Hey, y’all! I know you’ve been waiting anxiously for my next post (not). Well, here it is. It took an obscenely early flight from Orlando International Airport to LAX, a three hour layover, a short flight to Oakland Airport which I slept through, and a 15 minute Uber ride, but MOMMA I MADE IT! I was ridiculously tired yesterday so I half-unpacked and then passed out for two hours, but it’s starting to hit me that I am in California and this is happening.
Yesterday, everyone was pretty worn out and nervous about the PLACEMENT TESTING (DUN DUN DUN). Everyone who wasn’t a complete beginner had to take the exam which was split into four parts: Reading, Writing, Grammar, and the OPI (Oral Proficiency Interview). We were allotted 90 minutes for the reading and writing portions, 60 minutes for the grammar part, and up to 15 minutes for the interview. As one of my professors explained at dinner last night, the tests were designed to gradually get harder in order to determine what we know and don’t know in order to sort us into different levels. As always, my test-taking strategy was to do all the questions I knew and not waste time staring at what I didn’t know (this method has worked out very well over the last 20 years).
I don’t want to say too much, but I got through the reading portion pretty easily until the second to last section where I used my educated guessing skills. The writing part played out similarly. The prompts were reminiscent of exercises we did in AP Spanish and French where we’d write emails to a friend or describe a cultural feature. The last prompt asked for 150-200 words but I was exhausted at that point, so I’m not even sure how much I even ended up writing (whoops). Thanks to my preparation over these last three weeks, the grammar part was pretty much a piece of cake (alhamdulillah). I just finished the OPI less than an hour ago. I’d only ever done OPIs for Russian before so I was kind of nervous going in, but I stuck to my old habit of steering all conversations towards my love of languages (which I can thankfully talk about for hours in all of my languages). I’ll find out tomorrow if I made it into level 3 #pray4toni
Day 2 Observations
- It is way colder than I anticipated and I was expecting the worst. This is an exaggeration of course, but seriously. I just (okay three weeks ago) left Vermont aka the Tundra and I’m going to Russia after this, so I was looking forward to blistering heat like at home. I’m going to need to buy a comforter and another jacket pronto.
- Mills’ campus is gorgeous, but also super similar to Rollins College (a school in Orlando) so it feels like I didn’t really leave home. The food is 100x better than Midd’s and seems a lot healthier as well! The gym is also pretty close, so I might join team #fitfam this summer.
- Mills is also pretty inaccessible for differently-abled people. Whoever designed the dining hall not only put it atop a very steep hill but also had the audacity to add a set of stairs going up to the door. I can’t imagine how hard it would be to access the building if I were on crutches or in a wheelchair.
- I came in with a huge advantage in terms of friends because I know people from my Arabic class who are here. We should all probably branch out though because you can already see cliques forming #yikes #highschoolalloveragain
I’m getting in my fill of English language music (#nowplaying the Dixie Chicks) and articles. We sign the Language Pledge (trademarked) tomorrow afternoon around 2, but it doesn’t go into effect until 7am on Monday morning. There’s a mandatory information session tomorrow at 9 so I won’t get to check out the church that I found online. I’m looking forward to settling in to a routine soon because I’ve never been good at not getting bored during vacations. From here on out, my posts will be in Arabic. I’ll try to include lots of pictures, but if you really love me, you’ll use google translate to read my posts (Cue “Real Friends” by Kanye).
Okay, it’s time for another nap; bye for now!
