It's august of 2008 now. Three months ago, I was packing for our final trip to Quito. Now, here I sit, in a dorm room with a flag of Ecuador and a map of the world, and I am on a whole new adventure now.
On August 21, I moved into my dorm room and met Alice and Sara, my roommates. Alice is a former exchange student who went to Spain through Rotary, with an undeclared major and a biting wit. Sara is a second-degree blackbelt, a pre-med grocery store cashier who dreams of Eastern Europe and her boyfriend, Vjeko. Together, since that day one week ago, we have set out to make friends, and make friends we did;
Kevin and Mark, childhood friends from Farmingdale,
Anthony, with an accent as thick and obtrusive as steel wool, [we get a kick out of making him say dawluhz and dawg and cleassy]
Brian, with a whining voice and supreme height,
Andrew, who requested we call him Beast,
Alex, Ryan, and Cody who play keyboard, guitar, and harmonica, respectively,
Steve, a horseback rider who came over to watch a movie after class,
Madeline, a darling girl from Sweden,
Shaun, the quntessential young "gay guy" of the group [and proudly so],
Stacy, who hardly makes a peep,
Sam, our favorite, from Staten Island,
Ashley, whose upperclassman suitemate tried to scare her and the other freshman into switching out,
Andre and Oliver, who we sat with through an acoustic "jam session" on move-in day,
Will, who warns us against the frathouse evils [like we didn't already hear it a hundred times],
Pamela, the Ecuador-born girl form our Spanish class,
and a thousand more.
On monday we started classes; we set our blaring alarms, shoved new notebooks into old bags, and trudged down to Humanities, or Coykendall, or Wooster, or the Lecture Center, or wherever our schedules directed us to go. My first class was Introduction to Comparative Politics, with a teacher who requests we call him Robert. We went around and introduced ourselves and talked a little, and before i knew it, I'd done it! I'd survived the class! it was time to go!
Then, I proceeded to survive other classes. Freshman Composition, a general ed. requirement taught by a twentysomething dork. Then Intro to Theatre, with professor Kitsakos- I had to write out kit-SOCK-os, who kept us riveted and begging for more. Tuesday, Psychology with a professor who asks for what we want to learn and any music recommendations we have, followed by Spanish with a thoroughly latina teacher- Patricia Fitzpatrick. Har, har.
Tuesday night is $4 movie night and we finally all see The Dark Knight, in a theatre that maybe seats 50 or 60 moviegoers. We are 10 of oly 20 or 25 in the audience, though, and it is quaint and personal- I get up to go to the bathroom, and the man at the concession stand says HEYhowyadoin' before I have the theatre door all the way open. I fele like they were expecting us, putting the show on only for us.
Wednesday I start to get a little claustrophobic, so Alice, Sara, Sam, Kevin, and I walk to the nearest Stewart's-about a mile each way. I have some quality conversations, we get our necessaries- mouthwash, a pint of ice cream, bubblegum... We walk back, I finish my reading, and we go to bed.
Now, getting into my loft bed is very strategic. You can squeeze between the bed and the window and climb up the planks as if they're a ladder. You can do the chair-hop-to-the-bed acrobatic manoeuver, or you can do my personal favorite; the foot-on chair, foot-on-desk, knee-on-bed, pull-body-up move. It's pretty foolproof.... until I tried it last night in the dark, and stepped on my laptop. It never even occured to me that maybe my computer would be on my desk when I tried to climb up until- CRACK!- and at 7 the next morning, assessing the damage, I realize the CRACK was my entire body weight cracking my laptop screen. It's still functioning [obviously], but it's like I was racing Gravity to see who could break it faster. I've only been here a week! I've only taken it out to the bench by the door to study! How can I have already broken it?!
There are a few fixes to this kind of problem, but all of them mean I have to fix it. That's what really gets me. It's BROKEN! I am stunned. It feels so unreal that in one teeny tiny week, I've already done what few college students can manage in 4 years. Some days, the cards are stacked against you.
On the upside, I started work tonight- Wait... That IS an upside, right?
Sorry I'm so awful at answering or returning calls. Pick some names off the list, and they are probably the people I'm traipsing across New Paltz with. Oh, the glory of youth!
