My Room is Small. (More to Eat With.)

It's after 1 am in NYC, and I am settling into my very small dorm room with air conditioning. Hopefully, this will be the most boring picture on my blog- but here is where I will be living. Small is relative though, as I think back to Sunny's dormitory in Shaoxing. She shared a room maybe three times this size with six other girls. They had one small cupboard each for storage.

Anyway, I am just so happy to have a wireless connection that I must send a picture. I wish I could take a picture of the very international looking big circle of people sitting and talking down in the common room right now, but you know I am just a timid freshman seeking acceptance at this point and I was not invited in, even though I passed them about five times looking for the one bathroom on the hall. No, I did not get my requested I-House north apartment studio. But the good thing is that I will have about $1000 more to eat and see shows living in the ghetto dorm with a bathroom waaayyyyy down the hall (room rates were listed between $700-$18oo for the month- my room will be $742).

Most rooms identify their occupants by name, country and area of study, like these few down the hall:

"Jan Maravek, visitng scholar from Russia, Cesar from Mexico, studying Matematicos, and Amrin from Singapore, studying Law."

I took a shuttle from the airport, which was $20 instead of $60 for a taxi. I was the last of nine to be dropped off, which means I saved on a tour of the city as well. Our driver was from the Middle East, my guess is probably somewhere close to Egypt. I think this because while he played Delilah Renee's soft hits quite loudly (is she everywhere?), the only song he turned up to distortion was Celine Dion's "My Heart Will Go On." When I was in Egypt, the only way I heard this song was turned up past distortion, and I heard it a lot-- at least once every hour.

I was starving when I got here (no meal on the flight) so went down to this dive looking deli on the corner, open 24 hours. I ordered a BLT thinking it would be barely passable...but it was beautiful, on excellent bread with pastrami-like bacon. I bet even the AM/PM hamburgers are good in New York.

OK, now to try to sleep, with the big circle of international talkers still at it down the hall. It's been twenty years since I've sat in one of those circles until 2 or 3 am on a Friday night/Saturday morning, but mine was very homogeneous and white at the U of O.