Day 100: Spontaneous Saturday

What went well? 

Today was actually a cool day that I can say, yeah, that's a pretty cool story.

1. Visited the Morris Arboretum in the morning - the University owns this place. Enjoyed the sunshine and the nature.







  

2. A couple of guys started talking to us on the bus back. We ended up getting lunch/dinner with a bunch of people (who they'd also just met), then jamming with violin, electric guitar and ukelele, then going to the "Night Market" at Rodin Rooftop lounge with amazing performances by several cultural dance and arts groups. Totally random but awesome turn of events!!

3. Did my grocery shopping and my friend helped me to carry stuff back, which helped a lot.

What did I learn? 

• People at Penn respect culture a lot. Also, we have some amazing dance groups here, who really love to dance, put their hearts, intensity and energy into it, and are amazingly supportive of their team-mates. And everyone respects that.
• Good things happen when you clear your schedule and go with the flow. Just say yes!
• Writing this Buddhist paper brings up experiences that relate to Buddhist teachings. Like, dukkah. Oh my god, I feel so much unsatisfactoriness towards this paper at the moment. Just, MRAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH. (my reaction every time I look at it). MRAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!

Day 93: Spring Fling!

What went well? 

1. Checked out the Fling happenings in the Quad and around campus (aka frat houses). Lived vicariously through observation (damn vocal health precautions!!!!). Anyhow, I have to say, this is the happiest and liveliest I have seen Penn (thanks, alcohol!). It was just a weekend of complete letting go. But everything contributed to it - the gorgeous weather, the activities in the quad, friends hanging out together, flowering trees...it's Spring!
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2. Went for a nice long run around University City and along the river. It's actually so beautiful outside at the moment. I realised that Penn's campus is even prettier in Spring - there are so many flowers and flowering trees everywhere!
3. Helped to publicise the upcoming Calm Clarity workshop at Penn, and someone in one of the Facebook groups I shared it too kindly offered to help spread the word further!
4. Despite getting much less done than I hoped I would (I'm going to blame it on Fling!! It's really hard to do stuff when you know everyone else on campus is having fun!), I'm going to give myself credit for at least finishing the etymology section for Western "mindfulness" (first draft, anyway), and finishing the explanation of the translation of the Buddhist sati into mindfulness.

What did I learn? 

• Spring Fling can be summarised as: "A weekend of complete hedonism."
• Also, Fling is a time when the cliqueyness of Penn is super salient! People in various groups (e.g. sororities, frats, clubs, performance groups) walk around in packs, wearing the same shirts (with some clever Fling + group-related slogan). So, from a social psychology POV, Fling is a lot about affirming group identity and a time of group bonding.
• Not everyone is a fan of Fling. One guy in my dorm thought that it's "pathetic", "for various reasons". I'm not sure what these reasons are, but I am intrigued.
• The "ugh" (feeling of resistance to tasks - e.g. writing papers) can be pretty strong sometimes. To overcome it, I printed out my notes, grabbed my notebook, and walked somewhere without my phone or laptop and started writing out the section by hand. I didn't get that far - two solid paragraphs - but it was something. In the meantime, I've given up (lack of sisu, the Finns would say!!) on the idea that I'll get anything more done today and am going to actually have an early night. I will be in bed by 10.30pm!!!

Day 26: Monkey mind

Today was a bit of a mindless day, where I just wasn't entirely present. It happens to everyone from time to time though; some more than others, and I think in general, I've become a lot more present over the past couple of years. Despite this scattered-ness, a lot of good things still came out of the day.


What went well?

1. Got started on the next project for  positive psychology research, and managed to get some coherent thoughts down on the study design. While at the positive psychology center, I hung out with a couple of guys there on their lunch break and really enjoyed talking to them.
2. Finally got my bank card...3 weeks later.
3. Went and saw my Intro Buddhism professor for more guidance on my research paper, and now I actually have a solid direction, thanks to his helpful suggestions. Basically, I'm going to trace the history of the word "mindfulness" - how often it's been used in different years and how the meaning has changed across time, and therefore when it started being used in relation to Buddhist ideas. Apparently noone's actually done this before, so it'll actually be a unique scholarly contribution, hopefully. I also managed to write my research proposal straight afterwards, so feel like I actually got something done today and that I finally know where I'm going with this.
4. My phone fell out of my pocket in the library onto seat, but I realised 5 mins into my walk back and it was still there when I went back. Maybe there is a benefit to mindless email-checking after all??

