Fall Farm Party!!

Yesterday (Friday the 7th), we international students gathered for a while at a bonfire site off-campus - at Darby's house! 

Darby Woodard is one of the liaisons for international freshmen in the International Connection Program. Chrissy named it fancy - a "Fall Farm Party," in our meeting one month ago (Chrissy McCrary is the head of the ICP).

International Connection Buddies - Viet Le ('17) and Jake Saine ('16)

So, the Fall Farm Party is an exciting time to get off-campus, have a bonfire, roast marshmallows, grill burgers and hot dogs, and enjoy the company of friends! This event is open to international students of all classes and International Connection Program liaisons. We plan to make it an annual cozy gathering for this family of diversity at Furman!

I still remember Chrissy's excitement in her emails to her fellows: 

And it was SUPER FUN!! We arrived finding ourselves amazed at how beautifully everything was laid out: the tables, bonfire, food, and candles. The food: mac & cheese, burger, sweet potato were ordered from Mac's Speed Shop downtown - one of the few restaurants that ticked off with food quality itself rather than with PR and advertising. 

People stood in line for food and gathered at the bonfire. We served s'mores ourselves, had conversations with new people, and... hummed along some songs (in the case of me and Chrissy, we sang "I Knew You Were Trouble" (Goat Version) together).

Blake, Darby, Kilpy and I (from right to left)
 cuddled one another near a heater lamp

Braiding near the bonfire!

I love every event held by the International Admissions Office. The events always come with a warm feeling of similarity, open-mindedness, and welcome that brought all people together! 

International love with me, Sky Brilliandt, and Giang Nguyen

Halloween at Furman!!

Yesterday was such a blast!! 

I remember how excited I was after I got out of class and finished declaring my second major: Political Science with Dr. Kaup. I darted right towards the DH where Rick, who was in a black costume with the Naruto's Leaf Village's (Konohagakure) headband. He stood out among the DH crowd and got approached by quite a few people.

I dressed up like Jessie in Toy Story (Uhm, not quite but I have her cowboy boots, braid and hat!) and hung out with Rick the Naruto villager and Dove the cat. "What cat are you?" and Dove would say: "I'm just cat."

Dove the philosophical cat

Rick and I went to The Freaky Fiesta held by FUISA (Furman University International Student Association), CSA (Chinese Student Association), ASIA (The Association of Students Interested in Asia) and Baba Africa last night. There were: 

• Costume accessories for the Costume Contest
• A horror movie shown on a projector screen
• BONFIRE & S'MORES
• Hot chocolate and free snacks
• Lastly... Old friends and new friends gathering at the North Village Pavillion to catch up, share hugs, and have a great time together!!

I was not a selfie addict at night so I took only one selfie with my best buddy, although there were a lot of my friends who went to the fun event! 

Me (Jessie) & James Sturges (still James lol)

Anyway, I bet you guys had a spooky fun Halloween weekend!!

Immerse Yourself in Greenville Downtown Events

This month happened to be the most active-downtown month of mine!

First off, it is an event called Southeastern Regional Meetup by the University Innovation Fellows organization. The event carried an experiment in which random students from two universities in the South - Furman University and Clemson University - took a challenge of redesigning downtown eating experience for downtown diners. 

We were super excited for the event since Greenville city has been known for, besides its tranquil and healthily social environment, its so-called "Foodie paradise" reputation by both the locals and the visitors. 

Greenville downtown - Nightly peace

The Lazy Goat - look at such a beautiful view it has!

Basically, we teamed up and interviewed downtown people about their experience eating at downtown restaurants such as Gringos, The Lazy Goat, and Trappe Door. Then we drew out conclusions about remaining problems and picked one that we wanted to fix. 

My group decided on solutions to the slow, distractive service in the restaurants and invented some cool technological improvements to quickly notify the waiters to achieve prompt service. Guess what those were? They are iPads with at-door ordering options, waiter choice (with age, gender, characteristics indicated), and sensors on chairs and dishes!

The awesome thing was that after the event, we students realized our abilities to improve the community simply by such small things. We overcame the barriers of acknowledging that we were still college students and, all of the sudden, felt reinforced to work on our ideas and talked to people who could turn them into matters. 

Yes! Southeastern Regional Meetup implanted entrepreneurial spirit into our youthful and energetic mind.

Plus, I expanded my network with people all over the US, especially regional students and the UI Fellows. One of my favorite friends there is Rick Ferreira. 

