30th May 2011 - Day 1 @ Keystone

So today is the 30th of May and it is a public holiday in United States. It is their Memorial Day where they will honor those people who had contributed or sacrificed themselves for the country.

And today is also my first official day at Keystone. Woke up early in the morning and I was amazed by the stunning scenery it offers.

This was 8.20am in the morning, and it was still kinda foggy. The mountain far far away in the photo is the famous Mount Rushmore where it mainly attracts all the tourists to our Keystone. The forest surrounding it is the Black Hill forest which in fact it covers the whole area of Rapid City (which means that it is indeed a very large piece of forest).

And also today me and Laura went to Rapid City airport to pick up another Malaysian student before the three of us went for some grocery shopping at Walmart.

By the way, do you know how proud those Americans are whenever they mention about Walmart? Here is an example from Laura.

Laura : Do you have Walmart in Malaysia? Well, you know....Walmart.....has.....everything, from food to clothes etc...and even if you are given five hour in Walmart and I don't think you can finish shopping as well...

See, that is how high they rate their nation's largest grocery retail shop. And we spent an hour shopping at their food store for our 1 week food supply. Bought some spaghetti, bread, cereal, juice and other lots of stuffs. Total cost?? Only for $26.66. And yes, they do not have rounding system and every cent counts. And I like the concept of quater dollar over there. It means that instead of using 20 cents, they are actually using 25 cents. Funny.

And by the way, there is an interesting conversation happened between me and Laura while we were waiting for the other Malaysian student to arrive at the airport car park. Here is roughly how it went.

Laura : So, tell me more about Malaysia food. What do you eat usually? Are they spicy?
Me : Oh. we have lots of variety for food. And we have Malay food, Chinese food, Indian food and they all are different totally.
(and then we continue elaborated on the food stuff until a certain point)
Me : yea, because we have multi races in Malaysia.
Laura : Oh really, then how did these people come to Malaysia?
Me : oh that will have to involve a long piece of history.
Laura : Tell me about it, I love history.
(was thinking how am I gonna explain about it...)
Me : So during our country's colonization by the British, the Britain tried to expand their business in mining and rubber so they imported workers from China and Indian and then those workers settled down in Malaysia...
Laura : Oh I see, so who are in the land initially before their arrival?
(gosh, this is even harder to answer than final exam..)
Me : Well, they are called the native and we call them the Malay,
(then before I wanted to start elaborating on the Melaka Empire's story, I paused for a moment thinking that it didn't sound that correct due to my ego towards rejecting PERKASA's claim, so I tried to link it to another story)
Me : Well actually the Malays are the official native, but archeologists have found some ruins that actually Hinduism came long before them but they do not have solid prove to verify that.
Laura : Oh, I see.....

Gosh, I think I have just brought her to Holland (if you know what that means), I even tried to bring out the Lembah Bujang story to cover up my ego to recognize the thing that the Malays are enjoying some sort of special right just because they arrived (from Palembang) a few hundred years earlier. Well, it involves a lot of politic issue so I am not gonna talk about it again over here.

I hope I can perform better next time as a exchange student. =P

And tomorrow we are heading to Rapid City again to do our social security stuffs before we can start working the day after. And it seems like I don't have much problem on jet lag issue. I am yawning and waking up at the correct time always. =)