To make a quick introduction of myself, my name is Vicky Su and I love doing Volunteer jobs. This line of self-introduction originates from the first day I moved into Whitman. When we introduced ourselves in my dorm section, we were asked to use “I like …” and then a word that started with the first letter of our first name. Some girls who were named “Anna” or “Alicia” could say “I like apples.” Unfortunately, I chose my English name “Vicky.” Therefore, I had nothing to say but “I am Vicky and I love doing Volunteer jobs”. However, I would love for you to just call me Vicky instead of Vicky Su.(I freak out when people call me by my full name, which reminds me of my Dad. Whenever he gets mad at me, he calls me by my full name.) I am an international student from Shenzhen (in case you have never heard of it, it is a southern city near Hong Kong, China). I attended a Christian high school in Boston, MA for the past two years. Now, I am a freshman at Whitman, as you can see. I would love to use this place to blog about my daily life, experiences, opinions etc. at Whitman. So here we go!
First, I would love to share a few highlights from my first four weeks of school.
Highlight one: I accidentally introduced a married couple who are both my professors to each other… I know it sounds bizarre but a lot of times things just happen in their own way, such as a boy meets a girl, a girl falls in love with a boy, or a freshman accidentally introduces her professors who are married to each other. I was in my French professor’s office hours. All of a sudden, my Encounters professor just jumped in. Due to the conversation I had with my Encounters professor the day before, I assumed he was looking for me. Therefore, I stood up, and introduced my Encounters professor (a gentleman) to my French professor (a lady). When I pointed my Encounters professor to my French professor, and said, “This is my Encounters Professor!” My French professor smiled at me and said, “I know him. He is also my husband.” My face was burning and I really wished I hadn’t just done that.
Highlight two: As a big fan of American movies, I am taking a film studies class this semester. I thought this class would be easy because we watch movies once a week in Hunter. Watching movies for me always has been a pleasure. I watched over a hundred of movies over the past two years in Boston, which is more movies than I had ever watched in my first 17 years in China. HOWEVER, I sincerely found out that the movies we watched for the class are too American to me. The movies contain lots of sexual subtext, which is obscure and hard for me to understand. For example, when we watched our first movie “Lady Eve,” there is a scene in which lady Eve sees a snake in a room and screams loudly. My professor asked us if anyone could catch anything from this scene, and some of my classmates who are Americans, pointed it out that the lady Eve must be a virgin, because she is scared of snakes and snakes always represent the penis in the U.S. This context was blowing my mind. The first reason is that snakes always represent fortune and wealth in China, which I don’t associate with sex ever. The second reason is that in China, we DON’T talk about sex in class, ever. After experiencing this culture shock, I was excited to look for any obscure content around me that has to do with snakes in order to practice my knowledge. So that Sunday, my dorm section was having a brunch with the all guys section from Jewett. When we introduced ourselves, we had to name our biggest fear. One of the boys said that his biggest fear is sneaks. Hearing this, I was about to jump up and exclaim, ” You must be a virgin!” Luckily, my reason conquered my emotions so I didn’t say anything. But as you know, my thoughts are like waves surging turbulently in my brain…
More highlights are in my next blog, “It starts from here… (Part 2).
