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BLACKSBURG -- There were no poems recited. No bands played. There were no speeches.

Not a word was spoken during the student-organized ceremony Monday on Virginia Tech's Drillfield that served as a memorial to the 32 people killed on campus a week ago.

Just the tolling of the bell at 9:45 a.m. and the releasing of balloons.

Despite the simplicity of the ceremony, it took nearly 15 minutes to complete as the bell rang so many times people lost count. Each ring was allowed to echo across the Drillfield and linger in the ears of the thousands of people gathered while a white balloon floated into the sky.

Then nothing but silence for about two minutes -- save for a few sniffles and some birds chirping -- as 1,000 orange and maroon balloons were released.

The silence was broken when someone from the Drillfield's east end shouted.

"Let's Go!"

"Hokies!" came the reply.

The chant, popular on fall Saturdays, was done a few more times, but the crowd gathered emitted only a half-hearted, heavy-hearted attempt as people began to shuffle off and go about their day.

Such was the mood of the first day of classes at Virginia Tech since the April 16 shootings. People were reconnecting and some were trying to get back to normal -- sort of.

In many ways, Tech's campus looked similar to the way it has looked on sunny days past.

Small groups clad in Hokie maroon and orange and flip-flops made their trek through campus. Clusters of students sprawled on the hills around Squires Student Center. Tour groups filled with prospective students and parents tried to keep up with fast-talking student guides. And by midafternoon, barefooted soccer players shared the Drillfield with Frisbees and rugby players -- along with religious groups, police, reporters and onlookers.

But at Squires, students dominated the scenery. Chamroeun Siv, a junior from Roanoke, sat on the steps and watched them file past.

"If you don't think about it, it actually feels kind of normal."

In the hours after Monday morning's ceremony, evidence of grief and sorrow were carried more subtly: a black ribbon pinned to a polo shirt, a hug that was longer than normal, a tear quickly wiped away.

And though students laughed and chatted on cellphones while walking to class, the conversations in the dining halls were noticeably toned down. And less subtle reminders of last week's events were all over campus.

Norris Hall, site of 30 of the slayings, was surrounded in yellow police tape. The sounds of construction, sounds that some students mistook the gunshots for during the shootings on a much colder, blustery Monday, echoed near the building.

"I had a class in the second group of windows, second floor," Tech senior Kyle Rowley said, looking up at Norris. "It's just weird."

Minutes after the final balloon had been released, Tech freshman Sarah Henderson explained that her 9:05 a.m. chemistry class Monday was far from typical. Emily Hilscher, one of the first two victims of the shootings, was enrolled in that class. In her place Monday was a memorial in the middle of the 200-student lecture hall.

Professor Gary Long spent time in the class speaking to students about Hilscher.

He and several other faculty and students said class attendance was strong Monday. Senior Sarah Saxton said she heard attendance in general was even better than a typical Monday in the spring.

Sitting in front of Tech's graduate life center about 11 a.m., senior Peter Slonina said his decision to return to the classroom -- even though students could simply go home for the year -- was an easy one. He left Blacksburg only briefly last week to get a tooth filled.

"I wanted to heal with my community," he said. "There's nowhere else in the world I'd want to be right now."

That attitude moved Tech professor Susanna Rinehart to the verge of tears as she taught her 11:15 a.m. introduction to theater class. Students in the class say it was more crowded than it's ever been.

"Never have I been more proud of you kids," Rinehart said at the start of class. "Just by showing up you have inspired people. ... You are stronger than I could have ever imagined."

Many students spoke about Hokie spirit and compared the vibe and presence of orange and maroon to football season. But Greg Sagstetter, one of the many students who helped organize Monday's ceremony, said there's no past frame of reference to compare things.

"We're forever changed," he said. "Things will never be the same on this campus.

"And they shouldn't be."

Before walking into his afternoon class on Judaism, assistant professor Jerome Copulsky had spent days trying to figure out what to say.

But still, when it came time to face a room of roughly 25 students, he was at somewhat of a loss. There is, after all, no lesson plan for handling a tragedy like the one that unfolded on campus last week; no primer on how to deal with it.

Copulsky kept it simple.

"I said, 'I lost a colleague and a friend, a lovely man,' " he recalled, referring to German professor Jamie Bishop.

"Part of being a teacher is being present for your students and that plays out in different ways," Copulsky said shortly after the class let out. "Here, I needed to sit across from them and be present as myself -- as the professor who teaches the class, but also as someone who is part of their community, who is experiencing the same tragedy that they're experiencing."

The response from students "was a kind of quiet intensity," he noted. "I was asked, 'How does the tradition we study cope with these sorts of things?' and I tried to explain."

Staff writers Angela Manese-Lee, Anna Mallory, Jared Turner and Lindsay Key and Big Lick U contributor Shamus Williams contributed to this report.