Now that I've completed a full week of classes at Purdue, I'm ready to pass judgment on them.
AD113: Basic Drawing
Having a class at 7:30 AM on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays isn't ideal, but at least it's a wonderful class. The name of the course should be self-explanatory. We're drawing and reading about drawing. So far we've just been expanding on the beginning-of-the-year exercises we did back in Finneytown. Last week was contour line drawing of hands and organic objects. This week is gesture drawings of a peanut. I have a lot of homework, but it's all readings I can skim and drawings I enjoy.
AGR101 (honors) and AGR120: Introduction to the College of Agriculture and Introduction to the department of Horticulture and Landscape Architecture
These two classes combined only cost one credit hour, and they only last eight weeks, but they're back-to-back across campus from one another. All we do is listen to people talk about the activities, clubs, internships, research, etc. that go in in the college of ag as well as in our departments. It's not exciting, but I've already got people I can contact about helping with research.
COM114 (honors): Presentational Speaking
This class is about learning to address groups of varying sizes effectively. We're expected to address the class every time we're there. Normally it's just some sort of little impromptu thing, but starting Wednesday we'll be giving prepared speeches. I dread speaking to small-medium sized groups, but I need to learn to. At the moment I'm still not technically re-enrolled in the class, but I'm trying to get that fixed.
ECON210: Basics of Economics
I don't much care for this class. On Mondays and Wednesdays we have boring lectures with nearly 400 students, and on Fridays we have boring recitation (which I fondly refer to as regurgitation). I'm not very excited about economics, and I don't suspect I ever shall be. Fortunately, the course is extremely easy. Today I drew the girl in front of me instead of taking notes on one of the professor's many trivial examples.
ENGL108: Accelerated Composition
This one is okay. I like the instructor, but I can't determine what exactly we'll be doing this semester. Her goal is to focus on the writing skills we'll actually use later in life, but we haven't started on that yet. Right now we're analyzing articles and video clips to see how they argue their point using ethos, logos, and pathos. However, the definitions she uses for these terms aren't their actual Greek definitions - she defines them in terms of how they relate to making an argument. This took some getting-used-to, especially since ethos in this class doesn't refer to a lifestyle, it refers to the reliability of the source.
HONR299: Insects in Literature and Art
I love this class already, and I've only been to it twice. It's an interdisciplinary honors elective with only ten students and a great professor. As the title of the course implies, we're looking at the use of insects in literature and art. The professor is an entomologist, so he has a lot to bring from the insect side of things. He expects us to all work together on the artistic applications of entomology. Last Thursday he brought in a Madagascar hissing cockroach, a millipede, and a tarantula. I got to hold the latter two, and I loved it.
HORT101: Introduction to Horticulture
There are many things I like about this class. It's the only class I actually have a friend in, it's about plants, and our lab section meets in the greenhouses. Right now we're just going over the basics of plant biology, all of which I know from AP Bio. Hopefully we'll be covering material I don't know in the near future.
That's all, folks. Ta-ta for now.
Monday, August 31, 2009
Sunday, August 23, 2009
New People
Here are some of the people I've met who I have or likely will become friends with.
Julia is my roommate. She's an engineering major from Dayton, and it would have been hard to find a better roommate. She's adorable and we have a lot in common. We're both geeky, goofy, artsy, environmentally conscious Christians. We also have similar sleeping habits, which is nice when you're living with someone.
Justin was in my orientation group. He's from somewhere in Indiana, and he hasn't chosen a major yet. Whenever we got bored at the free-for-all scheduled social events during orientation we ended up talking to each other. He loves free stuff whether he'll ever use it or not. By the end of the week he had acquired fifteen cups, three water bottles (including the engineering one...even though he's not in engineering), three backpack bag things, and much more.
Aurash was also in my orientation group, and he's also an engineering major. He's from Texas and his parents are from India, but he has no accent whatsoever as far as I can tell. He wears Threadless shirts - a good way for anyone to instantly improve my impression of them. We also share music tastes and played in orchestra in high school.