What did I learn?

• Fresh Grocer does indeed sell tofu! I think I finally know my way around it now, so it shouldn't take as long to do a grocery shop in the future.
• Putting on gym clothes gets you in the gym mode. I changed into some gym clothes to do my laundry, and suddenly I felt like going to the gym (I had been planning to go tomorrow). So I did - even though I never go at night. Lesson: if you ever feel too tired or unmotivated to go, just put your gym clothes on. Seriously. You can decide to not go after you've gotten changed, but you probably will - what you wear is a powerful cue (unless you're one of those people who just wears gym clothes everywhere) and it'll feel silly to have to get changed back without going.
• The paper size is different here. I should have caught on when I noticed that the paper at the library was different when I was photocopying stuff, but I thought that it was a quirk of the photocopiers there. Nope! US Letter seems to be the standard here, and I realised when I printed something off and the top got cut off (US letter is shorter).

Miscellaneous thoughts

• There is so much free food around here. Where there are dorms or clubs and societies there are events, and where there are events there is food (seemingly a huge incentive for people to go!). So it's quite possible to spend negligible amounts of money on food if you are super skint and don't care about what you ingest :P Case in point:

The events board in my dorm. There are at least 5 events involving free food on here.

• Another difference that I don't think I mentioned is their approach to research papers over here. The reason that I was in such a kerfuffle about where I should go with my research is that they give you basically no restrictions (or guidelines, for that matter) on what topic to write on. Whereas in Australia it's normal to be given an entire 1-2 page assignment brief including a list of topics to choose from, here you just get told how many pages (not word count) the research paper should be...everything else is up to you! As long as it's related to the course somehow (and it doesn't even have to be closely related, unlike in Australia where in my experience, your assignments are often supposed to be grounded in the course material). The flip side is that professors are therefore much more accessible as advisors for your research paper, and it's normal to check in regularly with them for guidance during the process of researching and writing the paper.

Day 5: Exchange Student Orientation Part 2

We started the morning with our immigration check-in, before a brief campus tour and lunch at a food hall, Houston Hall. Hey, the food wasn't as bad as people had made it sound. I thought the options were actually pretty good. I mean, this salad I got was probably the healthiest thing I've eaten since I've gotten here:

Although, I don't get why the walnuts were "candied" - who puts sugar in their salad?!

One thing that I've definitely noticed though, with regard to food, is that healthy food is significantly more expensive than unhealthy processed fast food. For example, that salad was $6.50, while a McChicken burger is about $1.50. This must be a big contributor to why poverty and obesity go hand in hand, and it's largely due to the messed up farmer subsidy systems here.

Here are a few more photos from the tour:

College House. The architecture here is breathtaking. 

The Broken Button. Legend has it, Benjamin Franklin broke a button here? And apparently, one of Penn's "traditions" is to have sex under the broken button before you graduate. #collegeshenanigans 

The Fisher Fine Arts Library, where you get stared at if you breathe too loudly. I'm so glad there's actually somewhere to study where silence is enforced by efficient librarians (compare to "silent" sections in libraries at UniMelb).

The oldest standing building in Pennsylvania.

The "Dueling Tampons".

After lunch, we had some more orientation sessions on public safety, sexual violence, cultural adjustment, and using the library. I actually learned a few interesting and reassuring things about Penn's public safety systems and programs:

1. Free walking escorts anywhere around campus, 24/7
2. Free transit rides at night around campus
3. Guardian, which you sign up for on your phone, allows Penn Police to use GPS to pinpoint your location if you call them. You can also set a timer where you call and set a reasonable amount of time for you to get to a location, and leave a voice message that describes where you're going, what you're wearing, etc. Then when you get to the location safely, you call the number and enter a pin code to deactivate the timer. If you don't deactivate it, they'll send the police out to find you.
4. Free RAD (Rape Aggression Defense) Self-Defense courses. I'm really keen to sign up for one of these.

