The biggest change I've had to get used to is living on a co-ed floor. Now, I'm used to having guys in my building, and even in my hallway, but this is my first experience with having them in my bathroom. That's right--there is one large communal bathroom at the end of the hall that I share with about then other girls and five guys, one of whom is the RA. As a girl whose last experience with a communal bathroom was in a dorm nicknamed "The Nunnery", I wasn't sure how to react when I ended up brushing my teeth one night standing next to a guy who had just finished his shower and was wearing only a towel. That particular experience only happened once. Usually I don't encounter anyone in the bathroom, male or female. Other than the presence of men, the bathroom is pretty standard. Only one shower has good pressure, and it's drain seems to be clogged because when you use it you end up standing in two or three inches of water by the time you're done, which kind of defeats the purpose of wearing flip-flops in the shower.
In other ways, this dorm is much like any other. There are a few people who rarely come out of their rooms, and a bunch of us who go eat in the cafeteria together all the time. Also, very random things happen on the weekend. On Friday we went down to the basement lounge to play games and ended up watching the Disney channel instead. The Incredibles was on, can you blame us? On Saturday we stayed in again, because hurricane Hanna was making it rain pretty hard all evening. Again, we hung out in the basement lounge, but this time we really did play Uno for about two hours. The card playing was punctuated by an adventure involving the snack machine. One of the items in the machine is a bag o f popped, white cheddar flavor popcorn. Well, a bag of this had been purchased earlier in the night and then abandoned, as it was stuck in the machine, right above the door flap, effectively out of reach. And another bag was stuck on top of it. Somehow it became our collective mission to free the popcorn from the machine. (My mission was just to watch, and then eat the popcorn. It seemed to work out.) Chris managed to shake the machine enough to get the top bag to fall down and out of the way, but the first one was still wedged pretty bad. So Jana got the brilliant idea of buying one of the heavier candy bars above that space to see if it would fall and knock the popcorn loose. Instead, the Hershey bar bounced off the bag and flew across the inside of the machine to smack against the far wall before falling down into the retrieval zone. We were rather tired at this point, so it was pretty much hilarious. Our next plan was to get a stick and poke at the popcorn, but nobody felt like going upstairs in search of a pen. So Kristen bought Cheetos, and they, too, got stuck on top of the popcorn. Her solution was to bang the flap/door on the machine until the Cheetos fell down. This also worked for the popcorn in the end. So we were victorious and shared the bounty of white cheddar flavored popcorn. And there was much rejoicing.
Yesterday I found my way back to Park Street for a morning service. I really enjoyed it. If I continue to go to Park Street, I will more than likely make a habit of attending the morning service instead of the evening. It was refreshing to use a hymnal again, and hear a real church choir. But more importantly, the pastor impressed me. They had been working through the OT book of Zechariah, and he spent time explaining the form the visions were presented in, noting how the first and last vision mirror each other and so on in order to emphasize the central vision, which is about Christ. We were on the final vision, so I've missed most of the series, but I didn't feel at all lost listening to the sermon. In fact, his style reminded me of a couple of our USF profs. Even though I can't take any more theology courses out here, at least I can listen to a preacher who really knows his stuff and presents it well. We also took communion at this service. It was a good reminder that even though I'm far from home and the people I know, I am still surrounded by the body of Christ and a vital part of it.
After church I felt the need for a nap, so I slept until it was time to attend our hall meeting. This was when our RD and RA explained the rules for our dorm and encouraged us to get to know each other. Afterward I ended up at dinner with a bunch of my floor buddies and then found myself recruited to help design and put together bulletin boards in the dorm. I worked with Tetima, Jana and our RA Peter to choose themes for the duty boards and other displays. We had a stack of old materials to choose from, but only one idea in the pile was worth using, and we claimed it for our floor. So our bulletin board is a tribute to pick up lines--the good, the bad, and the downright awful. It even includes pirate pick up lines. We also put out sticky notes and a pen and encouraged our hallmates to come up with better lines. We'll see how that goes. I ended up doing all of the stapling of the background paper and all the other pieces. My time spent helping mom at school seems to have made me useful here, which may or may not be a good thing. I seem to be in danger of being recruited onto the hall council, a group that plans and carries out events for the North Hall residents. Of course, the current council members are all people I hang out with anyway, so maybe it wouldn't be too bad. We'll see how that works out. I'll leave you with a few pictures to give you a better feel for the things I'm talking about.
Here's one view of my room. It's not a bad size for just one person. This view doesn't even show my good-sized closet and bookshelf.
Here's another view, showing the other side of the room.
And this is the bulletin board we put together. We have to do several more, but we only got one put together for now. The rest will come later, after we've printed materials to go with our ideas.
-Kim
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