BLOGS

 'Describe your favourite part of the freshmen orientation' 

Having 'survived' through two extremely boring orientations before I came to the Education City, I wasn't looking forward to the freshmen orientation at all ! And to make matters worse it also had to be a long four days of orientaion =/  In fact, I was one of those people who were waiting for the orientation to get over fast. 

Contrary to the fact that I was not looking forward AT ALL to the orientation I was really excited to see Carnegie Mellon's architecture, its grandeur, and ofcourse the atrium. I got off the bus and the first thing that came into my mind when I saw the building in front of me was ofcourse...... "just how hot the weather was that dayy !"  taking a deep breath I crossed the road and the second thought that came into my mind was "OMG that's one lonnggg walk way!! " and then when I reached near the gates it opened by itself just like magic =D

So far so good. I walked through the East-West walkway and when I turned left I felt as if someone just punched me on my stomach. There were just too many new people out there ! and not just new people , there were different types of peple ! tall people , short people ohh I meant people from different countries, speaking different languages, and having different cultural backgorunds. I was really confused and didn't know what to do and found myself getting shy *irritated face* after all this was the first time I have changed my school, my city and my country. I was really uncomfortable. 

Then I heard Bilal ( one of our HOCs) shout 'TARTANSS' and all the OCs shouting 'AHOYYY'. And since we had a pirates theme throughout the orientation,this call marked the official start of the Carnegie Mellon Freshmen Orientation 2011 ! "I think I made it sound like the starting of a football game=s" well the activities that followed consisted mainly of ice breakers like there was one chinese whispers, and one that involved everyone to stand in a  circle and follow the leader. Well I need not go into to what what we did in the orientation so I'll just skip to the part I liked the best about our Orientation. 

Hmm, the activity I liked the most was  making the tower activity. The tricky part was to make the tower with balloons and the winners were to be the one who'll build the tallest tower ! We were given three big packets of balloons and we had to work as a team to blow them, tie them, then stick the balloons together all around the tallest guy in the group. What seemed simple took a lot of effort and after the allotted time was over, I could see the once scatterred groups gathered all together around their towers and taking photographs, everyone smiling, chatting, laughing Carnegie Mellon didnt really seem new to me then, it felt like home..ok ok enough emotions for a day =P I still haven't told my favourite part as yet *evil smile* the winners were announced and we heard some balloons bursting and then there was a chain of people bursting all the balloons. Everyone was bursting any balloon they could find ! People were jumping on balloons with wide smiles on their faces " just like this :D :D " it was sooooo much fun too !  and that moment we weren't just bursting balloons but we also burst out of our own nutshells :-) 

This was the Carnegie Mellon Freshmen Orientation. And a lot of the thanks to all the HOCs, the OCs and oh the red shirts too "sorry I forgot what you were called" . Had it not been for the wonderful orientation you guys prepared it would not have been possible for me to not only make the transition from high school  to university but also from one country to another country. TARTANS AHOY :-)

Name:Tanzeel Huda
Carnegie Mellon University
Class of 2015