Welcoming Committee

I woke up this morning with a growing sense of anticipation–we were moving into dorms today! After a quick breakfast we went shopping at Kmart to buy essential items like shampoo and laundry detergent. Once we were all prepared for our new lives at Penn, we picked up our luggage from the Sheraton and walked over to the quad to check in. I was super excited to meet my roommate and see my dorm, but first we had to wait to get our Penn IDs and welcome packets. Gradually our group moved into the quad, and we dropped off people at their dorms one by one. I was in the farthest dorm, Fitler, and Chloe thoughtfully helped me cart my luggage up the stairs.

Clara and Alysa at Orientation

My roommate, Christine, is amazing! She’s from Taiwan and is taking the Biomedical program, which has 105 students this year. She is so sweet and I think we’ll get along really well. Clara and I tried to do a load of laundry, which will hopefully be done sometime soon, but we’ve tried two different dryers and there hasn’t been any difference in the dampness. After that Clara, Christine, Samantha, and I went to the Penn bookstore to explore. I ended up buying Fast Food Nation, the book that I’m supposed to be reading for my AP Lang assignment. I hope I’ll have time to make some progress on it while we’re here.

Ed talks to us about security

We went to dinner at 5:00 and had a chance to meet some new people, which was really exciting as everyone is from such different places and backgrounds. After dinner we walked over to a chemistry lecture hall to have Orientation. Eli Lesser gave us the rundown of the academic side of the program, as well as some strong warnings about downloading illegal material from the Internet, sneaking out after curfew, and other generally frowned upon activities. Ed Healy also explained to us about some of the group activities that we’ll be doing on weekends. Some of the most exciting include day trips to New York City and Washington, D.C.

In about 10 minutes we meet with our RC’s to go over dorm rules, laundry, and other useful things. I’ll be sure to blog more tomorrow about what the dorms look like and how the first day of class goes. I can’t wait to meet my professor and get to know my classmates!