If you?re anything like the 34.2 million Americans who tuned into the Opening Ceremony of the Beijing Olympics, you probably spent the last few weeks glued to the TV watching athletes dive, jump, spike and run.
Most of you spent your summers in enjoyable ways: family vacations, lounging in the sun or resetting your sleep cycle back to that of a hibernating bear.
Most of us had never visited Shanghai, the modern city of 20 million where we would spend nine weeks learning Mandarin Chinese.
Culture shock. The term is typically reserved for the unprepared tourist?s excursion into developing countries.
My long journey to Turkey has finally concluded, and so far, the thing I both love and hate about Turkey is the paperwork.
At the University, a student may swim at the Aquatic & Fitness Center, bike up O-Hill, run down Rugby, motor through McCormick or crawl on the Corner.
The contents of a University student?s refrigerator probably look much like they did in past years: groceries and leftovers from home or eating out.
Less than four months ago, when the countdown to final exams entered single-digits and thousands of University students scurried across Grounds to meet study buddies and print term papers, the increasing stress level of many U.Va.
Expecting nothing less than to come back to the University a completely different person, I replay the events of my summer as I ride home on an Amtrak train and try to convince myself that I have in fact changed.It took me one bus ride and four trains to get from Glen Spey, N.Y.
Unless you?ve been living under a rock or in a cave these past two weeks (or both, if you can manage it), you know that the Olympic Games have completely captivated audiences worldwide.
Just two hours from Charlottesville, you can experience not just a taste, but a whole heaping platter of Korean culture.
Pairing wine with food is one of the more daunting tasks of the experienced connoisseur. In many ways, it is the ultimate goal of honing your tasting technique.
It seems that for as long as humans have been walking the Earth, they?ve been trying to pick out what separates them from mere ?beasts.? Everything from language to sex positions to the use of tools has been proposed, but simple observation contradicts each claim.
This past weekend, Grounds was a flurry of stuffed SUVs and discarded cardboard boxes as students prepared to begin their fall semester.
If you?re like me, nothing is more enjoyable than the Olympics. Every four years, you are suddenly free to drop everything and spend two weeks pretending you actually gave a crap about these sports all along.American sports fan during the Olympics: ?Ooh, go back, it?s gymnastics!
New faces are not the only change at the University this fall. When upperclass students return, they will be met by a new first-year class as well as by updates across Grounds.
First-years: Let me begin by commending your bravery. You have recently endured a difficult few days of saying goodbye to your friends and families back home, packing away your entire lives and arriving to a foreign place only to realize you don?t have air conditioning (unless you live in Kellogg, Woody or Cauthen, and if so, get prepared to hear a lot of your new friends whine).It is likely you brought a formidable array of belongings with you to Charlottesville.
What?s up, first-years. I?m the columnist who each week tackles the hard-hitting issues, such as which sorority T-shirt designs are, like, the most award-worthy, how to walk across campus without inspiring anyone to maim you, and which bathrooms around Grounds are the best to pee in.
"So, uh, is this the bordello?" Maybe I should have said it louder. But, you know, one tries to be discreet.
Recently, the University's Alumni Association hosted its annual Reunions Weekend: the ultimate chance for more than 4,000 devoted alumni to relive memories, catch up with old friends and tease their nostalgic whims by seeing how much things have really "changed" since their time as students. With the advent of computer technology, multifaceted diversity and architectural expansion, it seems that our predecessors would recognize hardly anything but Jefferson's own Rotunda.
