Bittersweet Move-in

Moving day! All the cohorts reported downstairs an hour before check-in for Summer Discovery and the luggage was ridiculously tedious to "carry". I had the most difficult of times trying to even pull my luggage to the elevator because I had to inefficiently put my bag of books and my backpack on the two suitcases and it made it that much heavier. After all the shenanigans that my suitcases pulled on me, we signed in and I arrived in my long-anticipated dorm. My roommate wasn't in the room at first, but I met him later.

My room feels very spacious for being a double. We have AC so we won't be dying in the hot Philly weather in our room anytime soon. There's a shelf where I can put my things on - as you can see in the photo - and I placed pretty much everything I need on it. I settled in and we head out for some "grub".

Lunch was bittersweet. Not because of the food, but the short good-byes that we exchanged with Mr. Hillyer. It was only a few short days but we developed a parent-child relationship over that time. He knows a tremendous amount about the East Coast and through our interaction with him, the experience has become so much better. I can't imagine the trip without Mr. Hillyer, he has been a quintessential person in our adventure in the East Coast. In the end, It's like a dad saying their farewells to his children.

My roommate, Alex Ehlinger! He's French!

I returned to my room and I finally had the chance to meet my roommate! His name is Axel Ehlinger; he moved to the U.S. three years ago from France, and he is currently living in New York. His mother was saying her goodbyes - jeez, it feels like it's wartime with all the goodbye - and after she left, Axel and I discussed our backgrounds. For this blog, I'll talk about him! Axel had the opportunity to choose between continuing to live in Paris or living in New York for a year. He chose to live in NY and he loved it so much that he decided to stay. As a rising senior, he's taking the chemistry program! He's in a French-American school and his school bases its education on the French system. In his school, everyone has the option of studying a set of classes based on: science, economics, or literature. Generally, some of the classes intertwine. If a student is studying economics, they will most likely not take any classes in literature. Economics has a set of statistics and calculus classes while science has the general natural sciences. However, if a student is in the science set, they have to take a philosophy class senior year. I know that France has a very similar system because the French exit exam (for high school) has an essay section that regards philosophical questions such as: "Is it our duty to seek the truth". The French are very heavily invested in philosophy, they believe that its the foundation for thinking. I believe this is true and it'd be fantastic for America to adopt a similar approach in high schools but we're having our own problems; realistically, the American education system is not going to go through drastic changes.

We became acquainted and after resting, we headed out to meet the other people on the same floor. At first, there were only three but more and more people started joining the group. It soon became a party of twenty! After everyone became acquainted, we checked out the rest of the hall.

Apparently, the third floor always has a lounge/lobby available only for us to use. What luck! We were all gathered so we decided to have a giant conversation about expectations from each other and overall ideas of what we wanted our hall to be like. We became even more acquainted and we had even developed nicknames for each other. We're planning to get a board game or party card game for the floor so we can have fun during our free time. My floor is very sociable so we'll be able to have much more fun than the other dorms! Just kidding. I'm not trying to start a dorm competition, but... we're the best.

We met up at 5:00 PM and head out to the dining commons. I met even more people in line but I didn't get to fully acquaint myself with them until later. The food in the commons was much better than I had anticipated, especially the pizza. I had a couple slices but I didn't eat too much because I thought it'd be harder to make friends if they saw how much I could eat. Axel and I got a plate of what we thought was lemon meringue pie but it was actually banana cream pie. I didn't like the banana flavor but the rest of the pie was satisfactory.

It's been a pretty long day since we had to get settled in to our new homes for the next four weeks. I really love my roommate, I've learned more about France than I did from textbooks. Not to say that we didn't cover France but the actual experience is much more enlightening. Class is tomorrow and I absolutely cannot wait!