Day One in DC!

1/23/11; 12:10am

So I arrived in DC yesterday and today I came to school! I arrived at the residential building at 10:30 sharp and met one of my three roommates, Tyler. She had bottom bunk on the left side of the room. I took the top bunk on the right side of the room though. Our room is actually really spacious and I love it. We have the front room so it’s facing out into DC, which is amazing! So after arriving at the residential, I unpacked and reorganized all my stuff, made my bed, and met some other people here at SEGL. Then, my mom, dad, and I drove back to the hotel to drop off the car and walked to a pizza place called Pizza Paradino (sp?) in DuPont circle. After an awesome lunch we went to the academic building. We were early so we talked to Gray, the academic dean, and Noah, the director, and one of my classmates, Andrew, who had just taken the SAT this morning. Most other families stayed at the residential and ate and took the Metro over so they met us at the academic. When everyone arrived, all of the kids went upstairs to the second floor and the parents stayed downstairs and had their little meeting with Noah. Lucy, our residential advisor, gave us a worksheet to fill out which was our first ethics activity. There was a situation and we had to describe what we thought the person should do in different ones; that’s the basic version. It took about 30 minutes. Then we all introduced ourselves, told everyone something about ourselves, and then where we’re from. There are lots of people from Washington State, a few from Texas, Georgia, LA, and even Alaska! Then we got another sheet that gave us three options on it, which allowed us to decide where we were going for the day as our first group activity. We chose to go to the Natural History Museum to look at a photography exhibit there. There were lots of pictures in different countries like South Africa and Tibet, and then there was a big presidential exhibit with lots of photos of Obama, and also of Richard NIxon, Bill Clinton, and the list goes on. After we walked there and saw the exhibit, we walked to the White House, where we saw our first protest! It was awesome, and I took way too many pictures of it. Then we walked back to the Academic building and had a dinner of Baja Fresh, which I’d never had before, and it was actually delicious! Then we got into a big circle and went over rules while here at SEGL and about the facility and about the staff, and basically everything we would ever need to know while here. Then we did some ice-breakers in between. We did a game where we had to get into alphabetical by first name without talking. Then, when we got to the dorm earlier this morning, on our doors were these cards with countries of the world under each of our names, and I was Nepal, so we had to pretend the floor was a big map and put ourselves where the country we had was on the map. It was a fun activity…even though some of the countries were just a little off. Then we played train-wreck, which was hilarious and so much fun. Someone stands in the middle and says something true about themselves. Noah started out by saying, I’m a duke basketball fan, so whoever was a Duke basketball fan has to stand up and trade seats with someone else in the room, and it can’t be a seat next to you. It seems all nice but some people were flying all over the room to try to get a seat, and my roommate, Tyler flipped over her seat, actually. It was hysterical, and quite a scene! Then we walked to the Metro, in freezing weather by the way, and boarded the Metro to the residential facility. We got off the Metro then walked to the residential and had dorm meeting for about an hour to talk about dorm rules, kitchen rules, and everything like that. And of course, the “gender rules” about having the door open at 90 degrees and clothes on at all times, and no horizontal. Then we got together shower schedules and things like that between specific floors. Then we went back to our rooms and just hung out with our roommates and chilled for a while. It was such a fun first day and I already love it here! I can’t wait for this semester!