Rick and me at the SMR event - goodbye time

We stayed in touch with each other since then by going to several events downtown together. The first one was his presentation about his internship at NASA last summer. It was held in Earth Fare by the Piedmont Humanists - a subgroup of the American Humanist Association in the Upstate South Carolina. I met some new friends, including Joe Melcardo the host of the AHA and one freshman at Furman named CJ Lane. After the meeting, we all became good friends: CJ always gives me an affectionate hug when he sees me on campus!

Also, we went to a talk about personal narratives by Jeremy Boeh - director of the Launch program at Wofford College in cultivating entrepreneurship among college students - at Beer & Napkins. The talk was about tactics on personal branding in business, especially in the start-up phase. During the talk, we learned to think of the stories in our life that matter, comfortably share with others, and come up with our own strengths and weaknesses that would go along with our entrepreneurial spirit.

That to say, if you intend to go for FU, you definitely don't want to miss tremendous opportunities that Greenville downtown offers for the locals and for Furman students!

Homecoming Started!!

Guess what: HOMECOMING WEEK JUST STARTED!! The whole school seems lit up with school spirit, sport games and post-midterm relief!

So here's the story: this year's Homecoming theme is DISNEY! HAVOC representatives dress on different Disney characters, like these guys:

Mulan by Danai

The Incredibles by Stephen

When I asked Uncle Google what is the story behind HAVOC at Furman, he gave me this blog post by AJ Calhoun in her HAVOC experience in 2011 - she was SPONGEBOB. So what do you do if you join HAVOC? The main objective of the competition is to compete with other HAVOC-ers in raising money for local charities.  AJ herself made a list:

1. You must remain in your costume at all times.

2. NO SHOWERING.

3. You are allowed three 10-min bathroom breaks a day.

4. When off from class you must be in the tent, with the exception of 7-9 AM: Breakfast; 11:30-2:30 PM: Dinner, when you must be in the DH.

5. Every night 1 or 2 people will be eliminated based on their performance in the challenge and the winner will be voted off by the other HAVOC-ers.

6. To make sure all these rules are enforced, a member of the FUSAB team will "babysit" the group 24/7.

We representatives of the Study Away Office also picked a theme (not for HAVOC, for the Disney school theme). 
Guess what movie these are in: "Let's get down to business" and "Mr. I make a man out of you!" Everyone in the office screamed in ecstasy; so, it seems that Mulan is in everyone's childhood!

(From left to right) Zac, Tien & Aneesh helped out painting

What's more, there was the Art Therapy event by APO today! Art Therapy has been the first event that we set up on the library steps, and it went awesome! There was:

• Improvisational music comprised of the violin, flute, and guitar
• The Paladin Network filming the event (with me being a camera operator)
• Students and Disney characters walking by, writing their worries and stresses on our Relief-It tree, shredding them hard and splattering paint all around. 

It was the greatest midterm stress reliever ever!

Here are how Nick Holt and Kelly Gansfuss released their stresses and had some fun!

The first Homecoming day was dynamic and enlightening! To those who stopped by the APO stress-pacifying section today, thank you so much for supporting us for our first event! 

Are you looking forward to having more fun in the upcoming Homecoming days? 'Cause I am!!

Sophomore Fall Break!!

I bet that Fall Break is the time when you guys will be bombed with our blog posts, since people will have been returned from fun trips all over the US (as in my case, I went to PA) or simply have a relaxing time at home!

Before the break, I visited downtown Greenville with my friends to chill out after killing two midterm tests. I had been studying all week, not to realize that only last-minute jumps were worth the effort, but that extended reading helped me a lot in open test questions (tips right here!). Darby Moore said good bye to me by her super cute, bluesy and literally hot-looking penguin pajama.

Greenville downtown with Danai and UIF!

Darbs’ bluesy penguin! 

My Fall Break to PA to meet high school friends was filled with traveling, random conversations and new-restaurant tryouts!

After a 24-hour bus trip (during which I had the chance to meet a lot of cool people luckily!), I arrived at the Lyco campus with my folks. We had some great discussions about different international student bodies in different campuses. Lycoming College (Williamsport, PA) has the biggest Vietnamese student body among the three (40 students), which motivates them to have more regular gatherings than we Vietnamese do at Furman. They have a China Cafe and the Lycoming mall nearby where they can hang out together. Bucknell University (Lewisburg, PA) has about 11 Vietnamese; they all blend in well with friends from other ethnicities and gather weekly to cook hot pot! It was great to hear from various perspectives to help improve the quality of the international body here at Furman!

