It Has Begun

The first day of classes is officially here!

I somehow managed to lug all of my belongings from the apartment back into my dorm room, sort through the ensuing mayhem of the closet-sized space, put my dorm room together (wall decorations included), and clean the apartment bathroom and kitchen for the moveout inspection all during few and far between spare moments of the beautiful chaos of last week.

And that leaves an orientation explanation to fill the big gaping hole of time you are uninformed of in my life. It's weird to think about because I feel as though I lost a whole week of my life on a retreat of some weird variety. We were so busy and saw the same people every day and I left campus only to go to my apartment so when the rest of Mount Marty moved to campus yesterday I was almost baffled by the fact that life had gone on outside of orientation and Mount Marty and I felt as though I had hundreds of errands to run and people to catch up with.

Despite the confusion, I am very glad I took the opportunity to be an orientation leader (OL). It was great and stressful and frustrationg and a blast all at once. It was great to spend a week with MMC students other than my closest friends and get to know them. I made many more great friends. It's also pretty sweet to walk around campus now and actually know who the majority of the freshmen are - definitely a different and exciting change from my past three years of knowing only the freshman volleyball players.

I only have a few minutes before I have to run off to my second class of my senior year, so I'm going to give you a very brief synopsis of my favorite OL moments.

I sprinted around campus with Becca and Jess (fellow OL leaders) during training to completely dominate a campus wide scavenger hunt, I carried piles and piles of lumber up four flights of staris to make the job of building lofts easier for the new faces, I saw a hypnotized nun and laughed until I cried, we held an OL dance party in Corbey hall before escorting the freshmen to bowling, Jess and I spent the majority of odd down time moments interpretive dancing and earning weird looks from the freshmen, I ate massive amounts of ice cream, I participated in a game of street ball basketball that lasted until midnight, and I had a great time with my OL partner, Heidi, even if we did have to do a bit of door-to-door knocking to track kids down.

Ohhhh, and on Saturday morning, Jordan Foos and I got up bright and early to run in the riverboat days 5K race. It was a beautiful morning to run and I had a great time. I've never run in a big mob of people like that before and it made the race seem so much shorter and manageable. It was a great time...very refreshing! I finished 93rd out of 269 (Jordan ran away and managed to finish 70th) and had a runner's high for the rest of the morning. I worked it off by joining the other OL's and the freshmen in walking the parade route (Jess and I threw in a few dance moves as well...)

I best be off so I'm not late for a class on the first day. Hold tight for more exciting details of the Fall 2009 semester!!