The exchange student orientation leaders put on a hilarious skit that encapsulated all of the possible cultural differences we might come across, in completely stereotyped form:

"Frat party"

Other memorable moments in the skit included:

• American guys confusing the hell out of an Italian guy with frat language - "brother", "servant" (pledge), "Greek"
• An over-enthusiastic American roommate, keen to become "BFFs"
• American students eating in class and dying to contribute to the discussion, with no substance whatsoever in their contributions

It was really cute.

I then went on a library tour of the Van Pelt library, which is kinda the "main" library. It's got 6 floors and is incredible. It blows UniMelb's Baillieu, Law Library and Giblin Eunson completely out of the water. I can't believe I get to study there. Will take some photos next time I go. And there are about 11 libraries in total at Penn. Really excited to see all of them. I'm still in awe at how well-resourced this place is.

Bought some dinner for cheap ($4.50) at a food truck, but I will start cooking soon (a few times a week), once I schedule in a grocery run.

So in summary:

What went well?

1. I was really impressed by all the public safety initiatives in place.
2. The cultural adjustment skit was hilarious.
3. Learning about some of the history and stories behind some landmarks at Penn.
4. Being excited about the awesome libraries here.
5. The exchange student leaders are all really friendly, nice and helpful.

What did I learn?

• The dining halls are actually pretty good! There are plenty of options, and they are very very vegan friendly.
• There is way too much stuff to do here, it can get overwhelming. Too many events to choose from, too many possible clubs to get involved with, too many cool people to hang out with...#decisionfatigue. I think to be strategic with this, I'll set aside maybe 30 minutes at the end of every week to research and decide on what I really want to do and go to in the following week.
• Penn has so much more tradition, history and culture. There's a story behind everything here.
• There's a 30 day "grace period" after the J1 visa program end date, but if you leave the US before the end of that grace period, it automatically ends, so you can't re-enter the US unless you get another visa (or a visa waiver, in the case of New Zealand). That was a really important piece of information for me to learn, since I'll be travelling to Canada during my grace period, so I'll need to apply for that waiver sometime.

Class starts tomorrow and I can't wait!! I'm also going to audition for an early music ensemble, Ancient Voices. My voice isn't exactly in peak condition at the moment with all the talking I've been doing these past few days, meeting all these new people, but hopefully it goes ok!

Also, I'll go and update my post from yesterday now, since that was a bit sparse.

Day 4: Exchange Student Orientation Part 1

The day in a nutshell: we got talked at about how not to plagiarise. Seriously, if I haven't been kicked out of uni yet, I'm pretty sure I understand what academic integrity is. The rest of the day was much more fun though. The exchange students met at a Chinese restaurant in Chinatown for a meal, and they brought me a vego option for everything that was ordered, which was much appreciated. Remember that I am blogging about everything within reasonable boundaries, so if you're wondering about something I haven't addressed, please shoot me an email (j.sun@student.unimelb.edu.au) and I am more than happy to meet up when I'm back :)

What went well:

1. Discovering the Magic Carpet food truck. It's fully vego and you can get a decent meal between $3-$6 basically.
2. Meeting more people from all over the place e.g. the Netherlands, Italy, Botswana...especially at the dinner.

What did I learn?

• I seriously need to catch up on some sleep! Jet lag is getting to me...
• They love my accent over here. I was at the bank, and the bank teller told me that she loved my accent.
• People self-segregate so much! Even amongst the exchange students, I can definitely see how easy it would be to not meet any local students, because all the French students have already bonded, the Aussies are all hanging out together, those from China are doing the same...and it's kinda funny and simultaneously disturbing to see how much I identify with the Australians over here, since I am representing UniMelb after all, and it's the closest to New Zealand, culturally, compared with the other cultures here. I really noticed this tendency in myself, to want to hang out with the Australians, but to combat this, I decided to just join a random table at dinner, and it was great to have conversations with people from other places.
• People don't have very positive ideas about the US. At the start of orientation, they asked us what positive stereotypes or ideas we have about the US. Slowly, we managed to list three: good universities; friendly, positive people; good service. Then when it came to the negative stereotypes, they came flying in, starting with guns. This is probably partially an illustration of the negativity bias, but it was really interesting to see.