Back at UR

September 1, 2008 at 10:37 pm (Friends, School, Sleep, UR) (classes, housing, jetlag, moving)

Well folks, I’m back at UR, horrendously jetlagged having woken up at 6am for the past two days.  Last night I went to sleep on an air mattress and woke up on the floor – fun times! 😀

I had to get up early this morning anyway because I had a few errands to run before I could actually do anything here.  P (whose room I stayed in last night) and I went to breakfast around 8:30, then el boyo and I headed to housing to find a room for me.  I must admit, I’m pretty impressed with my negotiating skills.  The lady at housing tried to tell me that I could only room with someone who had an opening in their room because any open rooms were promised to other students who had already requested room changes but couldn’t move until September 15.  However, after much discussion, she admitted most of those girls are on the other side of campus from the building I wanted to be in, and thus there was the possibility that I could grab a double room to myself until my roomie comes back from abroad in the spring.  The tipping point was that roomie had submitted a piece of paper to housing last spring saying that she wanted to room with me in the spring when we both returned from study abroad.  With written confirmation in hand, housing lady felt that I was justified in living in a double by myself for a semester – yey!  So I had the choice of two rooms in my preferred dorm – one on the third floor and one on the fourth floor.  I had hoped to be able to live on the same floor as P, but the only open ones there were triples, so that was out of the question.  Thus, I choose the third floor.

The next task was getting my SpiderCard reactivated and choosing a meal plan, which housing lady helped me out with by calling the OneCard office.  Thus, in one stop I had already finished my two main tasks for the day!  The next stop was to the post office, where I picked up my mailbox key with no problem whatsoever.  Finally I returned to P’s room to collect my stuff and move it upstairs.  El boyo comes in great use in times like this.  He single-handedly brought both of my 50+ lb bags upstairs (one at a time!) and then proceeded to totally rearrange the room to my specifications.  Now the room is lovely and balanced, except that it feels so empty without roomie.  While I like having my own room, it is a bit lonely, especially when you only have an empty desk, bed, dresser, and closet to keep you company.

Within the next few weeks, I’ll be making a trip to B-more to pick up the rest of my stuff that my parents are bringing down for me, so that will help make the room feel a bit more homey, especially when I get my big lamp and don’t have to rely on the harsh overhead light for all my light.  There’s also a big open space on the floor, so methinks P and I are going to have to go find a lovely rug to put there.  And there’s a perfect spot in the corner where I would love to put a big fluffy armchair, but I don’t think I have the resources for that.  I wonder if Amazon sells chairs….  Hmmm

After setting up the room to my liking and completely unpacking (yey me!) I actually went to 3 of my 4 classes I signed up for this semester.  I’m pretty optomistic about all of them, though at least one of them is out of my comfort zone, as it deals with art, so that will definitely be a challenge for me.  The others are interesting, though one of them, which is one of the more interesting ones, I think could be improved by facilitating conversation in a circle or something rather than the rows of us staring at and speaking to the teacher instead of conversing with the class as a whole.  And it’s a class about teaching.  Go figure.  Anyway, I have my last class tomorrow, which is in my comfort zone, as it’s a Latin class, but I think it’ll be pretty hard since it’s wicked upper-level.

And that’s all folks!  I’ll try to keep you updated when I get more sleep and start making my room cozier.  Oh, and did I mention that they painted all the doors/doorframes in this dorm and put down new carpet?!?!  It looks so much better and so much more sophisticated than the grungy pink and blue of last year!  Let me know if you want pictures…