Orientation: Day 3

So right now it's one in the morning bu my roommate is down the hall. Now, I'd go to sleep, but I can't for a couple reasons. One, I have to write this for all the lovely people who care so much to read this. For those keeping up with me, I'm writing my last one tomorrow then I'll probably be distracted by my ever so busy life...heh, right. But tomorrow is the last day of orientation and I actually get to go home. I'm kinda excited, kinda sad, you know? So this morning was pretty flustered. A couple times yesterday my roommate left the room a couple times to get ready for bed and stuff. She'd just leave her key in the room and keep the door slightly opened so she could get back in. So I figured I'd try it this morning, right? I was just gonna brush my teeth. I come back from brushing my teeth and the door is completely closed. I pull on the handle a bit, thinking maybe that would somehow help. I knocked on the door a few times and stood around awkwardly outside my door holding my toothbrush and toothpaste. One of the twins noticed my odd behavior and told me they had seen her go down to breakfast. So they let me leave my toothbrush in their room. I went down to the dining hall. A couple orientation leaders (OL) said hi to me which was cool and then one of them is like, "Hannah, do you have your name tag? You need that to get into breakfast." the name tag is attached to my key, or more of vice versa, so I explained situation quick and they're like, oh okayy. So I get down to the cafeteria (a miracle, I was horribly lost for a couple minutes) and get my roommates key. But she only gives me the key, so when I get to the dorm, I realize I can't swipe myself in. I didn't have my phone and I didn't have anyone's number anyways so I was stuck. I hung out like a creeper until someone came out. I was lucky because I knew the person who came out. Copeland Taft. He's related to President Taft so hes automatically cool. Taft is my favorite president because he was fat and funny. On a very political person, clearly. He swiped me in and I got into my room! So happy! Went down to breakfast and sat with Karen and a bunch of other people at breakfast. They all stayed my buddies for the day. Like Meredith and Eric. We had a few lectures, a tour, small group random games. During the tour, they were discussing why we can't swim with the seals. Kay, those things might look cute from 20 feet up, but they are aggressive, people! We also split up into majors for the first time. This school is mostly girls, and there was a total of one guy in the marine group this orientation session. His name is Peter, but I keep wanting to call him Ben. He looks like a Ben. I told him so, because I was feeling oddly bold. The OLs put on a couple sketches about college issues (they have a thing here called Friday Night Live. This wasn't it, but still cool). They were really funny. Then we had a party thing!! I met up with JoLonna (I got her number, I'm getting Karen's tomorrow) and Karen. We played/watched people play Nuke 'Em, which is like volleyball, but instead you throw the ball over the net. If the person catches it on the other side, they just throw it back. If it touches them or lands near them, they are out. It's pretty fun, we should play it back home. It's best with lots of people. Copeland is a beast at it. I'm not...you need to have the dedication to dive. Then, a girl sat next to me on the sidelines and we started talking. We both realized we were marine bio majors. So we hung out for the rest of the night. There was a dance going on and earlier in the night, Karen and JoLonna and JoLonna's roommate Kylie (she spells it different, but I can not remember how) all ran in to "wobble" which is, like, the UNE orientation dance. Everyone knows how to do it. I don usually dance though unless I'm with people I'm completely comfortable with so I just stood awkwardly on the side of the room. Then this OL comes over to me and introduces himself. Zack. People call him by his last name Loki. I already knew that. He tried to get me to dance!! He's like, it's fun and I'm sure you can do it. And I'm like, yeah, I'm sure I can. But I don't want to. So he said something like, "We're gonna dance later and walked away. At that pint, I left the room. I wasn't interested into being forced to dance. So back to Marine Bio girl. Sam. She actually got me dancing. I tried the wobble and I was pretty awful. It that's okay. Loki saw me and he yelled something to me and I stopped dancing. Stupid Loki made me feel awkward. Anyways, I wasn't going to sleep because they were telling us ghost stories about the dorms. Avila, 4th floor, specifically room 406 is haunted. This girl was raped and murdered by her boyfriend in the bathroom. That gives me the creeps. There was also other scary stuff. I'm gonna have fun sleeping. So I apologize for atrocious spelling and grammar and storytelling. It's impossible to type on this thing for the blog. There are stars on our ceiling. How long have they been there? Kay, she's back. It's sleep time!

