First day of class

I had my first class of the semester this morning at 8am. The experience was completely unlike a year ago when I started my graduate work. Then I spent fifteen minutes wandering around campus trying to figure out which poorly labeled building I needed to go to. When I finally found the lecture hall, I entered to see a sea of students from south Asia; I was probably one of ten US citizens in that class of over 100. I knew nobody in there.

Today, I walked into the much smaller room to see eight other students (the other five showed up after me). I recognized all of them and knew seven of them by name. I was good friends with two or three of them. Today was much better.