Initiation Week

Did you know that ICU has another name? Some people call it Isolated Crazy Utopia. I thought it was ridiculous at first, but now I'm starting to believe it.

Dorm life at ICU is a lot different from dorms in the US, I think I can safely say. For one thing, we pretty much run our own dorm. A cleaning lady comes in to clean the bathrooms, empty the trash, clean the floors, etc., but we take care of the dorm by ourselves besides that. People have chores and committees and if you don't comply, you're letting everyone down. We're more of a community than a dorm.

Whenever new students come in, they have to go through what's called "Initiation Week." I still think it's a form of hazing, but it's over now, so I'm not worried about it. We were warned about this a bit before we came here, but I never, ever expected how time-consuming it would be.

Here's how it works: new students dress up in ridiculous costumes all week so they can stand out. The newbies pick the theme themselves, and, yes, we wear the same costumes for all 5 school days. On the final day, we perform a 3.5 minute dance that we choreograph ourselves. The dance was especially terrifying to me because I have ZERO dance experience. (Well, okay, I went to a couple meetings of Belly Dancing Club, but I never practiced.) So, on top of orientation activities, dorm meetings, and starting classes, we were spending 2+ hours (mainly at night) every day to perfect this dance and our costumes. My dorm's theme was the 7 Dwarves from Snow White.

Debbie Downer Warning: In all honesty, the only time I actually enjoyed doing this was when the whole thing was finally over. I'm one of those people that NEEEEEDS free time, and when I don't get it, I get really emotionally unstable (which prompted me crying in class that one time and a couple of other times besides). Luckily, one of my friends (who is head of the culture committee here) was nice enough to let me tearfully call her and explain that I wasn't having any fun and I couldn't learn the dance and I didn't feel like I was getting anything out of this...to which she responded that she felt the same way, but the point of it is to make all of the new students feel closer to each other. I felt a bit better knowing it wasn't really supposed to be "fun."

Okay, enough whining. A lot of you have already seen the video on Facebook that I was tagged in, but I might as well post it here. This is the performance (if you can even view it; if not, sorry! This is from my friend's Facebook page)

Videoooo.

Overall, I guess it did make me a lot closer with the other new students.

Just be warned that this will happen and you will have to do it if you're considering studying abroad at ICU, but don't let it influence your decision too much, because it's only for a week (even though that week will feel like forever).