Metamorphosis

I couldn’t wait for my alarm to ring to wake me up. My eyes had been open ever since 6:00 AM, waiting for a better time to take a shower without waking everyone up. Despite my efforts, I couldn’t wait so I decided to take the quickest shower possible. Luckily, my shower didn’t wake anyone up. Around 8:30, I woke the rest of the clan and go them up and running on their feet. I’d already packed last night, because I couldn’t sleep from the Gay Pride party down the street. However, I still decided to double check my luggage and make sure I didn’t forget to bring something important like my socks to Brown with me. Luckily, I didn’t miss anything and felt prepared to finally depart for Brown University.

We dragged our luggage out from the room, into the elevator, and let go of it as soon as we found chairs to sit on. Ms. Kaplan came down and I returned the hotel receipt to her for keeping. After everyone got down to the lobby, we decided to leave our luggage in the Ball Room of Hotel Providence and head back to Small Point Café for breakfast. This time, I got the freshly squeezed orange juice and the raspberry muffin. We finished our most important meal of the day and headed back for Hotel Providence to start loading up our luggage into the car.

It’s safe to say that this game of “Luggage Tetris” was nearly as hard as the one we played when we first arrived. The valet helped load everything up in the car for us. Personally, I feared for his safety because he didn’t look like he was physically strong enough to carry them. (In other words, he was pretty skinny.) It only took five minutes or so to get from Hotel Providence to Brown University.

Door Nametag (I love palm trees) 

Check-in was one of the first things we did once we stepped onto campus grounds. After, we dropped off our luggage at one of the booths and proceeded in getting our student IDs, room key(s), and maps of the school. The whole process didn’t take more than three minutes, and we hurried down the stairs to get to the next part of the process. We were given directions to get to our dorms, gathered our luggage, and headed down the rocky road to our dorm rooms. Just in case some of you don’t know, balancing luggage on cracked and deformed sidewalks is a pretty big challenge alone. Nick and I arrived at Grad Center D together, but separated at the stairs. I’m going to be staying on the third floor of Grad Center D while Nick is rooming on the second floor.

I dumped off anything heavy that I could find and began setting my bed sheets when Nick suddenly called me and told me that we were going to take the tour now. I took my keys and rushed out the door. As soon as I exited the doors, I remembered that I left my ID in my room. Luckily, there was a kind student who opened the door for me. I flew past the flight of stairs, got my wallet, ran out the doors, and started sprinting as fast as I could in my tank top and jeans. I made it just in time for the tour to start. The tour took around an hour. When we finished, we attended the Student/Parent Orientation where they talked about some of the safety rules and events that we’d be doing in the Summer@Brown program.

My lovely, single, and fully unpacked dorm (no roommates)

Ms. Kaplan was sad so see her flock of birds leave as if we were her own children. We all took some pictures together on the staircase of one of the Brown buildings and started going to the Brown bookstore to get our textbooks. After purchasing our textbooks, we went out for lunch and spent our last few minutes with our chaperones.

By the time lunch was finished, we said our goodbyes to our lovely caretakers for the past week and were officially on our own. I headed back to my dorm and started unpacking some more items from my suitcases and laid them out in their proper places. Our floor headed down together for our Student Orientation together and did some icebreakers to get to know each other more. After, we took a first class tour around Brown and even went onto the streets to do a little exploring with our RA, Adam. Dinner went by pretty fast, and soon enough, we were back in our rooms to get ready for the Ice Cream Social event that Brown was hosting.

I actually contemplated on whether or not to go to the Ice Cream Social, but I didn’t have much of a choice as my floor-mates dragged me out and coaxed me to go with them. I’m very pleased I went to the Ice Cream Social, more than anything. It started off kind of slow with just me and Andrew waiting in line for ice-cream. But as soon as we got our sorbets, we were ready to mingle. I was given the opportunity to meet some of the most amazing people who were going to be taking the Macroeconomics course with me.

One of them was named Sai. Sai was born and raised in Chicago, but recently moved to India 4 years ago and has stayed there ever since. He direly misses the cold temperature that he used to experience in Chicago, and hasn’t experienced cold in four years. I also got to meet Avery who came from Hong Kong. She speaks both Mandarin and Cantonese (yay) and is extremely easy to get along with. It’s quite amazing how so many students are studying abroad for this program. In fact, I’ve only met approximately five students who are actually coming from California; two out of five are actually from the Bay Area. Though I’m not one of those who study abroad, I can get the feel of how intelligent they must’ve been to have their shoes placed on the Brown campus.

With this knowledge, I am even more motivated to work harder and represent my district, my school, and my community. I am so grateful for this opportunity to be here at this very moment and enjoying every single minute of it here. There is no way that I am going to miss out on any of the amazing things that are offered to me here. Starting today, I will slowly be transformed into a greater person, and a much more knowledgeable student. As the hours go on, I can only imagine the treasures that lie out there for me at Brown University. They have already showed me the full extent of my social skills as well as challenging me with time management. Tomorrow will be the first day of the Macroeconomics class. Even though I’m still shaking in my shoes, I can honestly say that I cannot be any more excited than I already am at this point. From here on, there is no turning back. There is only the option to move forward and defeat the obstacles that are stopping you from obtaining glory.

Sidenote: I was so afraid that the internet connection here would be just as bad as the one back at the Hotel. Luckily, it's not. With the Ethernet cable, my laptop is a fully functioning blogging machine.