Nieuws - 24 augustus 2011

Wageningen needs your smile

Last Wednesday morning, two days before the start of AID, I payed a visit to Forum. I wondered what the freshies would look like.

My babies of my AID group, I'm a mentor!
First I came to a long-haired girl, sitting with her mother and her brother. She looked quite tired. 'Excuse me, may I ask some questions?' My request didn't seem that welcome: they looked to each other for a while, finally the girl replied 'Yes' reluctantly. During the interview she asked me to repeat the questions for several times and appeared a bit impatient. (Is it because of my terrible accent or bad looking? I hope not.) In the end I got no info from her except that she's Polish and too fatigued to speak a word. Such a start was a bit disappointing, I felt like biting the dust.
To regain my confidence and guts, I decided to turn to a Chinese, kind of my comfort zone. I directly asked him the question which I most concerned myself with: what's your first impression of Wageningen University? 'Boring and strange, I don't like it at all,' he even gave a frown. What a flabbergasting remark; actually he was not a new student here but a third-year Bachelor in Rotterdam. 'The city is too small, I prefer living in the big cities where I can have more entertainment.' Ok, one man's treasure is another man's garbage. Also thanks to him, I realized Wageningen is not Mr. McDreamy to everybody.
The last person I talked to was called Biho, a Ugandan. Different from the prior interviewees, his amicable smile made me feel comfortable to chat with him. 'Can you use one word to sum up your first impression of this school?' I asked. 'Em...' he thought for a while, 'I would like to say 'challenging'. Although I received a lot of help from the considerate and responsible crews, it's hard to start my life from living in Ede, a bit far from the campus,' he expressed his worry, a nagging problem for many new students. 'Don't worry too much, your smile tells you can go through it.' I meant it, not some inane consolation: an optimistic smile indicates the ability to overcome difficulties in life. We gave eachother a firm handshake to end our talk.
Wageningen was all about the AID in the past few days. Unfortunately I didn't recognize new smiling faces on the street. Whether it's just a coincidence or this village is really losing his charm? I don't know. Is Wageningen a heaven or a dull town? The answer is up to you. Wageningen needs your smile to make it better.


Vid of the week: Let's cheer for this sensational lipdub again!