My Classes:
All of my classes are very cool so far, we’ve had a limited amount of homework, but there is a massive amount of reading and studying to be done, I’m really enjoying it.
All of my teachers have email address, and they all use them - they are big into power point presentations (my psych teacher has interactive ones for every class, with built in videos to emphasize her points). Buffalo is certainly wired for sound, audio, visual and internet.
Many of my classes don’t have finals or papers due (apparently the teachers don’t like to grade them, as much as the students don’t like to write them…go figure) so they base your final grade on a series of quizzes (and some teachers give you bonus points for actually showing up to class, which isn’t mandatory for all classes).
Another neat fact is that the teachers upload their notes to a website that is custom made for each student, so we don’t have to have them slow down their teaching, all we do is write down some facts on top of the notes they wrote for us.
All of my classes are very very good so far (my World Civ teacher greeted us with a Buddhist blessing, and will be teaching us about ancient Chinese healing methods, English 102 is basically students discussing whether a writer has a good argument or not, and us writing papers - which is very cool because the entire class is able to do it appropriately, and respectfully which didn’t happen last year in High School).
The Buffalo Area:
The Buffalo area is pretty neat (and it has a lot of fun things to do, if you know where to look). I’m on North Campus, which is technically in Amherst. From my campus, I take a free inter-campus bus 20 minutes over to the South Campus and then I have access to pretty much the rest of the region.
Downtown Buffalo is like a little tiny village, and it’s pretty nice (although there are a few not so pretty areas). But to get anywhere downtown you take the single line transit (’subway’) to get there. It is a straight shot down Main Street (underground part way, above ground part way), and from there, you can get to the theater district, all of the coffee houses, the old bookstores and more, you use this road to get anywhere in the downtown area.
Every Thursday night there are free concerts in the park (in season), and SPoT Coffee is a very cool coffee house to go to (a lot of students from UB go there).
Friends:
Yes, I’ve made some 
and I’m running into some friends from high school as well.
Dorm Life:
Is, well, interesting. asides from the fact that somehow we managed to get locked out of the bathroom at 3 am everything’s going pretty well. It would definitely be an interesting study for an anthropologist.
The thing is, is that we have a few students who are having probably one of the longest and (perhaps) one fot he most retarded pissing contests I’ve yet to witness:
One of them has a 700.00 subwoofer, the other has a 600.00 subwoofer, and they are trying to see which one can out do the other, which basically means the 600.00 person is playing “house” music, the 700.00 one is playing rap - the end result is that all of us are either
a - shutting ourselves in the kitchen and ask before opening the door, asking “friend or foe” and then getting weird looks from the RA who is on the floor a total of once a week, from what we can see. Although this doesn’t really help as we can feel the floor vibrate. We may put up a sign reading “secret hideout” if we find the time and can manage to locate some markers.
b - going to the library, which is okay, but as we have all found out, no one actually uses the library often, its quite bizarre. A few of the grad students who were talking with us told us how they went there to take out a book a maximum of three times in their college career (again, everything, including books is done online; even online borrowing - to do a research paper, just log into the Library’s wesbite).
c - Go to SPoT
d - Blast Yanni back at them… “Ha, take that…new age will get you!! muhahahahaha!!!” (this one, on observation, has not been as successful)
Food:
As I’m quickly finding out, I should have gotten the smallest meal plan possible and just used dining dollars, the food here is, while techincally and legally considered edible, perhaps questionable to feed to prisoners of war.
Overall:
I’m loving it, the place is great, the classes are great, the entire area is just…a college town, no one dumbs themself down for classes, the proffesors are into teaching, and really enjoy it when we can get a good class discussion going on - my teacher who has over 800 students knows my name, it’s pretty impressive. The campus is gorgeous (or as gorgeous as a campus comprised of entirely red bricks can get), and Downtown Buffalo is alot of fun, it’s a place where you can just go do something, and not have to spend a whole lot to have a good time, and it’s really close by.
Anyways, more updates later, it is now 11:36 and I need sleeeeep.
Love you all,
TTYL,
~ Matan