Kevin went to high school with Justin who introduced us when we were sitting around at our night of fun and frivolity at the sports/recreation facility (co-rec or RSC). He is yet another engineering major from Indiana. He's sweet and nerdy and has some sort of slight to moderate physical disability that I couldn't identify. If all goes according to my plans, when I join the orchestra in the spring and he'll be there in the oboe section.
Margaret is a public horticulture major I met at the ag picnic. She seems sweet and hopes to operate a botanical garden someday. Since she's in the landscaping/horticulture department, we'll probably have some classes together.
When I met Margaret I met the guy who is the only other LAHD (landscape horticulture and design) student I found during the entire week... but I forgot his name. He was originally going to come here on a football scholarship, but then he blew out his knee and permanently ended his football career. He looked into horticulture and forestry, chose LAHD, and likes it so much that he doesn't regret that he had to give up football to find it.
I actually met Michael earlier in the week when I went to an interest session about the honors programs. When I first saw him, for some reason I sensed a "pretentious jerk vibe," but that proved to be a hasty and inaccurate judgment. He's majoring in horticultural science, so we had a nice discussion about aeroponics while we waited to go hiking on the honors retreat. We continued to talk along the way and made jokes about the designer who didn't make the canyon trail handicap accessible. He might be in the orchestra as well, so I'll be seeing a lot of him in the future.
I also met Kayleigh at the honors interest session. She's majoring in biochemistry in the college of ag. I knew the minute I saw her that we would likely become friends, but that it might take some effort for us to get to know each other. On the honors retreat we got off to a good start working on a jigsaw puzzle together.
Elizabeth and I literally ran into each other finding seats during the opening ceremonies of the honors retreat. Later we ended up sitting next to each other at dinner, and we discovered that we have a lot in common. We both like horses but not the all-too-often snobby people that ride and show english, we want to do volunteer work with the environment, we enjoy being outside, we like taking pictures, and we're awkward around people. Since the retreat we've eaten together twice, and we're bound to continue to interact. Her major is engineering, and she's from the Chicago area.
Allyson became my Facebook friend back in January, but we didn't meet each other until the honors retreat. She's from Indianapolis and is majoring in food science with a minor in dance. Since we're both in UHP and ag honors, we'll be seeing a lot of each other. She's friendly and just a bit sarcastic, and I love sarcasm in moderation.
Kilian was helping Kayleigh and Mary (she's next) with the jigsaw puzzle when I met him on the honors retreat. He's in engineering - hopefully aerospace, so he likes to call himself a future rocket scientist. Since he's in UHP and the orchestra (violin I think?) and will be attending the call-outs for the outing club and the medieval club, I predict that we will have plenty of opportunities to continue becoming friends.
Mary was the other girl who helped with the puzzles. She's going into pre-vet if I remember correctly, and that's pretty much all I know about her right now. She's very shy, but nice.
Dr. Chris is the person in charge of the UHP. He's a retired entomology professor who never misses an opportunity to encourage us to consider entomology. I instantly took a liking to him because he reminds me so much of Uncle Reggie. He's an enthusiastic, intelligent, friendly, old man of Chinese heritage. I hope to talk to him about entomology. Maybe he knows more about millipedes.
Whenever we go to a meal, Julia and I look for a lonely person and sit with them, and that's how I met the next two people. Wa is an exchange student from China who is here to study psychology education to become a professor back in China. She was so adorable! She's struggling with English and very nervous about it, so she asked us the words for a lot of thing at the table and then wrote them down in a little journal.
Just a few minutes ago we got back from lunch with Jeff. He's from Indiana and he's majoring in economics and will hopefully go on to law school afterward. It was awkward at first because it took us a while to find anything we had in common, but then we discovered that all three of us did theater in high school. The ice was finally broken and we had a nice little conversation about theater in our tiny high schools. I might try to find him later for the opening convocation I'm supposed to attend about our summer reading. Julia has an engineering honors thing, but Jeff and I are both scheduled for the same convocation and it would be nice not to go by myself.
