Orientation

Today is the first day of orientation, all classmates and professors join together in Anheuser Busch Hall. An introduction to this university and more important, to this law school, was made by the Dean Syvrud. And then Ms. Greenhaw and Mr. Koby briefed us about the coming course Intro to US Law & Methods. Dean Keeting, Ellis and Glumsky gave us precious advices on how to select courses, like JD’s first year course or upper-level course etc.

The Dean of LLM program, Dr. Shoresman and all the other professors of Washington University law school are really trying to speak English as simple as we international students can understand. I highly appreciate their effort, mention that Ms. Sarah, who explained all the email from the entire LLM class of 2010, without this lady, I can have a chance to be in Wash U.

I found it’s still some kind of cannot follow the native English speaker, especially conversations between natives. Ms. Greenhaw kindly told us that it’s ok, and told everybody not to be shy, speak a lot, write the assignment on the time and hand it in. It will take a month to get use to native speaking English. Mr. Koby added that do not forget to join workshop specially with US students in the courses. These advices seem useful, and I gonna try them all later, let’s see.

Also, I make some new friends, Pong from Thailand, who is interested in Chinese culture. He knows the historical character like Wu Sangui and Chen Yuanyuan. This guy is funny. Dr. Luo Wei, the lecturer from Quanzhou, China, JD&MLIS, will meet the class tomorrow. I am looking forward to his research lab.

Though all things are fresh and funny, now I have to deal with the case reading assignment for tomorrow. Yep, keep reading cases and cases, the Dean said we'd better quit Facebook and Twitter. That's OK.  Haha, except for these books which I cannot running from, life on this campus would be a joyful time for me, I believe.

Sunshine, storm, hail and ... sunshine

7:05 p.m Edmonton,
I entered my lab. The sky was clear, the sun was bright. The light was too strong and I had to drop down blinders to block it out.

7:15 p.m Edmonton,
It's getting dark outside. I rolled up blinders. Oh my god~, just 10 minutes, the sun had been totally covered by clouds. A huge strom was attacking the city: lighting splited the sky, thunder sounds went through my thick glass window, and rains beated the whole building. But where did so many clouds come from? Amazing!

7:20 p.m Edmonton,
Seems my imagination still could not follow the weather here. Only after 5 minutes, the rain storm changed to the hail! Like thousnads of bullets, they dived from sky to the earth. Terrible.

7:35 p.m Edmonton,
What?? Sunshine?? Again? I was really really shocked to see the sunlight again and, the sky was totally clear. Everything was in peace. Like nothing happened before. How could that be! The whole process may even not be longger than half an hour.

This happened a few days ago. Now I am not so surprise about weather like this, because it happens a few times after that. Some friends told me they usually get this kind of stuff in summer.

I still remember that when I was in high school, my teacher told me people in English speaking country uauslly talked about weather for polite, but now I guess this reason may need to be updated. People talk about weather because it does change too fast, at least, in the summer of Edmonton.