If you’ve been to Friday Bible Studies you know that our post bible study activities are limited to Barrows Hall. We have had trips to Fenton’s or SF but that’s a rare treat. Two weeks ago we decided it was time for a change. We divided into teams and ran out, literally, into the night for our very first photo scavenger hunt!
Ok so what exactly is a photo scavenger hunt, you ask?
The scavenger hunt is basically a game where people, either individuals or teams, are given a list of items or activities they have to do (all free things) to accomplish. Whoever comes back first or within the allotted time wins. Except in our case, people were given a list of places to find on campus and take photographs as a team…some of the pictures turned out to be hilarious. Here are some of the highlights. Continue reading
For the third part of the Connect series, we filled up 110 Barrows Hall, the room we will use for the rest of the semester. I was personally very surprised to see the hallway outside filled with people, pizza, and conversation- and all before 6:30pm. We started by watching our first video about Peter and the lab experiment and then an awesome video about a grad students fluctuating self-worth as he interacts and compares himself with the people around him. Dr. Chul Kim gave a message along the same lines about how we view people in our lives. You can listen to it here:
The excitement of receiving and welcoming new international graduate students continued in Part 2 of our Graduate Student Welcome Night series. Although the stress of school has begun to mount for some of our students, many of the new friends managed to join us again for the second Welcome Night. We also met many new friends. We once again packed Lipman Room with about 100 attendees. 
The long awaited Graduate Student Welcome Nights (Part I) finally took place on Friday, August 28, at Lipman Room (Barrows Hall, 8th floor). At the event, we had well over 100 attendees, who came from many different countries: Turkey, France, Germany, Korea, China, Iran, India, Greece, and right here in the U.S.
We participated in the I-House Resource Fair on 8/19 at 2-4pm to meet and welcome the new batch of Berkeley international graduate students. There were a number of tables there to provide services and information to the students. I appreciate this annual Resource Fair hosted by the International House because it provides a one-stop shop for all the international students to know what kind of resources are around them. We set up our welcome table with our new banner and picture boards at this event, too. We also showcased our new torpedo pens that have our new group name “IGSM” and domain name “www.igsmonline.org” on them.
As you can see from the picture on the left, a lot of students came to this event and looked for information that could help them settle on this campus. We gave them our English Class and Graduate Student Welcome Nights flyers. Many students took interests in the English class. Our English Class instructor, Carolyn, was right there to meet the new students and answered their questions. Many of the IGSM students also helped out with tabling and flyering at this event, meeting new students and sharing their experience at Cal.