Today was our first day in the orientation program, which lasts throughout the whole month of August. Of course, as usual, I woke up a lot earlier than I was supposed to. I felt like I couldn't let anything happen to the first day. I didn't really trust the alarm clock on the cell phone, so I woke up an hour before it went off.
Anyway, the first thing that caught my attention was the size of the university. The Burnaby campus if just huge and also very beautiful, of course, as it sits on the top of Burnaby mountain. From where I'm staying at the residence hotel until the grocery shop on the other side of campus it is a 15-minute walk. So, you can imagine how not nice it is to go grocery shopping and have to walk all that distance with heavy bags. I guess this is one of the things I will just have to get used to, since I might never have a car here.
The second thing is that everyone - and I repeat, everyone - was in class at least about 15 minutes before everything started. I guess that even the coordinator got a little surprised, I think she mentioned something related to that. This is the kind of thing that would never happen in Brazil. As we know, brazilian people are always running late and some people believe that it is actually nice not to be on time for things, be it a meeting or just to go to lunch with friends. I'm not here to say bad things and criticize Brazil, but this is the kind of thing that makes me sad about my own country, and I strongly believe that it should never happen. Nobody should ever feel bad for their own country. I do miss Brazil a lot. I miss the brazilian people, my people.
This is the next topic. The lack of brazilian people and what I idea I have from this. Of course, there are brazilians everywhere in the world and Vancouver would not be an exception. However, I'm having difficulty finding brazilian people in the campus. I haven't seen any sign of any brazilians. I know that the classes will start in September but I was hoping to see some brazilian people. About that, in my classroom I'm part of two minorities. First one, I'm the only south american, or even, american in the classroom, everyone else is asian. Second, there are only 2 boys in the classroom, which are me and a chinese guy. Even though I'm very friendly and it's easy for me to make friends and talk to everyone, today I felt like I didn't belong there. I saw all those chinese people speaking chinese to each other while we were on the campus tour, and I didn't have anyone to talk to, in portuguese or even spanish.
What I understand and analyze from that is that south american people are, indeed, too poor. I'm not talking about money, I'm actually talking about the opportunities. I know that there are tons of rich people all around South America, but most of them don't even give a damn about their education. They come from rich families and just inherit everything without any efforts or any dreams of their own. Once again, I feel bad when I don't see my own country participating in the important things of the world. There are 20 chinese people in my class, out of the 23 attending orientation today. The question really is: why? Why aren't there people from other nationalities in the classroom? This is something I hope to find an answer as I progress through life here.
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