Orientation: Day 2

Oh my god, I made friends!! I am so happy. I have people to actually hang out with, which is great because there's a party tomorrow night. Well, party thing. Dance. Jolonna is gonna try to make me dance. Maybe I will. It will be good to relax. They do a lot of dancing here. Synchronized dancing. I could never memorize all of those steps. I'm sure I'll learn after a few years... It's so weird to think this will be my new home. So this morning I accidentally woke up my roommate. I wanted to shower before everyone else got to them. I felt bad, but she's nice and said she was kind of up anyways. I'll take her word for it. We went on a little boat ride to an island. With us, for some reason, we brought friend target #2. Katie. I talked to her a bit and walked around with her. We say hi when we see each other or smile, but I just lost her to other people. But I digress. At the island, there were evil sea gulls. They dive bombed you as you walked by! People had to wave sticks in the air to ward them off. There, I swept out a lighthouse tower. I was terrified the whole time because at the top, there's a sign that said, "Danger: intense noise may sound without warning". I thought I was going to die in that tower. The fog horn would go off and it would startle me so much I would fall down to my very tragic death. We got to climb to the very top of the lighthouse and look out. It was really cool but I wasn't as mystified as everyone else. I've been up in a lighthouse before, a few times. Which reminds me of a funny story. I'll tell it later if I feel like it. The scariest part was when I had to carry wood to this little hut thing alone in a very territorial seagull area. I feel like I had one almost fly into my face. Everyone called me very brave for facing that. And climbing the tower by myself up sweep. I took some time to hang out with Katie. She's a very quiet and mousey kind of girl, that's how she became a target. But anyways, yeah. When we got back to campus, normal orientation people were showing up. Since then, the Internet has slowed down significantly.. We met our orientation leader for our floor. Her name is Linda. I like her, she's crazy and sassy. Then we went to see a motivational speaker. I completely forget his name, but he was great. He said stuff like be your own best friend and be present. He was also really funny. I'll post his name when I remember it. Then we played random games and then were released for free time. I hung out with my new friends Karen and Jolonna. And met someone from new jersey. He doesn't like new jersey, he told me. I said my parents get confused sometimes when they go for gas there. See, in new jersey, when you go to the gas station, an attendant needs to pump your gas for you. New Jersite commented on how he was confused when on the way to orientation the driver of his car had to get out to pump. I'm feeling pretty good right now. My roommate is "sleep surfing" so I feel right at home because mom does that. I have friends, hopefully I can find them tomorrow morning. They both live on my floor, and I know Jolonna gets up early, so I'll try to do that to find her. Two more days, I think I'll make it :)

Orientation: Day 1

There comes a time in every young Hannah's life that she realizes she has to grow up. And that includes going to a college orientation. So if any of you were interested, I decided to go to University of New England in Maine. It's near Portland, look it up. Ive also come to realize that there are other Hannah's in the world who are studying marine sciences at UNE. Okay, there's only one and she spells her name wrong and she's older, but it's still very confusing. People talk to her. They don't talk to me. But that's my fault. I'll give you a little narrative of my first day because you all care so deeply. So it started early. Like, before five. Got all ready and finally packed up, and headed out to Maine by six. It's a four hour drive and I slept through most of it. And got a painful crick in my neck. Anyways, I got here feeling very nervous. I'm not good with making friends. It took me years to get someone I could very comfortably talk to at Sound. I tried to make my parents turn back for Seymour. They weren't going for it. We stopped at Tim Hortons (Miss Alex would be so excited). I had a doughnut and hot chocolate, which in my personal opinion was not as good as Dunkin Donuts. Okay, so we get to the college. I sign in and am given a room. My roommate's name is Meghan. I like her because of her name and it reminds me of Meghan Murphy, who is back in little old Seymour. Besides her name I know very little about her. I don't know what to say to her, and my dad had to introduce me to her for me because I forgot. There was one girl my mom and I picked out to be my friend. She ended up bring in a different group and I barely saw her, and she ended up making actual friends. I guess that's not how friend making works with me. We were doing a community service thing today because its a pre orientation thing. We went to an old mill, where they were setting up a opening showing of a hundred year old 800 foot painting. It is so big that it didn't fit in the Saco Museum in town. We got to explore the mills a bit when moving chairs and tables. We rode scary freight elevators and went down hallways that were definitely not up to code for a factory. At one point in the elevator, one of the orientation leaders claimed she saw a face looking through the window. Jo one was saw it and there had been no one in the hallway leading to the elevator. The man who was in charge of the chair moving operation(he owns the mill or something like that) said she might have seen the ghost. That led to a discussion I could somewhat add to! I mentioned that the house I live in is fairlynew and built for and by my family so there's been no human deaths. Turns out the girl who had seen the face (Leeann, I like her, but she's one of the leaders so not who I'm supposed to make friends with) used to live in a renovated tuberculosis center. How creepy is that? After all that, we rejoined with all the groups and played stupid "get to know you" games and made a fool outt of ourselves. Overall, it was fun. I forgot to bring a towel and I feel incredibly awkward that I'm not talking to my roommate. People keep telling me that it'll take time to make friends. Everyone else is getting along like best buds with each other. I won't believe my well-wishers from home until I make a friend. I guess I will, these are the kinda of people I like here. A little on the weird side. There are friendly twins across the hall, but they get along great with everyone because they aren't completely alone and apparently being identical twins is a great conversation piece. alright, I'm done for now, thanks for reading this ramble xD. Day one of orientation complete.