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yesterday we met my housemates T, L, and I, and heard about A/J, although i still haven't laid eyes on her. but these are not the only people i see on a daily basis. we've just wrapped up Freshers' Week, which -- in edinburgh as well, so is this maybe a british phenomenon? we have freshman/new student orientation at US universities, but not like this -- is a marathon of social activity with an occasional moment of taking care of something administrative.
it might actually be easiest if i try to describe the week a day at a time, rather than give a list of people (which is to say initials) i've acquired as a social circle.
friday 1 october
there was a thing at the college bar, you remember, but i didn't go. not at all. never mind friday.
saturday 2 october
nothing.
sunday 3 october
tea and coffee social for new students, at which i met L and recognized the name and said Hey! you're my suitemate! other characters (i feel like i should maybe color-code them for gender):
S -- from london. cute, stylish, not living in college (=on campus). seen her a couple of times since then, but i think she's also been back home for a bit.
M -- the first of four by this name, actually, so let's call him M1. from chicago, sort of eco-geeky. was talking at one point about a project he'd done on st croix with trackiing the laying habits of sea turtles, or something. cool, but often seems very slightly stoned.
Z -- also from chicago. little and bouncy; haven't seen much of him, but you know how terriers have all that energy? like that.
A -- another american, but i forget from where. sort of quiet. possibly overwhelmed by the almost-mandatory socialization.
N -- canadian, seems young, very nice.
M -- this is M2. from philadelphia. another hoya ('04).
K -- greek. a little nutty, but in an entertaining way.
N -- also greek, also nutty, angry socialist (?). actually i don't know if he's a socialist.
M -- M3. navy brat. about nine feet tall. has been living in glasgow for seven years.
B -- canadian, former rugby player, knows from curling (had a cousin who lost ... something; the ontario playdowns? ... when she accidentally kicked one of her opponents' rocks), similarly geeky to a lot of us.
P -- english, crazy in that way only english students can really be. some of you may remember hearing stories about my friend R from the archery club at edinburgh? except for not being from manchester, P is a lot like that.
K -- bulgarian. decided quite late to come to school this term, so until recently he didn't have a place to live, but was staying at a backpackers' hostel. ugh.
M -- M4, from dallas. haven't seen too much of him, but M3 tells me the four of them are thinking of forming a club.
M -- a different M name. english. funny and pleasant, but identifies as "a christian", which annoys me -- not that people shouldn't be christians, and in fact everyone i've ever met in britain who's identified as "a christian" (there was a lot of that in edinburgh) has been unfailingly nice, non-evangelical, etc. it's just that i'm really bugged by the fact that this denomination calls itself non-denominational. (i'm bugged by that everywhere i encounter it, though. nobody had better tell me they speak without an accent of any kind, for example.)
thing that occurs to me: where are the women? i've typed "font color=blue" a lot here. hrm.
C -- the college president, and another american. (there.)
a bunch of this crowd went to dinner sunday evening, where we were joined by M, an applied linguist, who has a possibly-subconscious adopted accent that i find sort of amusing. (not that -- i mean, people should speak how they want, and if they feel like fronting the end of the diphthong on words like "know" makes them belong in some way, great. i find myself adjusting vocabulary and intonation in most conversations with shopkeepers etc. -- it cuts down on the amount of time i have to repeat myself if they can understand me the first time. but i don't kid myself that i sound any less american, and to my ear M doesn't sound any more english than i do. [shrug] but whatever. P-the-baby-queen-social-director has a subconscious adopted accent as well, and knows it, and knows it's a thing that happens. M3, the one who's been in glasgow all this time, has an ordinary non-localized american accent but uses words like "proper" and "sorted". i don't know why girl-M's accent is such a thing for me.)
monday 4 october
pub crawl. same crowd described above, really. this is where i had the beer followed, once we returned, by red wine in greek-N's room -- queen!P, M3, greek N, B, and some other people all live in the same building as i do, which is about a ten-minute walk from other places, so the bunch of us -- including my suitemates L and I -- went back after the pubs closed and hung out chez N with the bad wine (supplied by P, who also has good wine but didn't give us any). the only person i remember meeting for the first time on monday was A, not my flatmate A/J but a different A, who is from texas.
