Thread: Orientation questions?

Can anyone tell me what goes on in orientation for a week? How many hours is it in the day? Is there a dress code?

are you a new spring or fall student?

Spring semester.

Originally Posted by remember

I refuse to give you an orientation FOR your orientation...

Relax, they pretty much babysit the new kids (and their parents) all throughout the orientation. They'll give you a schedule and explain everything to you once you get there. They're going to help you all get adjusted and set up. You're moving to a new country so someone has to show you the ropes. They'll show you the campus, registration, see the town, learn how to call a cab, go to the grocery store to get essentials... etc etc.

So are you spending the entire day with the school or will I be able to have some time to myself with my family? We booked a rent-a-car, was that necessary? I asked the school and they couldnt even tell me if they were going to drive my family to the hotel and then drive me to the campus. So, we got a rent-a-car. I would hate for my family to be stranded. How far is lublin from warsaw?

warsaw -> lublin is about 3h drive.
Hopefully you didn't book a hotel in Warsaw... that might be bad.
Also, you might wanna double check that your folks are alright with stick shift... I donno if you can rent cars with an automatic transmission. I'm kinda looking forward to learning what my friends term 'real' driving.

Do your parents even have an international driver's license? (I'm assuming they would need that, but not sure).

If I remember right, you can drive with a US license if you show it and your passport for some limited amount of time. Never checked that fact for sure though...
L.Y.L. :
I agree with Remember on the cab thing... and confess to totally forgetting that you probably don't know Polish and thus would have major problems with the laws/signs when driving.
Doublecheck your packet and call HMI... they've been good about answering this type of questions. And it DOES say in the packet they they'll pick you up (you and your folks) but that family needs to book their own rooms as dorms will only be for student use. From what I heard they'll show you around town as well, and parents are assumed to be with you till they leave. Their trip back shouldn't be too hard, there are buses running between Lublin and Warsaw airport that I'm sure someone from HMI can book for them and drop them off at so they get to the airport with pleanty of time.
Also,
Driving in PL sux... unless things have changed drastically in the past couple years, i wouldn't recommend it to US drivers... half of us shouldn't be allowed to drive here, where almost everyone is used to idiots and acts accordingly. The signs are mostly pictoral due to EU having so many languages... but they don't correspond to US ones as well as you'd like. The lights have an extra setting (a lot of lights turn on green > yellow > red > red and yellow > green, which confused the hell out of me the first time i saw it), as they still mostly use stick shift. Laws are less cousioned than they are here, less idiot-proof and allow for risk taking. You'd be scared witless the first time you saw a 2-lane road (1 each way) with 5 cars on it at once. No kidding.. it's normal procedure on the long drive between major cities. I was scared when I wasn't even behind the wheel.

was the summer thing like that too, or does going to the start of school one suffice? They say the summer one is augustish or something... stateside....
or do BIS people not have that one?