New Everything

Today was the first day of our Summer Discovery adventure! We now are going to be living in dorms on the UPENN campus. Even though I checked double or triple on the room selection form, I was placed in a single room. At first I was a bit disappointed because I wanted to make friends that way, but I realized later that we have so many other opportunities to make friends and that we are, realistically, only going to be in our rooms when we sleep. We just got back from today's activities and it is almost 11:00 PM, and we are told that we should expect to sleep around midnight every night! Along with the new living arrangements, we also are making new friends, learning new things and experiencing new cultures!

We arrived on time a little before 11:00 AM and checked in with no difficulties. Upon arrival, we all received a folder with information, a Penn ID card which allows us access to virtually everything on campus, two keys (one for the outside buildings and one for our personal room,) and a t-shirt. The staff were very friendly and helped us find our rooms and get settled in. We had until 5:00 PM to unpack and make some friends. We then met for dinner and headed as a group to the commons where we will be eating every day. The food was better than expected and there were so many options and variety to choose from. There was also a lot of dessert options! I had chicken pizza and an eggplant dish for dinner and then apple pie and ice cream for dessert. I also had iced tea. I was pleased with the overall experience and look forward to having our meals there so frequently. 

After dinner we had some time to relax again. Audrey and I and some of our new friends got to know each other in the outside quad area where we were surrounded by an ultimate frisbee game and plenty of other groups talking. The quad area will be a very popular hang out spot, I think, because it is so beautiful and there are a lot of benches, trees and grass to relax by. Then we met up with our residential counselors (RCs.) My RC is Abby and she, along with all the other RCs, knows everything there is to know about UPENN, Philadelphia and the program. Each group had between fifteen and twenty people in it. We went to the orientation as a group.

The orientation was very helpful and cleared up a lot of questions. We met the people who are in charge of and run this whole program and got a feel for how many people there will be in our classes. In Social Justice there will be around 40. I'm so excited to meet everyone in my class tomorrow! I met some of the people in my RC group including people from Paris, Turkey, Kansas, New York and many more interesting places. The diversity in this program is amazing and even better than I expected! The rules were explained, and although there were a lot, most were common sense and very reasonable. We get a lot of freedom and are treated like real college students for the most part.

Following the orientation we had smaller group discussions with our RC groups. We all introduced ourselves more formally. There are some pretty interesting people in my group! One girl brought a whole bunch of henna and showed us awesome designs she can do for us. This is something I would definitely like to try some time in the next four weeks. There are also figure skaters, musicians, singers and much more! I'm really happy with my group and look forward to getting to know them better. We were then shown the office where we have to sign in at every night between 10:00 PM and 11:00 PM. As it was around 10:15 PM when we went, we all signed in and then went our separate ways. I hung out with some of my floor mates for about a half hour, got ready for bed and then went back to my room to write descriptions of my room and this blog! Seeing as it's almost midnight now, I should probably head to sleep. Wish me luck on my first day of class tomorrow!