tuesday 5 october
welcome drinks in the college bar, where again i hit mostly the same crowd. L and M3 and some folks from their department had been out drinking since about 7pm and arrived around 9:30; M3 was doing very well with V, who, let me say right now, is very sweet -- so the fact that i also think she's as dumb as a bag of nails is in no way related to my mild resentment of her late arrival on the scene. (M3 and i had been hitting it off! i had an after-lunch smoking buddy! rar.) english-P and i provided (slightly drunken) color commentary on a doubles pool match between the teams of M3-and-V and two canadians whose names i can't remember -- J, i think, and something else. you should understand that the cloth on the pool table is not precisely true, or even entirely intact, which makes the games a little interesting. also the space is too small for it; on two sides there's room for you between the wall and the table, but not your cue. heh. but the commentary was fun. ("let's watch as J sets up his shot. he needs to sink this ball to stop the haemmhoraging." "and ... he hasn't done it. he can't be happy with that shot, P." maybe you had to be there.) new person: L, who cracks me up a great deal of the time and may not mean to at all. i make his accent posh-public-school and his attitude generally-ironic, which is a killer combination. happens to be one of B's suitemates, the other of whom is apparently totally antisocial and also hardly ever there.
wednesday 6 october
movie night. monty python and the holy grail. no drinking scheduled; queen!P planned it that way, so people could have a break. :-) B and L and english-P brought wine and had four glasses, and offered me the fourth one. yay i felt special (plus i had a glass of wine).
thursday 7 october
i only left the room once. thursday was a non-day.
friday 8 october
welcome bop, which i swear is what it was called. it's traditional to refer to a dance as a "bop" around here. everyone does it. unfortunately, the DJing was extremely of the suck. no sense of what the crowd was responding to, and the stuff they were playing, they mixed badly. le sigh. thing was over around 1, B and i helped queen!P take down the decorations etc., left together eventually and went back to his room, which i have to say i prefer to having people up to my room -- like i learned from a roommate three or four apartments ago, it is better to be the one who leaves afterwards. sadly, he was ill-equipped for that sort of guest (am i the only one with condoms in the nightstand drawer?), and by the time this became clear i was in no shape to run upstairs and fix. so, all side shows, no main event. [shrug] next time. it's convenient to have someone in the building for that purpose.
today
no more fresher's week (which should be called freshers' week, shouldn't it) events. so sad. but seriously, the summer-camp-like social whirlwind can only go on so long before it's exhausting. i've had a quiet day so far today, though i'm thinking of hiking out to the grocery store again. nothing on the docket for tomorrow either, but monday morning is my first lecture. [bites nails]
oh! T's boyfriend seems to have moved out today, presumably into his own place that wasn't available until now ... ? i ran into them and another friend of theirs in the hallway on my way to the shower, and he was pulling a rolling suitcase. so perhaps we'll see a little more of her now -- or perhaps she'll always be over there. who knows.
it might actually be easiest if i try to describe the week a day at a time, rather than give a list of people (which is to say initials) i've acquired as a social circle.
friday 1 october
there was a thing at the college bar, you remember, but i didn't go. not at all. never mind friday.
saturday 2 october
nothing.
sunday 3 october
tea and coffee social for new students, at which i met L and recognized the name and said Hey! you're my suitemate! other characters (i feel like i should maybe color-code them for gender):
S -- from london. cute, stylish, not living in college (=on campus). seen her a couple of times since then, but i think she's also been back home for a bit.
M -- the first of four by this name, actually, so let's call him M1. from chicago, sort of eco-geeky. was talking at one point about a project he'd done on st croix with trackiing the laying habits of sea turtles, or something. cool, but often seems very slightly stoned.
Z -- also from chicago. little and bouncy; haven't seen much of him, but you know how terriers have all that energy? like that.
A -- another american, but i forget from where. sort of quiet. possibly overwhelmed by the almost-mandatory socialization.
N -- canadian, seems young, very nice.
M -- this is M2. from philadelphia. another hoya ('04).
K -- greek. a little nutty, but in an entertaining way.
N -- also greek, also nutty, angry socialist (?). actually i don't know if he's a socialist.
M -- M3. navy brat. about nine feet tall. has been living in glasgow for seven years.
B -- canadian, former rugby player, knows from curling (had a cousin who lost ... something; the ontario playdowns? ... when she accidentally kicked one of her opponents' rocks), similarly geeky to a lot of us.
P -- english, crazy in that way only english students can really be. some of you may remember hearing stories about my friend R from the archery club at edinburgh? except for not being from manchester, P is a lot like that.
K -- bulgarian. decided quite late to come to school this term, so until recently he didn't have a place to live, but was staying at a backpackers' hostel. ugh.
M -- M4, from dallas. haven't seen too much of him, but M3 tells me the four of them are thinking of forming a club.
