The People Here are Crazy

There was a thunderstorm last night and I was way too hyper to do much of anything.

What did we do yesterday....

Tour of Haverford college. Nice place, I loved their library. But I like Bryn Mawr campus better.

Topic conferences to get comments for our first draft. D liked mine and had really interesting things to say about it. Things I hadn't really ever focused on when looking at my own work. Like character motivation in relation to description. Is something described in a way that relates to how this character thinks, not just because it sounds cool. And the use of adjectives in relation to the tone and feel of the scene.

Today in class we talked about truth. The first thing I said was does the truth matter. No one else has been in my English class.

Last night we had an open mic night. It was really cool to hear other people's works. Our MC was one of the Urban Studies profs and she said "If I pronounce anyone's names wrong, tell me. And lets welcome J.C." J.C. is one of the Creative Writing Profs, she's really cool. She got up to read her poem and said: "That's not how you pronounce my name." The other Urban Studies prof read a poem in the same accent as Tia Dalma from Pirates, I forget what it's called. But it was awesome!

We're turning in the revised draft of our first piece tomorrow. I have spent the past twenty four hours thinking about four pages. Today I played with two paragraphs for an hour. I wish I went over the rest of it with such a fine toothed comb but my patience is not that good. Oh well, I'm pretty happy with it. I think if I add any more to it I'll kill it. So - enough!

The people here are nuts. The science people officially hate us, we've been banned from the third floor lounge. So we're going to steal their DVD player and watch Rocky Horror.

At lunch we were talking... about racism! That's right, the Urban Studies kids were talking about it this morning. And we were talking about racist ice cream and then Paloma (she's from Bolivia and she's awesome) said "I have a friend who's bi-curious." And Ruth said: "So he's like ice cream?"

They've also come up with new ethnicities. Like 'Blasian' which is a black Asian. And 'Blew' - a black jew. And decided, that since I'm like two drops Hawaiian, I'm Asian. Don't know how that works out.

This afternoon an actor named... something I forget, came and did a part of her one act for us. It was amazing. She was like... five different people and there were a lot more in the rest of the play. Her British accent was beautiful. The play was... the Sangryia Tree, I think. I don't have my schedule with me.

Tomorrow we're going to Philadelphia.

The Science People

I love camp, I just heard the best dirty joke:

A hippie gets on a bus and sits down next to a nun. He asks the nun to have sex with him. She says no and gets off the bus. The driver asks the hippie if he wants to know how to get the nun to have sex with him. The hippie says yes so the driver tells him that if he goes to the cemetery on Tuesday night she'll be there praying to God. All he has to do is dress up as God and she'll do what he asks. So the hippie does and the nun says she'll have sex with him but it has to be anal sex so she can keep her virginity. Afterwards the hippie pulls of his disguise and says "Haha, I'm the hippie!" Then the nun jumps up and says "Haha! I'm the bus driver!"

I love it!

I'm having so much fun. The people, so far, are really cool. They're fun to hang out with and really inviting. Some are really quirky. A few of us went into to town to go to Starbucks tonight. My mocha was 2.76. What the fuck people. Really. Earlier today we had a "mapping the community" exercise where we talked about what we want the group to look like and how we want people to treat everyone. And everyone was really... sincere. Which was cool. And I actually felt more connected to everyone afterwards. Which was cool.

Class this morning was really intense. Everyone was very into the discussion and it seemed very fast paced to me. But I can see how much I can learn and that's exciting. I really like the book we're reading.

We have the first draft of our creative piece due tomorrow. I'm sort of satisfied with mine. It's good enough for now, but has some work still.

We're having fun, the science people (who are very antisocial with everyone else) have taken over the third floor lounge. So tonight while they were downstairs watching the Disney Cinderella the third floor writers and the fourth floor kids and some other people took over their lounge. They were not happy when they came back. We also asked if it turned out okay for Cinderella. And insinuated that they've been capturing the squirrels and using chemicals to burn the hair off their tails.

I don't think they like us very much.

Other news: US women's soccer beat Brazil 2-0. Fuck yes. And I'm in love with Madeline Kahn.

Maybe I like this place

You know, I might really like it here. It's pretty damn cool. Day one was fun.

Got up, took a shower, went to breakfast. Food, unfortunately is all the way across campus and is the farthest thing we have to walk to. And they put spicy stuff in their potatoes. WTF. I was very annoyed. The rest of the food is pretty good. I'm still alive.

