This week we are
celebrating throwback Tuesday with a flashback to the start of the semester. John
Urban, American Academic Coordinator at the HNC, takes a look back to the first
couple weeks of the semester—from orientation to the Mid-Autumn festival.
HNC’s first week of classes ended nicely with an HNC-wide
party to celebrate the mid-Autumn festival. As any student would attest,
orientation week and the first week of classes are busy, but for completely
different reasons.
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| 2015 HNC Cohort |
Orientation week contains many important meetings like
introduction to life at the HNC, academic policies, course introductions, and
for international students, applying for residence permits. This is all on top
of adjusting to a new city, new school, new faces, and new roommate!
Below are some selected events from the first two weeks.
On Tuesday, students
elected representatives to the 班委 (banwei), or student government.
The banwei is elected every semester and is in charge of organizing events as
well as acting as the official representatives between the student body and the
administration. It is composed of four members: one Chinese male, one Chinese
female, one international male and one international female. After having the
candidates talk before the entire student body, everyone votes for their
preferred choice of the above four categories. One of the banwei members,
Chelsea Toczauer, is one of the contributors to this blog!
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| The Banwei (right to left): Brendan Melchiorri, Deng Jing, Chelsea Toczauer, Deng Yitao |
On Thursday
night, students enrolled in the HNC Certificate/SAIS MA program attended a
virtual meeting with Julie Micek, the Academic Affairs Director at SAIS. Student
in this program spend one year in Nanjing completing the certificate and then
spending three semesters in Washington, D.C. at SAIS completing their MA. Micek
explained the course transfers for different concentrations, the differences
between concentrations and specializations, and specifically, which courses at
HNC have been approved at SAIS.
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Faculty and students participate in dance competitions
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With classes beginning, students worried less about
orientation and finding their way around the HNC, and more about which courses
they wanted to choose, and having to do readings in Chinese.
After frenzied planning, the students put on a talent show
and held a party that capped off an exhilarating week of classes, but also, and
equally as important, served as a celebration of the Mid-Autumn festival.
Whereas last year’s talent show was rained out and held later in the
auditorium, this year’s weather was perfect. Under a full moon, students
showcased their widely varying talents: Latin dancing, traditional Chinese
songs, modern takes on old Chinese dances, professors and students competing to
see who could best do the dance to “Gangnam Style and a dance to military
songs. The show continued with a skit about the moon goddess Chang’e, and a
faux dating game, and a bilingual Disney song medley rounded out the night’s
events. It was a truly delightful mix Chinese and Western, old and new. With the
Co-Directors acting as judges, the skit about the Chinese moon goddess Chang’e
took first. Second place was 1st year MAIS Slater Rhea performing
two Chinese songs, while third went to the dancing professors.
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| Chang'e Skit |
Stay tuned for ghoulish a ghoulish post and pictures for the
upcoming Halloween Party!
Written by John Urban,
American Academic Coordinator