Julia is my roommate. She's an engineering major from Dayton, and it would have been hard to find a better roommate. She's adorable and we have a lot in common. We're both geeky, goofy, artsy, environmentally conscious Christians. We also have similar sleeping habits, which is nice when you're living with someone.
Justin was in my orientation group. He's from somewhere in Indiana, and he hasn't chosen a major yet. Whenever we got bored at the free-for-all scheduled social events during orientation we ended up talking to each other. He loves free stuff whether he'll ever use it or not. By the end of the week he had acquired fifteen cups, three water bottles (including the engineering one...even though he's not in engineering), three backpack bag things, and much more.
Aurash was also in my orientation group, and he's also an engineering major. He's from Texas and his parents are from India, but he has no accent whatsoever as far as I can tell. He wears Threadless shirts - a good way for anyone to instantly improve my impression of them. We also share music tastes and played in orchestra in high school.
Kevin went to high school with Justin who introduced us when we were sitting around at our night of fun and frivolity at the sports/recreation facility (co-rec or RSC). He is yet another engineering major from Indiana. He's sweet and nerdy and has some sort of slight to moderate physical disability that I couldn't identify. If all goes according to my plans, when I join the orchestra in the spring and he'll be there in the oboe section.
Margaret is a public horticulture major I met at the ag picnic. She seems sweet and hopes to operate a botanical garden someday. Since she's in the landscaping/horticulture department, we'll probably have some classes together.
When I met Margaret I met the guy who is the only other LAHD (landscape horticulture and design) student I found during the entire week... but I forgot his name. He was originally going to come here on a football scholarship, but then he blew out his knee and permanently ended his football career. He looked into horticulture and forestry, chose LAHD, and likes it so much that he doesn't regret that he had to give up football to find it.
I actually met Michael earlier in the week when I went to an interest session about the honors programs. When I first saw him, for some reason I sensed a "pretentious jerk vibe," but that proved to be a hasty and inaccurate judgment. He's majoring in horticultural science, so we had a nice discussion about aeroponics while we waited to go hiking on the honors retreat. We continued to talk along the way and made jokes about the designer who didn't make the canyon trail handicap accessible. He might be in the orchestra as well, so I'll be seeing a lot of him in the future.
I also met Kayleigh at the honors interest session. She's majoring in biochemistry in the college of ag. I knew the minute I saw her that we would likely become friends, but that it might take some effort for us to get to know each other. On the honors retreat we got off to a good start working on a jigsaw puzzle together.
Elizabeth and I literally ran into each other finding seats during the opening ceremonies of the honors retreat. Later we ended up sitting next to each other at dinner, and we discovered that we have a lot in common. We both like horses but not the all-too-often snobby people that ride and show english, we want to do volunteer work with the environment, we enjoy being outside, we like taking pictures, and we're awkward around people. Since the retreat we've eaten together twice, and we're bound to continue to interact. Her major is engineering, and she's from the Chicago area.
Allyson became my Facebook friend back in January, but we didn't meet each other until the honors retreat. She's from Indianapolis and is majoring in food science with a minor in dance. Since we're both in UHP and ag honors, we'll be seeing a lot of each other. She's friendly and just a bit sarcastic, and I love sarcasm in moderation.
Kilian was helping Kayleigh and Mary (she's next) with the jigsaw puzzle when I met him on the honors retreat. He's in engineering - hopefully aerospace, so he likes to call himself a future rocket scientist. Since he's in UHP and the orchestra (violin I think?) and will be attending the call-outs for the outing club and the medieval club, I predict that we will have plenty of opportunities to continue becoming friends.
Mary was the other girl who helped with the puzzles. She's going into pre-vet if I remember correctly, and that's pretty much all I know about her right now. She's very shy, but nice.