I love the Market Street Bridge in Harrisburg, PA that we passed by. When I ask a French middle-aged couple what they think about the architecture of the bridge, they confirmed that it has some European styles and elements.

Market Street Bridge

So, three more cities are checked from my United States journey! Besides, it includes my first time Sushihana and Panera. And you know what; I miss the southern sweet tea so much that one of the first things I did when I got back to campus was taking a full glass of sweet tea!

P.s: I love traveling, travelers and their stories! Whoever you are, if you want to share your Fall Break journey or any traveling stories, please email me to samkristen.can@furman.edu to talk about traveling!

Teaching Boy Scouts with Alpha Phi Omega

Note: This event happened last week on Sep 20th.

Even though I have joined Alpha Phi Omega, a fraternity that promotes the spirit of "Be Of Service, Be A Friend and Be A Leader", which resembles Scout Spirit, I had never seen a boy scout in my life until last week at Clemson University. 

American boy scouts

It was a service called Merit Badge University in which APO members provided essential knowledge for boy scouts through whole-day lectures. At 7 AM, member of Alpha Eta Nu chapter of Furman University started heading to Clemson. There were hundreds of boy scouts in tens of lines - most of whom were high school freshmen.

I was the teaching assistant of the Citizenship in the World class. The lecture was delivered by two Clemson APO juniors. Most of the boys in my class were freshmen; the oldest one was a junior. We mostly talked about current events like Whether Scotland should gain independence over UK; Whether the US should treat Ebola-positive American citizens in the home country with top-notch researchers and doctors; and Whether the US should intervene in the Syrian Civil War. The boys were super energetic - they raised their hand for every single question that we brought up for discussion!

I could see the courtesy and honesty in every act inside and outside the classroom. After the courses, the boys gained Merit Badges as certifications. I'm sure that each of them learned something from the classes and therefore, they truly deserved the badges.

Samples of Merit Badges for Scouts

Overall, I loved the experience with my brothers and would love to go more! Isn't it a worthwhile experience being under the heat, waiting in an endless line for pizzas and talking to your brothers about your meaningful work?

Photos of the event in Furman APO closed group - All brothers at Furman!

Love doing service? Join Alpha Phi Omega - Be a rushee by attending our meeting any Wednesday 7:00 PM at Johns Hall 101!!

Live Tweeting - Have you tried?

I'm glad that I have had the chance to get exposed to social media savvy this much by taking the Digital Communication class at Furman. I am having and will continue to have a lot of experiences in Photoshop, Audacity and Premiere Pro to create videos, slideshows, podcasts, blogs and a personal website in a professional manner. One of the first things that I have learned during this first month is how to Live Tweet.

Live Tweet using LiveTweetApp

Live Tweeting requires not a ton but strategic preparations, especially in spreading the word so that people can follow your Twitter and get familiar with your hashtag. For example, I chose to live tweet the Moon Festival last night on Sep 19th (by the Furman Chinese Student Association) with the hashtag #moonfes. Before the event, I posted in Furman groups via Facebook to notify people of the information so that if they weren't able to come, they could search for the hashtag and see the whole event. (You can sit back and enjoy it too just by searching #moonfes and see the tweets by @samkristencan)

I also tweeted some heads-ups about Moon Festival like this:

I tweeted a few before the event started to warm up

Live Tweeting made my attendance more special and meaningful than ever before. I actively participated in the show by taking plenty of pictures and videos, plus paying attention to every juncture of the event. I captured main activities including most of the performances in the show. (Check out one performance on my Youtube channel!)

Shooting the #moonfes moments

Also, I acquired 30 more followers thanks to #moonfes! Imagine each morning waking up and seeing Twitter's notifications: 5 more friends are now following you!

Experience in social media now seems to be endless. Each skill I gain opens my eyes to a multitude of things that I can do with social media, such as my Live Tweeting lesson shows. Thanks to Digital Com, I will have a ground for personal branding, because polishing a good-looking personal website and online portfolio can actually earn you real-world jobs!

"HireArt's vetting process found that companies are seeking employees with social media know-how. But getting a job in social media is about more than following your favorite celebs on Twitter and trolling Facebook for the funniest statuses. There's strategy involved in using a social network to promote, and employers are specifically seeking those with search engine optimization and search engine marketing skills." - USNews.com

So start thinking about crafting your image in social media professionally and don't forget to stay tuned for more Furman experiences in my blog!!

Follow me on Twitter: @samkristencan; Facebook: Sam Kristen and Blog: samkristencanfurman.blogspot.com to know more about FU!!