And So It Begins

It’s finally the day to check into our dorms; the wait was finally over. I have never roomed with somebody before so this whole experience is new to me. I looked forward to meeting my roommate. We arrived at the check in and quickly got carts to put our luggage in. I finally got my Penn ID and it felt official. I have been waiting for this moment for three months and now it’s here. There was someone from Summer Discovery who guided to our dorms and help take the luggage out of the crate. I am staying in the Class of 1928 (’28). 

I saw that no one was in my room and assumed that my roommate was not here. I quickly claimed which bed I wanted and pulled out all my bed essentials to set my bed. Mr. Hillyer wanted to eat lunch with us as a good-bye present but first he wanted us to meet a man who works with the academies. He introduced himself as Eli and said that he reads the blogs before he goes to sleep (at 11 PM) and expected us to post it by then. We all laughed and I was happy that there was someone who said, “Oh I read your blog” it felt like we had a fan. Mr. Hillyer originally was going to take us to go eat BBQ but Eli suggested us to go eat at this donut and fried chicken place. We checked out the donut and fried chicken place but only bought a donut to eat. Mr. Hillyer took us to the BBQ place but unfortunately it was close so the nearest restaurant was a Mexican restaurant called Mad Mex. The food came in big portions and I couldn’t finish my burrito so I took it back to the dorm. Sadly the food wasn’t as good as the Mexican food in California. Mr. Hillyer dropped us off at the dorms and we all went our separate ways. 

A burrito????

From the shop Eli recommended

I claimed my territory (bed)

Air conditioning 

We have a sink inside the dorm! 

I went back to my room and started unpacking. It felt nice to remove everything from my suitcase since I had to pack and repack for the last three days. I saw that my roommate settled in but she wasn’t there. Jun and Chiamaka came to visit me out of surprise and we decided to go to the other cohort’s rooms too. One by one we picked up and toured the cohort’s dorm and got to meet their roommates. At 5 PM, everyone split up and went to go find their group. I found my group and met my Room Counselor (RC), Sarah, who took us to the dining commons called 1920 cafeteria. The food was decent and now I know what dorm food taste like. There was also a lot of junk food but there was also a salad bar. 

Sarah led us back to the Quadrangle and had us do some ice breakers so that we (people on my floor) could all get to know each other. We did an assembly line activity where we had to answer a question that Sarah had said to the person across from us. I did think that I got to know some of my floor mates  better and I also met my roommate, Kinick. I have learned that there are a lot of people from different countries who come here and I love how it adds to the diversity. I had no idea how big of a name UPenn was until I got here. 

We did some more ice breakers but this time it was with almost everyone from all programs. It was very fun and a good way to get to know one another. Sarah took us to her dorm because she needed to get something for our mini orientation. We settled around the RC's dorm living room and Sarah went over the guidelines and the rules for the dorms. After the mini orientation, we did a small ice breaker and Sarah bought us some M&M's. Each colored M&M had a question and we had to have an answer for every M&M of that color. 

The girls in the cohort had to do laundry so we went down to the laundry room which was in my dorm building. Since we had to wait for laundry and blog, we decided to have a "blog party"  in the laundry room. The most frustrating thing about the first day was that we had no access to internet and that is why this blog is up so late. To kind of solve this problem, we had to type our blogs out on a word document and then copy and paste it onto our blogspot. 

Blog PARTY!

Hopefully I can get internet tomorrow and I won't be behind on blogging. I'm really looking forward to tomorrow's class and hopefully I can learn a lot and make new friends.