Dr. Chris is the person in charge of the UHP. He's a retired entomology professor who never misses an opportunity to encourage us to consider entomology. I instantly took a liking to him because he reminds me so much of Uncle Reggie. He's an enthusiastic, intelligent, friendly, old man of Chinese heritage. I hope to talk to him about entomology. Maybe he knows more about millipedes.
Whenever we go to a meal, Julia and I look for a lonely person and sit with them, and that's how I met the next two people. Wa is an exchange student from China who is here to study psychology education to become a professor back in China. She was so adorable! She's struggling with English and very nervous about it, so she asked us the words for a lot of thing at the table and then wrote them down in a little journal.
Just a few minutes ago we got back from lunch with Jeff. He's from Indiana and he's majoring in economics and will hopefully go on to law school afterward. It was awkward at first because it took us a while to find anything we had in common, but then we discovered that all three of us did theater in high school. The ice was finally broken and we had a nice little conversation about theater in our tiny high schools. I might try to find him later for the opening convocation I'm supposed to attend about our summer reading. Julia has an engineering honors thing, but Jeff and I are both scheduled for the same convocation and it would be nice not to go by myself.
Friday, August 21, 2009
Passing Incidents
I have a few miscellaneous items to share about Wednesday night before giving a brief account of the honors retreat. After the deluge, there were, of course, puddles. And, of course, I felt compelled to wade through all of them. I told my group I was protecting them by testing the depths of the treacherous sidewalks. I don't think they appreciated my service enough, but they were amused. I guess they're not accustomed to people who don't care whether or not their feet are wet.
The comedian for the night was actually the dating doctor played by Will Smith in "Hitch." He shared with us about relationships, and one snippet of his presentation was about something called Jahira windows. I had never heard of them before that time. For the first window, we were supposed to pick a favorite animal and tell your neighbor the first three words that came to mind related to that animal. I chose a millipede. My first three words were cute, round, and black. He proceeded to tell us that these three words describe how we think people perceive us. I think my answer breaks that.
That night we stayed up later than normal. When we finally did go to bed, we must have been asleep for only a few hours when we were awoken by the loudest crash of thunder I've ever heard in my life. There was one minuscule rumble a moment or two later, and then it left as quickly as it had come.
On Thursday afternoon I departed for an honors convocation retreat at a beautiful state park southwest of Indianapolis. The best thing about the retreat was that we didn't have to play any stupid ice-breaker games, and we weren't arbitrarily divided into small groups where we were expected to instantaneously form life-long connections. We got to choose what we did, and in choosing we found people with similar interests. I chose to go hiking. The park had some of the most beautiful trails I've ever seen, even considering the fact that we couldn't see beyond the range of our flashlights given that we chose to wait until dark to go hiking. The terrain reminded me of West Virginia, and the sky reminded me of Butler Springs. It was delightful. I would have preferred to go with a smaller group, but I ended up talking with a handful of people who I continued to talk to for the duration of the trip and beyond. After hiking, I learned a new card game and played mafia with a louder group of people. A bit later, I transitioned to a smaller group that had started a jigsaw puzzle. I showed that puzzle who was boss and proceeded to start another with the only two people who had any interest in starting another. Friday morning was spent listening, discussing, and asking questions, but for the most part it was valuable information... unlike orientation.
Soon I'll be leaving to go paint pottery with my roommate. Next time I'll introduce some of the people who have or might become my friends.
The comedian for the night was actually the dating doctor played by Will Smith in "Hitch." He shared with us about relationships, and one snippet of his presentation was about something called Jahira windows. I had never heard of them before that time. For the first window, we were supposed to pick a favorite animal and tell your neighbor the first three words that came to mind related to that animal. I chose a millipede. My first three words were cute, round, and black. He proceeded to tell us that these three words describe how we think people perceive us. I think my answer breaks that.
That night we stayed up later than normal. When we finally did go to bed, we must have been asleep for only a few hours when we were awoken by the loudest crash of thunder I've ever heard in my life. There was one minuscule rumble a moment or two later, and then it left as quickly as it had come.
