second day of classes.

        First full day of classes. The bus showed up at Etisalat at 8:30am. It was a packed bus. I recognized some of the faces from the icebreakers we did last night with some other RIT Dubai students. Islamic Culture class 9:00 to 11:00. Then I found a spot in the library to do some work....and so did every other RIT USA kid haha. It sounds like the RIT Dubai students usually don't use the downstairs library area. So now, the 11 Americans have kind of set up camp there. Most us were uploading pictures, skyping with family, and updating blogs because the internet connection on campus is much better than in the dorms.
        Advanced Computational Techniques was from 1:00-3:00. This class is taught by Dr. Ghoneim, an RIT USA professor that most of us knew before we came over here. He is a great teacher. The ACT material we were covering is kind of confusing right now, mostly finite element analysis stuff, but so far he does a great job of explaining it. 
The best thing about the classrooms here is the Smartboards. Professor Ghoneim uses colors and highlights stuff and draws pictures and then all the notes he takes get posted online to MyCourses. It's awesome.
        Steve and I went to Mirdef City Center to look for some swimming stuff for the water park tomorrow. Oh yea, forgot to mention, ChaRon arranged for us to have a bus to take us to a water park tomorrow. Might I point out that it is December 6th....but also 78 degrees farenheit. TOTALLY AWESOME!!
Last class of the day was Renewable Energy Systems from 6:00-8:00. It's a graduate class made up of 90% RIT USA kids. The teacher seems like he will be great at teaching this topic. He's pumped about everything renewable energy related and he's pretty energetic while he is teaching. 

Think this awesome fridge would fit in a dorm?

        After school I was just hanging out in the boys lounge downstairs, uploading some pictures to my computer. Thistle (Andy), Dylan, Steve and then Kristin came to join. It was a laptop party! We only had one plug, and I was using it because I had set up in the lounge initially. Dylan had this great idea to get his power strip and plug it into my converter so we could all use the American outlets on his power strip. 
        Sooooo I was sitting closest to the outlet, so I plugged the power strip into the adapter. Then I went to plug the adapter into the outlet....and WHAP!! There was a huge spark and a ginormous popping sound and immediately the power strip started smelling like electric static and burning. It scared the bejeezes out of me! and also shocked the bananas out of my right arm! It was tingly for the next hour haha. Despite that minor set back, the laptop party was fun.