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.