On Thursday afternoon I departed for an honors convocation retreat at a beautiful state park southwest of Indianapolis. The best thing about the retreat was that we didn't have to play any stupid ice-breaker games, and we weren't arbitrarily divided into small groups where we were expected to instantaneously form life-long connections. We got to choose what we did, and in choosing we found people with similar interests. I chose to go hiking. The park had some of the most beautiful trails I've ever seen, even considering the fact that we couldn't see beyond the range of our flashlights given that we chose to wait until dark to go hiking. The terrain reminded me of West Virginia, and the sky reminded me of Butler Springs. It was delightful. I would have preferred to go with a smaller group, but I ended up talking with a handful of people who I continued to talk to for the duration of the trip and beyond. After hiking, I learned a new card game and played mafia with a louder group of people. A bit later, I transitioned to a smaller group that had started a jigsaw puzzle. I showed that puzzle who was boss and proceeded to start another with the only two people who had any interest in starting another. Friday morning was spent listening, discussing, and asking questions, but for the most part it was valuable information... unlike orientation.
Soon I'll be leaving to go paint pottery with my roommate. Next time I'll introduce some of the people who have or might become my friends.
Thursday, August 20, 2009
Some Adventures Thus Far
Sunday was move-in day as well as the first day of BGR (orientation). After unloading the van, semi-setting up the room, eating lunch, and saying good-bye to first my family and then Josh, I went straight to a meeting my the RA's for my building. I don't remember anything that was said, so it must not have been all that important.
After that, we were sent to go meet our BGR leaders and groups. Since my dorms are all-girls dorms, we were put into tiny groups that would pair up with a group of guys from the all-guys dorms. My group had five other girls and was led by a guy named Ryan. Julia (my roommate) was in my group. That's not supposed to happen, but I certainly didn't mind. She was the only girl of the group that I actually talked to. After dinner we met up with our male buddy group and their female leader. There were ten of them, but we rarely had more than eight attending any given session. I talked to several of them a few times and a few of them several times. We'll have to wait to see if any potential friendships stick.
There was plenty of stuff that accompanied BGR that I could have gone without. Lame music pervaded the entire experience. Each dorm was put into one of five large groups to compete in the Inter-Hall Showdown, and we had to do all sorts of cheers to gain points. I did go without a Monday interest elective and three-and-a-half hours of boring in the auditorium on Wednesday afternoon. Instead of attending these sessions, I did things like decorate my bulletin board with pictures from home, finally turn in my medical history form, call my family and Josh, organize papers, and so forth.
There were some pleasant parts of the routine. The food was good, and there were plenty of options. There were even options for when you can't choose a single option, as the monster cookie taught us. This amazing cookie had peanut butter, oatmeal, chocolate, m&m's, and probably a great deal more yummy than I could distinguish. It was amazing. I also enjoyed the slide show of rules at the beginning of all our sessions in the auditorium - and it's not just because I support the existence and knowledge of rules. They made them entertaining. For example: serious repercussions could result if any of the following is found in Elliott Hall ... El Chupacabra. I always enjoy a Chupacabra reference.
On Monday night in the Union, Julia and I decided to watch a hypnotist show. It was my intent to get called up on stage and then prove that hypnotism doesn't work on everyone, but he didn't pick me. Plus, once he had all his participants on-stage, he explained that he would dismiss to the audience any persons who didn't connect with his voice. The show wasn't what I was expecting. It was hilarious. Yes, some of them may just have been good actors, but many of them seemed "actually" hypnotized (I consider hypnotism more of an effort on the part of the hypnotee than skill on the part of the hypnotist). He had them do all sorts of things. .Once they pretended the audience members were baby animals at a petting zoo, and a guy from my group was taken up on stage as a giraffe baby while other audience members were perceived as anything from bunnies to mermaids to dinosaurs. Another time, a handful of them were supposed to sing "Happy Birthday" in a foreign language, and one guy chose Draconic (I doubt any of them were singing actual words in whatever language they chose). When they pretended to have their 200th birthday parties, one girl asked for pot, and another guy asked for a bow and arrow. When asked why he wanted a bow and arrow and why he was still active youthful, he explained that he was an elf. There was all sorts of fun, so I'm not all that concerned about whether or not they were genuinely hypnotized.
