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.

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