I went to a Movie Night sponsored by a Christian group on campus (GBEU). It was marketed towards International students. We watched “October Sky,” one of my all time favorite movies. It was great. It was also pretty cool to watch that movie because the 50th anniversary of the launching of Sputnik occurs this week (October 4). I met some really great people. There were about a dozen people there and they came from Greece, Burkina Faso, California, Finland, China, Canada, Switzerland, Australia, and India.
Two students that I met from China live near me in Lausanne, so we ended up taking the Metro and Bus together. It was neat. I think that their English teachers must have been from the UK because they spoke with British accents.
It’s great to meet so many people from all over the world. I learned some interesting things about China. China has three time zones, but only one of them is used. The people in the east just start working earlier than the people in the west. Also, one of the students expressed her concern about how many people in China go off to other countries to study and then return to China to work. She didn’t think that this was bad, as she is doing the same thing herself; she just questions whether things learned in abroad are appropriate for China. For example, economics and politics in Western Europe are quite different than China. How can that knowledge be put in to practice in a positive way for China?
Another interesting fact: Studying for the GRE is quite popular in China because a lot of students hope to go to the US for Masters and Doctoral programs. The section that Chinese students study the most, and therefore do the best at: Grammar. This also happens to be the area that American students do the worst in. Interesting, considering the GRE is given in English.
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