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.
No comments:
Post a Comment