2 ½ x 3 Kaitlyns and Awesome Blogs

Blog No. 3: Actually Moving Into Kresge and First Day of Classes

Monday morning, we woke up very early to try and move everything in all at once with the first trip. The night before, we packed up almost everything into Kaylah's car. Only my laundry basket of clothes, piano, saxophone, and printer didn't fit, which is surprising because Grace, Kaylah's car, is very very very very small.

The first thing we did was drive to this little red kiosk at the base of campus, in order to purchase a parking permit that will allow Grace to be parked at a very close parking lot. Unfortunately, that didn't happen. Apparently the lady at the booth said that the computers cannot bring up the information for undergraduates…

So we drove a little further to the TAPS office. Thing was, there was a line at that building that went out the door. The only close by, available parking was at the entrance, which was full. What we had to do was Kaylah had to stand in that cumbersome line, while I sat in the driver's seat, wait at the stop sign for anyone to pull out of a parking spot so that I can park Grace without getting a ticket. When I parked Grace, about 15 minutes of country music later, I walked to where Kaylah was in line. After we entered in the building, there was a person who said that they would help us because Kaylah has done this before. So we skipped ahead of the line to a door, where Kaylah was being processed on the computer. Thing is, Kaylah had already purchased her Remote parking pass and could not purchase a temporary one. We had to call the TAPS main office, leave a message with Grace's license plate number, and leave a little piece of paper saying "DO NOT CITE" on Kaylah's dashboard.

This part took all of an hour to do, all for a piece of paper. That was very much a time waster… DX

Then we ran to the Kresge housing office to pick up my dorm key and to actually see which room I was in. Joao, the housing director, is a pretty laid back guy. Let's just say that he would be the face of what UCSC's reputation would look like… Kaylah knew him through her job as a community assistant, so they were palling around. Usually, the new residents get a care package, like papers and stuff about the campus as well as the room keys. When I opened my folder up, all I got were the keys, which meant that I had to walk everywhere to get my ID, my mailbox, and any other helpful information. Way to be on the ball. XD

So, after we got the keys, Kaylah and I, as well as the compact car full of stuff, drove to Kresge East. Just as Audrey predicted, I got the third floor. Just as Kaylah predicted, I got the only single available, which happened to be in the apartment where one of Jackson's friends, Nicholas, lived.

When we walked into the apartment, I could feel my jaw just drop. The living room area was really big. Walking into this apartment, you get the living room on the right, which walks into a nice sized kitchen area. You also get the hallway of four rooms and a center sink divider, where the bathrooms split between shower and toilet. My room is the first one accessible from the front door. I walked in and I finally saw it. My room. My home away from home. My new home.

I figure the room ought to be around two and a half by three Kaitlyns big—that's right, I measure by Amazons. Screw you metric system! I'd think you could take Kaylah's old room at Kresge and double it and you'd get the size of my room. You walk in and there's a big sliding door closet to the right and a small desk to the left. The bed would be straight in front of you against the base of the window, right next to the bedside bookshelf. The dresser of three drawers sat at the foot of the bed. I couldn't have asked for a better space!

So we started unpacking. One by one, we carried the random bags up to my room, including the duffel, the more-than-16 lbs bag, the backpack, the basket of blankets, and many "green" bags full of random stuff. When we got to the storage bins, we figured we would try and take them both at the same time. They both weighed a lot. What we did was we took the little cart with the bungee cords and hooked the stacked bins to it. I pulled the cart, Kaylah pushed. We were only able to get up the hill when my hand started to hurt from the top bin scraping it. I decided to carry that up the stairs real quick just so that I wouldn't have that scraping my hand all the way up to the third floor.

Suddenly, I hear a big BOOM ka-chunk ka-chunk ka-chunk ka-chunk ka-chunk –slide- PICHUU! ka-chunk ka-chunk ka-chunk ka-chunk ka-chunk ka-chunk BAM! So I rushed outside to see what the noise was and to see if Kaylah was alright. Kaylah, the blonde that she is, had apparently rolled the large bin up to the second to last step to the second floor when she lost balance and clutched the cart, which in return released the bin from the bungee cords, making it slide down all those stairs and sprawl out its contents on the ground floor. Kaylah, other than nearly peeing her pants, suffered no harm, thankfully.

The rest of the unpacking and setting up went smoothly.

Meeting my roommates didn't take place until later that night. They weren't there when all the commotion was going on in my room. I wondered where they had been and I was nervous as to meeting them. When I walked in that night, they were circled around a table just talking. At first impressions, they were not all that mischievous looking, so I walked up and greeted them all with a handshake.

Tony and Nicholas are the gamers in this apartment. Nick was the one that helped me a little bit with trying to find my classes. Tony also took interest and would normally pop into my room if he felt inclined to ask something.

Alex and I are a lot alike. We're both musicians, trying to find our spot where our puzzle piece fits into in this world, we like the same music, we both talk about the same things. Thing is, he was also talking to me about a friend's party he went to, where he was pretty much drunk that entire night. The list pretty much ends there.

The next day, I also met my CA, Katherine. During a nap, I hear a knock on the door. So I woke up and walked to the living room, where I saw this curly haired chick. She was very peppy and inviting from what I could tell. The CA is basically a person I would turn to if I had any questions or if I had any problems. Katherine was very welcoming and basically gave her introduction. Apparently, Kaylah know Katherine from when Kaylah had the CA job. So, sometime in the coming weeks, I'm going to go and talk to her.

 

As far as classes go, I'm pretty psyched:

My Econ for Accounting class starts at 8 AM, right about when I really don't want to be awake. However, after the first day, I felt that I could handle it. The teacher, Mallory, is very into her job. She looks and talks very much like a butch lesbian with white hair. Her lectures are fun and are very easy to follow, even though she goes through them very quickly.

Two hours and a breakfast later, my Intermediate Macroeconomics starts. The teacher, I'll call Borscht, is also one of the teachers that loves his job. He has a thick, almost Russian accent and uses the words "awesome" and "blog" a lot. He also repeats himself, not to undermine us, but for clarification. So I giggled when I noticed the accent when he was trying to say "Mankiw's AWEsome Blog" a few times, or when it almost sounds like a parody impression of Arnold Schwarzenegger. XD

The Introduction to American Studies follows twenty minutes later, on the count of it being a big campus and I would have to sprint to class if it weren't. Our teacher, Kim Lau, would… to put it bluntly… be my idea of a PILF, and possibly Dustin's, too. She, too, is passionate about her subject, which is fine, but she also likes to try and open doors for people. She has us watching Michael Moore documentaries and read excerpts of Obama's book, so she'll have a unique take on this course that I can get involved with.

Discussions start this week, which are basically optional/required free tutoring/laboratory hours for each of the classes. All of my classes fall on a MWF pattern with two hour-long discussions on Tuesdays and one in the morning on Thursdays. Within all of this, I am going to work in a gym schedule. Our gym, or "Wellness Center", has the most gorgeous view of the ocean, so when I go on the treadmills I can bask in the ocean breeze.

So yeah… That's how it is so far.