BLOGS
The theme for this year’s New Student Orientation (NSO) was the ‘Hoya Cup’. The coordinators thought that it would be best to use the world cup fever to develop and generate a theme around it. Being a Foreign Service school, as coordinators we felt the need to tie in politics to the theme. So we had 6 teams headed by 6 political figures competing for pride and glory. The 6 political heads were Mahatma Gandhi (India), Nelson Mandela (South Africa), Gamal Abdelnasser (Egypt), Barack Obama (U.S.A), Ahmedinijjad (Iran) and Angela Merkel (Germany). When we chose these leaders we made sure we picked some controversial figures too, just to spice things up a bit. Each team was awarded points based on their performance in an activity or game.
This year’s NSO was more challenging because it was during Ramadan and so we had to restrict ourselves to indoor games and activities. Café Ceramique was a success once again for the 3rd time where every student made his/her own tile which would go up on the wall and placed beside tiles made by previous classes. One of the highlights of NSO 2010 was the visit to Sheikh Feisal Museum where students got an opportunity to look at the Sheikh’s personal collections. An awards ceremony was held at the museum where each team came up with a performance and entertained students and officials alike. After some very close calls, team Abdelnasser emerged winners and was awarded the Hoya Cup.
The coordinators for this year’s orientation were Bushra Alam (Class of 2013), Malik Habayeb (Class of 2013) and myself. We had a great time planning the orientation and this experience definitely helped us improve our leadership and organizational skills.
Jibin George Koshy
Coordinator NSO 2010
Class of 2012
Georgetown University