M -- a different M name. english. funny and pleasant, but identifies as "a christian", which annoys me -- not that people shouldn't be christians, and in fact everyone i've ever met in britain who's identified as "a christian" (there was a lot of that in edinburgh) has been unfailingly nice, non-evangelical, etc. it's just that i'm really bugged by the fact that this denomination calls itself non-denominational. (i'm bugged by that everywhere i encounter it, though. nobody had better tell me they speak without an accent of any kind, for example.)
thing that occurs to me: where are the women? i've typed "font color=blue" a lot here. hrm.
C -- the college president, and another american. (there.)
a bunch of this crowd went to dinner sunday evening, where we were joined by M, an applied linguist, who has a possibly-subconscious adopted accent that i find sort of amusing. (not that -- i mean, people should speak how they want, and if they feel like fronting the end of the diphthong on words like "know" makes them belong in some way, great. i find myself adjusting vocabulary and intonation in most conversations with shopkeepers etc. -- it cuts down on the amount of time i have to repeat myself if they can understand me the first time. but i don't kid myself that i sound any less american, and to my ear M doesn't sound any more english than i do. [shrug] but whatever. P-the-baby-queen-social-director has a subconscious adopted accent as well, and knows it, and knows it's a thing that happens. M3, the one who's been in glasgow all this time, has an ordinary non-localized american accent but uses words like "proper" and "sorted". i don't know why girl-M's accent is such a thing for me.)
monday 4 october
pub crawl. same crowd described above, really. this is where i had the beer followed, once we returned, by red wine in greek-N's room -- queen!P, M3, greek N, B, and some other people all live in the same building as i do, which is about a ten-minute walk from other places, so the bunch of us -- including my suitemates L and I -- went back after the pubs closed and hung out chez N with the bad wine (supplied by P, who also has good wine but didn't give us any). the only person i remember meeting for the first time on monday was A, not my flatmate A/J but a different A, who is from texas.
tuesday 5 october
welcome drinks in the college bar, where again i hit mostly the same crowd. L and M3 and some folks from their department had been out drinking since about 7pm and arrived around 9:30; M3 was doing very well with V, who, let me say right now, is very sweet -- so the fact that i also think she's as dumb as a bag of nails is in no way related to my mild resentment of her late arrival on the scene. (M3 and i had been hitting it off! i had an after-lunch smoking buddy! rar.) english-P and i provided (slightly drunken) color commentary on a doubles pool match between the teams of M3-and-V and two canadians whose names i can't remember -- J, i think, and something else. you should understand that the cloth on the pool table is not precisely true, or even entirely intact, which makes the games a little interesting. also the space is too small for it; on two sides there's room for you between the wall and the table, but not your cue. heh. but the commentary was fun. ("let's watch as J sets up his shot. he needs to sink this ball to stop the haemmhoraging." "and ... he hasn't done it. he can't be happy with that shot, P." maybe you had to be there.) new person: L, who cracks me up a great deal of the time and may not mean to at all. i make his accent posh-public-school and his attitude generally-ironic, which is a killer combination. happens to be one of B's suitemates, the other of whom is apparently totally antisocial and also hardly ever there.
wednesday 6 october
movie night. monty python and the holy grail. no drinking scheduled; queen!P planned it that way, so people could have a break. :-) B and L and english-P brought wine and had four glasses, and offered me the fourth one. yay i felt special (plus i had a glass of wine).
thursday 7 october
i only left the room once. thursday was a non-day.
friday 8 october
welcome bop, which i swear is what it was called. it's traditional to refer to a dance as a "bop" around here. everyone does it. unfortunately, the DJing was extremely of the suck. no sense of what the crowd was responding to, and the stuff they were playing, they mixed badly. le sigh. thing was over around 1, B and i helped queen!P take down the decorations etc., left together eventually and went back to his room, which i have to say i prefer to having people up to my room -- like i learned from a roommate three or four apartments ago, it is better to be the one who leaves afterwards. sadly, he was ill-equipped for that sort of guest (am i the only one with condoms in the nightstand drawer?), and by the time this became clear i was in no shape to run upstairs and fix. so, all side shows, no main event. [shrug] next time. it's convenient to have someone in the building for that purpose.
today
no more fresher's week (which should be called freshers' week, shouldn't it) events. so sad. but seriously, the summer-camp-like social whirlwind can only go on so long before it's exhausting. i've had a quiet day so far today, though i'm thinking of hiking out to the grocery store again. nothing on the docket for tomorrow either, but monday morning is my first lecture. [bites nails]
oh! T's boyfriend seems to have moved out today, presumably into his own place that wasn't available until now ... ? i ran into them and another friend of theirs in the hallway on my way to the shower, and he was pulling a rolling suitcase. so perhaps we'll see a little more of her now -- or perhaps she'll always be over there. who knows.
