
Here’s the link, if you want to learn more about the event: http://www.wacmaine.org/
Other than that, the whole thing was fun, from the start. We were about ten students from UNE and Mrs. Donna Gaspar, from Student Affairs, took us in one of the school’s vans (Portland is about 20 minutes away). It was kind of funny that she had us fill out emergency contact forms and then told us it was her first time driving a van…hahaha…Seriously now, she’s great and we’re glad she took us (she had to postpone a flight to NY for that, too).
When we got there, we had to sign up and write our names on post-its, then tag them to our countries, on the corresponding maps (you can see that in the pictures). It was nice that under each country there was a small sticker with a few general guidelines regarding that particular state.
My post-it is at the bottom right corner
. It was really nice and educative to just go up and talk to people, learn where they were from, how they got there, hear different languages… For instance, talking to a guy from Peru I learnt that his boss was Romanian – I had no idea there were other Romanians in the Portland-Biddeford area! Or, there was and exchange student from Germany, who, with the occasion of this event, found out that Lithuania was in Europe=)) See, it was a useful experience for everybody there :))
We also talked with the teachers there, and some of the host families for the exchange students…Remember how I said that, if anything, the people here are incredibly friendly? Well, I was talking to a lady – a host for one of the high-school students – and, after roughly 10 minutes of conversation, she just invited me to Thanksgiving dinner…just like that… Coming from Eastern Europe, that’s just… so unexpected…I’m pretty sure that constantly coming across attitudes like that around here is going to slowly shape me in positive ways… And that’s part of what this college system is about, right?
Ok, that's all for today... But I have a busy weekend ahead of me, so there will probably be more "blog-material" soon enough. Till then, take care, everyone!
Anda.