We have our first class at 9:30, which sure as hell beats zero hour. They're in a building across the street that looks sort of like an obese cottage. Very cute, just large. We go in, past stairs, to the left into our lecture hall. Everyone sits in a circle in a very strange chairs. My teachers are... really, really, really awesome. I'm not awake enough to come up with more interesting adjectives, but they're really cool. They're very laid back and are just as interested in listening to us as talking. We had seminar for an hour where we discussed last nights reading and basically said... whatever we wanted. We're reading really cool stuff. Then we had workshop with writing prompts. Oh yeah, there are the most brilliant window seats in the lecture hall, they're about two feet deep, made out of marble-y looking stuff. I saw a chipmunk out the window. It looked like a normal chipmunk just had its tail straight up in the air like it was constantly being electrocuted. The prompts, like everything else so far, are very open ended, but I liked them. After we discussed what wrote and gave constructive-ish criticism.

Then lunch. More food. Some questionable. Then... Topic conferences, that's right. I really liked this. We have two profs, right, we signed up in the morning to meet with one. I met with D, who's very cool and easy to talk to. And we just talked ideas for twenty minutes. We have a creative piece due on Wednesday and we talked that around. It was really helpful and I came out feeling a lot more sure about what I was going to do.

We did our reading and wrote the paper for tomorrow in the afternoon, had a tour of the computer lab and did a group journal exercise. The sunsets here are gorgeous and I saw a good bench to watch from I just didn't get a chance to get down there.

Tomorrow: Go to library, buy postcards (not at the library)

Arrival

It’s very bright here. I don’t think clouds exist. Except on the nametag on my door.

Red eyes suck. Slept maybe three hours. Have no idea what day it is.

The airport was fine. I sat at the gate next to a woman in a black trench coat who texted “crazy about u” to someone then read a wedding magazine thicker than half the books we read for English last year. I sat next to her and read ‘The History of Homosexuality’ in the Stranger. We did not converse. Speaking of the Stranger, I recommend checking out this week's Control Tower, it's hilarious.

The plane was a bucket of bolts, it’s a miracle we made it. The little TVs flipped down from the ceiling and we watched the safety movie in English and Spanish. The little TVs flipped back up. And back down again. And we watched the safety video again in English and Spanish. Then I listened to the two old guys next to me compare a kidney transplant to fixing a car. I was slightly worried. And went to sleep.

Got completely lost on the way here with Mr. Taxi Driver who barely spoke English. But we made it. Everything is made out of stone and the first thing I thought of when I saw it was Jeff and how he’d love to climb the buildings. The dorm is very dusty and the creaking of the floors is louder than our violin section. I’m in room 306 on the third floor, which is probably bad because I’ll have to make a conscious effort to be social. Which is not my forte. And there are only three other people up here in my class, the rest are below. But I'm actually pretty pleased about it, I get lots of space.

The people are alright so far. One of the girls on my floor is from Bolivia, she's really cool. Another girl is into Wicked and Broadway, so we'll have something to talk about. I'm one of three people from the west coast.

East coast people are interesting. They're very... hardcore. They seem to be really into everything they're doing. Where as, in Olympia at least, we're mellow about everything. And they all seem pretty conservative - I've already got a couple on my list to not bring up politics around.

Now the people running the program... they're my kind of people. The coordinator is awesome, and everyone else has sort of the Evergreen vibe. Without the Greener vibe. If that makes sense.

Oh, there's file sharing here on itunes, so there's all this music from other people. Lots of Spamalot and... for some reason, all the Brandenburg concertos.

There are little gold plaques on my window frame that say things like: “Caitlyn Clark ‘07” and “Linda Claire Bush ‘85” and “O.T.E. loves M.V.” The last is by far the most interesting.

Have to go do reading for class tomorrow. We have a segment from the Woman Warrior. Now I'm glad I read that book.

Leaving

Leaving for the airport.

Have accepted the fact that:

My parents are going to kill my plants

My coffee will cost more

The CDs I didn't put on my iPod are the ones I will want later

I will want the raincoat that is in the boat house and probably moldy.

The flight is going to suck

New Life for the Blog

Since Parker says he's restarting his blog, I have to as well. Unlike Parker's, mine actually has a point.

I plan to use this as a travel blog over the next month while I'm on the East Coast for my friends and family to keep up with me. Because I think it will be easier than mass emails. And I'm lazy.

So - I leave Saturday. My plane leaves in the six o'clock range and I'll take a red eye to the Philadelphia airport. From there I take a cab to Byrn Mawr and try to find a key to get into my dorm. If I can find my dorm. Then I will get massive amounts coffee.

Three weeks at Bryn Mawr then my parents pick me up and we go to Massachusetts to see Mount Holyoke. If I didn't find any feminists at Bryn Mawr I will certainly find them here. From there we go to Long Island to spend a night with a friend of my mother. We take the ferry from there to New York City and spend a week there to see more schools and Wicked. I get home on the 26th of July.

Theoretically, that's the plan.

-L