Tuesday morning I got up at the bright and early hour of 6:00 AM for breakfast at 7:00. After eating we had an hour of down time before our first session, so Julia and I decided to go in search of the hidden music practice room in the tunnels because neither of us really likes to play piano in front of other people. We quickly found that the common room under our building had a piano, but it was so poorly tuned and of such a poor timber that Julia named it the saloon piano. Our search continued. We found no practice room, but we did find adventure of a low-key variety. After searching through the open halls, we found a set of older, creepier hallways. In these hallways, there were menacing fire safe doors rigged with all sorts of pulley systems. They were begging to be opened, so we opened two of them. The first was filled with stacks of mirrors leaned against the walls. The second was a janitor closet. We didn't open the third because someone (or maybe something) was working in the room on the other side of it. When we rounded the corner, we found that we were in Shealy, the building under construction. One can't get into it from above the ground, but there was nothing stopping us from walking right in through the tunnels. So we did. For the most part, the workers ignored us. One of them said hello as he passed, but that was the only recognition we got other than a glance or two. We never did find the music room, so we went up to the main desk to ask where it was. They informed us that it used to be under Shealy, but that it was closed for construction and people weren't allowed down there (here we exchanged glances and grins that said "about that..."). Another one will be opening sometime in the nearish future. Until that point I suppose I'm stuck with the saloon piano or playing in the lobby. One of the guys in Cary can get me down to their practice rooms, but then he would have to be there the whole time since I'd be a girl in the guys' dorms. Maybe I'll check out the ones in the visual and performing arts building and see if they're open to everyone.
This post is getting pretty long, so I'll just tell one more longish tale and save the rest for my next post. Yesterday evening the tornado sirens went off. It wasn't looking too menacing outside, but one of our neighbors checked the weather channel anyway. The radar was beautiful. A nearly prefect bow arc was headed straight for us and a tornado had already been sighted. Our RA told us that she didn't think it would be all that serious, so we decided to stay upstairs. I went down to the saloon piano, but people kept on passing me and telling me to go to the deeper tunnels since there were still windows in the saloon even though they were sunk into the ground. I went back upstairs to wait for the storm there. As it drew nigh, it grew quite blustery outside. The cicadas raised a sudden and raucous cry to the wind. After a few minutes they suddenly went silent again. Not too long afterward the rain began. In seconds it was pouring and the wind had shifted to blow it straight through our window, so we had to close them a bit to protect Julia's laptop. The rain and the wind and the thunder and the lightning were exhilarating. Eventually the tornado siren sounded again and the storm had picked up so much that we decided it might be a good idea to head down to the lower tunnels. Once we got down there, we were stuck there for an uneventful half hour. The storm had already begun to calm down by the time we reached the tunnels, so we really could've stayed up in our room. Some of the Cary guys did, and they were just fine. At least we didn't miss much of the excitement since we went downstairs so late.
I'm about to leave to go on an honors retreat, so I'll say goodbye for now. Soon I'll bring you a few other points of interest from orientation along with descriptions of some of the people I've met and hopefully will continue to talk to. If anything worth reporting happens on the retreat I'll be sure to inform you all of that as well.
After that, we were sent to go meet our BGR leaders and groups. Since my dorms are all-girls dorms, we were put into tiny groups that would pair up with a group of guys from the all-guys dorms. My group had five other girls and was led by a guy named Ryan. Julia (my roommate) was in my group. That's not supposed to happen, but I certainly didn't mind. She was the only girl of the group that I actually talked to. After dinner we met up with our male buddy group and their female leader. There were ten of them, but we rarely had more than eight attending any given session. I talked to several of them a few times and a few of them several times. We'll have to wait to see if any potential friendships stick.
