I was minutes from getting to my first party experience in the US and to actually confirm the fact that "University of Florida is a big party school." One of my recent friends who had been here for quite a while was kind enough to invite us to a party and also give us a ride in his car. The party was big and was a mix of students from all over the world. There wasn't much dance but lots of Hard Music "Metallica and Offspring types." It sure started feeling like America. The place was filled with drinks(hard and soft), food, music, frolic and a lots of colorful and beautiful people. For the next few hours I found myself really comfortable and enjoying myself and everybody treated me as a part of the gang. The feeling of making so many friends at one place was sure overwhelming.

It wasn't too late till the cops came in, and we realized that one thing that should definitely be done before arranging a party is to invite the neighbours, let them know that there will be loud music and seek their assent because it is quite possible that the neighborhood kintergarten kid might have an exam next day and his mom might just dial "911" (Emergency Number - for any emergency assistance like Police, Fire Brigade etc) to let her kid study. Well the cops don't take more than 5 minutes to come by and the party has to get over once they are there. Then what these people say is that the "Party Got Busted!".We were really unlucky not to even have had sufficient stuff to eat there and had to order a pizza over the telephone (24 hours service).

I had a pretty good weekend with another couple of get-togethers and parties, better than my first ones, and was getting used to the Party word and also the idea of hanging out coz in US nobody sits at home in the Weekend. It's only work through the week and only fun at the weekends.

Monday came and I was back to routine, there was a lot of work coming my way. My first homework was assigned with a specific deadline which had to be followed and also a specific format in which it had to be submitted (Electronic). The professors really love neat and formatted homeworks to be submitted and besides homeworks count a lot towards the Final Grade. The weightage might depend on course to course but generally homework accounts for about 20% of the grade along with projects and term papers which might count another 20% and exams(3-4 of them) counting the rest. The classes were really enriching and I began learning a lot. I got used to going to the Library because I discovered that there's nothing better for study than the Library. Most of the libraries in the US Universities are big with one location dedicated to each specific area of study. All book catalogs are online and generally there are about 300,000 volumes of books in each unit with 6 floors of seating space.

Life was getting speedy and I was advancing gears everyday. I remember rushing for the morning class missing my morning breakfast every Monday, Wednesday and Friday and then hunting for something decent to eat on campus. Initial days were hard when the mechanism of conversion of US dollars into rupees and using this conversion to find out whether things were expensive or cheap always occupied the mind, but soon I realized that I was in a different country altogether with different priorities and standards of living and I had to give it up to have good food. I still have not discovered anything close to the masale dar Indian food anywhere in Gainesville where I stay. The food menus here range from Mexican(Burritos and Tacos), Chinese, and a lots of American stuff (like burgers and sandwiches), most of these are non vegetarian by default (beef or pork which these guys call Ham), the availability of Indian food and groceries in any place very much depends upon the contribution of Indian population in that place in the US. There were 1-2 Indian grocery stores which I discovered them to be too expensive. My eating habits sure changed during all this and breakfast was all about Fruits, Juice and Bakery which was nothing close to the paranthas with makhan back there in India, but we guys sure used to cook good India food at night to keep the Indian taste alive on our tongues.

Not much later, the day arrived when I was supposed to begin work and I reported right on time. Everybody was courteous and all my seniors including the manager insisted on my calling him by his name (everybody loves to be addressed by their names). Everything was disciplined, centralized and monitored as a continuous process of performance audit for each and every employee. The first day went by understanding work and noticing how well other people work and subsequently trying to work better. The hours went by and I was incrementing my count 6 dollars every hour. At the end of the day I was rich by "36 dollars" and sure felt great.

Letter 3

Nitin Ahuja

Letter 5