Breaking Ice

12:30pm today we had a long-awaited lunch meeting.  For the first time, we members of the American cohort finally got to meet the members of the Chinese cohort!  This is all pretty sudden for them because it wasn't until 2 days ago that they found out whether or not they got in.  Every single one of them ranked IBCE as their first choice among various programs of study.  We've yet to see whether or not they're going to give us a run for our money, but I have my suspicions.  It seems that 13 out of the 20 new kids all went to the same high school--a magnet school for college-bound students pursuing business and commerce.  So yeah, they might just know (a lot) more about business than we do.  The good news?  Every single one of our new friends is native to Hong Kong, which means their Mandarin is just as bad as (and sometimes worse than) ours.  Way to boost my confidence!  Here's the picture of everybody (I'm in the second row from the bottom on the far left):

To meet everyone, we had a casual lunch meeting at the University Guest House.  I was expecting more dim sum, as that seems to be the food of choice for these occasions, but instead we had a western-style lunch complete with speeches in both English and Mandarin.  All in all, I think 4-5 languages were flying around the room, but we all had a great time.  Yammy Lai and Glos Ho made sure we were all well-dispersed so that we could mingle with each other and, thankfully, what I thought was going to be an awkward lunch turned out to be anything but!

Needless to say, we were all pretty intrigued by each other, but I think (or at least hope) that I speak for everyone when I say we found more common ground than differences.  We all quickly made friends, exchanged phone numbers and email address, and talked about a lot of common interests.  Unfortunately, English was the language of choice, but we're all trying to get into the habit of the Americans speaking in Mandarin while the Hong Kongers speak in English.  That way, everyone gets practice.

After lunch, we weren't ready to part ways, but it was so incredibly hot we couldn't just hang around outside.  Our solution was to pile onto the bus headed back to the dormitory and just take all 20 of our new friends with us!  In the dorms, we all hung out and got to know each other even more.  I haven't met everyone yet, but there is a contact list going around with phone numbers, email addresses, etc.  Plus, everyone is currently adding everyone else on (you guessed it) Facebook.

For your amusement, I'm making a slight detour to explain the Mandarin word for Facebook:  fei si bu ke.  Say it out loud, and you'll see that it's just an imitation of the English word.  What's funny is that it literally translates to "You must die."  Ominous much?

Anyway, enough morbid humor.  We hung around with everyone up until 4:30pm or so, after which things started to disperse.  I love my new friends, and I can't wait to get to know everyone better.  I'm just so glad that we finally have the complete inaugural IBCE group.