Settling in: Redux

Considering our decision to travel during the winter break until the last possible week, it looks like we got on the residence boat pretty late. All of the new students have already settled in and it seems that they have their own groups and cliques... and despite there being greater international diversity from the West this time around (several Brits and Norwegians have been thrown into the mix), everyone seems to look the same to me. And none of us old crows can remember any of their names!

It is somewhat surreal to see all of these people going through the exact same experience that we went through six months ago - although the homesickness probably won't hit most for a little while yet. It's nice to be able to give advice to people when the need it ("Ed, please don't drink the tapwater. You WILL get typhoid.") and be the veterans of the exchange experience, but we're still going to have to connect with these people. Enter Joe's trademark potluck wine-and-cheese party at his house tomorrow. It should be a fun way to get to know people, methinks.

On the school front, I've been scrambling all week to make a schedule for my classes and register by Friday, the add/drop courses deadline. I'm feeling fairly far behind in Arabic after two months without, but methinks I'll be able to persevere.

Good news: I got my marks back and I'm carrying an A- average, with only a single B out of six courses. The agreement between Ghana and Carleton on this exchange is that my transcript will only show "Pass" or "Fail" for each course, but I won't let that rain on my parade...