There was plenty of stuff that accompanied BGR that I could have gone without. Lame music pervaded the entire experience. Each dorm was put into one of five large groups to compete in the Inter-Hall Showdown, and we had to do all sorts of cheers to gain points. I did go without a Monday interest elective and three-and-a-half hours of boring in the auditorium on Wednesday afternoon. Instead of attending these sessions, I did things like decorate my bulletin board with pictures from home, finally turn in my medical history form, call my family and Josh, organize papers, and so forth.
There were some pleasant parts of the routine. The food was good, and there were plenty of options. There were even options for when you can't choose a single option, as the monster cookie taught us. This amazing cookie had peanut butter, oatmeal, chocolate, m&m's, and probably a great deal more yummy than I could distinguish. It was amazing. I also enjoyed the slide show of rules at the beginning of all our sessions in the auditorium - and it's not just because I support the existence and knowledge of rules. They made them entertaining. For example: serious repercussions could result if any of the following is found in Elliott Hall ... El Chupacabra. I always enjoy a Chupacabra reference.
On Monday night in the Union, Julia and I decided to watch a hypnotist show. It was my intent to get called up on stage and then prove that hypnotism doesn't work on everyone, but he didn't pick me. Plus, once he had all his participants on-stage, he explained that he would dismiss to the audience any persons who didn't connect with his voice. The show wasn't what I was expecting. It was hilarious. Yes, some of them may just have been good actors, but many of them seemed "actually" hypnotized (I consider hypnotism more of an effort on the part of the hypnotee than skill on the part of the hypnotist). He had them do all sorts of things. .Once they pretended the audience members were baby animals at a petting zoo, and a guy from my group was taken up on stage as a giraffe baby while other audience members were perceived as anything from bunnies to mermaids to dinosaurs. Another time, a handful of them were supposed to sing "Happy Birthday" in a foreign language, and one guy chose Draconic (I doubt any of them were singing actual words in whatever language they chose). When they pretended to have their 200th birthday parties, one girl asked for pot, and another guy asked for a bow and arrow. When asked why he wanted a bow and arrow and why he was still active youthful, he explained that he was an elf. There was all sorts of fun, so I'm not all that concerned about whether or not they were genuinely hypnotized.
Tuesday morning I got up at the bright and early hour of 6:00 AM for breakfast at 7:00. After eating we had an hour of down time before our first session, so Julia and I decided to go in search of the hidden music practice room in the tunnels because neither of us really likes to play piano in front of other people. We quickly found that the common room under our building had a piano, but it was so poorly tuned and of such a poor timber that Julia named it the saloon piano. Our search continued. We found no practice room, but we did find adventure of a low-key variety. After searching through the open halls, we found a set of older, creepier hallways. In these hallways, there were menacing fire safe doors rigged with all sorts of pulley systems. They were begging to be opened, so we opened two of them. The first was filled with stacks of mirrors leaned against the walls. The second was a janitor closet. We didn't open the third because someone (or maybe something) was working in the room on the other side of it. When we rounded the corner, we found that we were in Shealy, the building under construction. One can't get into it from above the ground, but there was nothing stopping us from walking right in through the tunnels. So we did. For the most part, the workers ignored us. One of them said hello as he passed, but that was the only recognition we got other than a glance or two. We never did find the music room, so we went up to the main desk to ask where it was. They informed us that it used to be under Shealy, but that it was closed for construction and people weren't allowed down there (here we exchanged glances and grins that said "about that..."). Another one will be opening sometime in the nearish future. Until that point I suppose I'm stuck with the saloon piano or playing in the lobby. One of the guys in Cary can get me down to their practice rooms, but then he would have to be there the whole time since I'd be a girl in the guys' dorms. Maybe I'll check out the ones in the visual and performing arts building and see if they're open to everyone.
