Orientation Day 1

Monday, February 2nd, 2015

10:30pm South African Standard Time

Weather 63°F - Light Rain

Today was the first day of our week long orientation at the university. During the opening ceremony I was surprised to find that 30 students were all here for the semester from St. Benedict / St. John's University, which is just down the road from St Cloud. They were not in my orientation group, but it will be fun to get to study and make friends with them because we can continue to meet up after we return to the states.

The first half of the day was breakout sessions about why NMMU hosts international students. Internationalization was the theme for the day. I learned that since the vast majority of local students at NMMU barely had enough money to study at the university, the opportunity for them traveling to study abroad was out of the question. Hosting international students is one of the only ways the university can provide a form of internationalization for the students. When I interact with the local students, I am the closest that most of them will come to the United States and our culture. So not only am I benefiting from experiencing a new county, culture and people, but the students at the university are getting a global perspective by having classmates from around a world that they are unlikely to ever experience in person. I suppose that that is the point of any international office at a university. I have had many experiences with international students throughout my educational career and they are the closet I have come to their respective countries. I never thought of international students from this perspective prior to listening to the presenters today, but I am sold that they really do add a much-needed dimension to the education system.

Another presenter at a breakout session shared a TED Talk with us related to internationalization. It was entitled, "The Danger of a Single Story" by Novelist Chimamanda Adichie of Nigeria. She discussed that people often base their conclusions and beliefs on a single story. This related to us as international students in that we are getting out into the world and not only enriching our view of society, but providing much more dimension to the South African students here that otherwise would have only one story to base our respective societies on. This is the essence of internationalization. By having more then one story to overlap about different people and societies, the better we will understand each other as we venture forth to become the next generation of leaders in the world. If you have a moment I encourage you to take a look at the link to the video I have below.

TED Talk: The Danger of a Single Story

The second half of today was spent doing our pre-registration. Although we had done much planning throughout the last few months, it was still a headache for all of us trying to understand their course scheduling system. We had picked courses that we wanted to take in advance, but we had to register for them in person and it was difficult for all of us to understand how to differentiate the different lectures, practical’s, and tutorials that each class has. The staff was very helpful, but the registration system itself was confusing even with help. In the end we were all able to register. Erin and I were planning on taking German, but the school decided not to offer it this year. Instead I decided to take Afrikaans, one of the 11 official languages of South Africa, with Angela. I am excited to learn one of the more popular languages that I have been hearing every day and be able, or at least attempt, to converse with the locals in their native tongue.

By the time we finished registering and were ready to go home for the day, it was pouring rain. The women at the international office said we could catch a Kombi for cheap and they would drop us near our hotel. A Kombi is South African Slang for a rickety taxi van that will pick you and anyone else that flags them down and drive them to a spot along the main parts of the city. They always yell at us as they drive by when we walk around the city and we have always shaken our heads because we're usually within walking distance and the weather is nice. However, this time we were on a mission to find one as soon as possible as we navigated our way out of the campus. 

Titus and I were well ahead of our group of SCSU students when we came upon the main road, so we flagged down the first Kombi we saw to get out of the rain. I remember Titus telling the driver we were at the Summerstrand Hotel as we paid our 9 rand to the boy in the back collecting money and yelling out the window. They must have heard us wrong because after a good 15 minutes of driving around the city slowing down to yell at or pick up every person the driver and boy saw, we got on the main road out of town with the van filled with locals. We asked the boy if we were ever going back to the hotel and he got a very alarmed look on his face and said he thought we said a different hotel. I suppose if I knew Afrikaans, I'd have known that they boy was yelling a suburb of Port Elizabeth out the window and not the part of the city we were staying in. 

Anyway, they pulled over and dropped us off at a taxi stand so we could catch a cab back to town. The problem was, there were no taxis waiting. We were both hungry, so we took off to explore some shops up the road. This part of town was obviously not for the tourists. It was completely made up of locals and was much more run-down than the parts of PE that we had seen so far. We walked around browsing some of the very authentic local shops until we found a KFC on the corner. We both thought that sounded good and went in to discover it was packed and we were the only non-locals in the place. We were alright though; it wasn't like people gave us threatening looks, they were more confused about how two college boys ended up there for dinner when there is another KFC much closer to campus. Regardless, we were lost and hungry, so we both ordered a Fully Loaded Box meal and quickly ate it. We then called a private taxi company from a business card the international office had given us and they came to pick us up from the address we gave them. (The only way we knew the location was from the KFC receipt!) For $8 total, the driver took us straight back to our hotel and our Kombi adventure was finally over. I would still take a Kombi again, but I would pay more attention to the route that they are going and make sure they know exactly where we want to go. But hey, we got one heck of an adventure out of the deal.

Walking to Campus

Registering for Classes

Somewhere in Port Elizabeth