This post is getting pretty long, so I'll just tell one more longish tale and save the rest for my next post. Yesterday evening the tornado sirens went off. It wasn't looking too menacing outside, but one of our neighbors checked the weather channel anyway. The radar was beautiful. A nearly prefect bow arc was headed straight for us and a tornado had already been sighted. Our RA told us that she didn't think it would be all that serious, so we decided to stay upstairs. I went down to the saloon piano, but people kept on passing me and telling me to go to the deeper tunnels since there were still windows in the saloon even though they were sunk into the ground. I went back upstairs to wait for the storm there. As it drew nigh, it grew quite blustery outside. The cicadas raised a sudden and raucous cry to the wind. After a few minutes they suddenly went silent again. Not too long afterward the rain began. In seconds it was pouring and the wind had shifted to blow it straight through our window, so we had to close them a bit to protect Julia's laptop. The rain and the wind and the thunder and the lightning were exhilarating. Eventually the tornado siren sounded again and the storm had picked up so much that we decided it might be a good idea to head down to the lower tunnels. Once we got down there, we were stuck there for an uneventful half hour. The storm had already begun to calm down by the time we reached the tunnels, so we really could've stayed up in our room. Some of the Cary guys did, and they were just fine. At least we didn't miss much of the excitement since we went downstairs so late.
I'm about to leave to go on an honors retreat, so I'll say goodbye for now. Soon I'll bring you a few other points of interest from orientation along with descriptions of some of the people I've met and hopefully will continue to talk to. If anything worth reporting happens on the retreat I'll be sure to inform you all of that as well.
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
Living in a Castle on a Fiefdom Among Cornfields
I'm all moved in at Purdue now that I finally found out where to recycle the boxes sitting around my room. Tonight are the closing ceremonies of orientation, and then tomorrow I leave for the honors retreat in the afternoon and get back Friday afternoon. Saturday is empty (unless I attend any call-outs or events that day), Sunday I'll visit a church, and on Monday classes start. I'm looking forward to attending classes and getting into a routine instead of running around non-stop at orientation.
Later I'll type up some of my adventures, but for now I'll describe my dormitory*. I live in the all-girls dormitories, Windsor Halls. Windsor is comprised of five v-shaped beautiful old castle-like buildings. Four of them are arranged in two pairs such that the V's open to each other to enclose nice little courtyards. Two of them are updated and air-conditioned, two are not (I live in one of them), and the fifth is under construction (but I got inside anyway... I'll explain that later). The lobbies have old-timey furniture and light fixtures. Little side-rooms called courting rooms open off of the lobby and are similarly furnished. Many of the lobbies also have nice grand pianos (at least one is a Steinway in excellent condition).
One of Windsor's best feature is the underground tunnel system that connects all five buildings and a dining court. The tunnel system includes common areas, pop machines, snack machines, what Julia refers to as the "saloon piano", creepy doors, and creepy rooms (I will elaborate on the last three in a future post). If it continues to be as hot as it's been for the past few days, I'll probably be spending a lot of time down there where it's cooler.
I'm off to play the "saloon piano" during my remaining free time. Be on the lookout for pictures of the castle on Facebook.
Later I'll type up some of my adventures, but for now I'll describe my dormitory*. I live in the all-girls dormitories, Windsor Halls. Windsor is comprised of five v-shaped beautiful old castle-like buildings. Four of them are arranged in two pairs such that the V's open to each other to enclose nice little courtyards. Two of them are updated and air-conditioned, two are not (I live in one of them), and the fifth is under construction (but I got inside anyway... I'll explain that later). The lobbies have old-timey furniture and light fixtures. Little side-rooms called courting rooms open off of the lobby and are similarly furnished. Many of the lobbies also have nice grand pianos (at least one is a Steinway in excellent condition).
One of Windsor's best feature is the underground tunnel system that connects all five buildings and a dining court. The tunnel system includes common areas, pop machines, snack machines, what Julia refers to as the "saloon piano", creepy doors, and creepy rooms (I will elaborate on the last three in a future post). If it continues to be as hot as it's been for the past few days, I'll probably be spending a lot of time down there where it's cooler.
I'm off to play the "saloon piano" during my remaining free time. Be on the lookout for pictures of the castle on Facebook.
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