THE BIG DAY

I'm sitting on my bed in my dorm room writing this, which is kind of crazy, I guess. Maybe I'm just tired.

So move-in was nice; Mom and Dad helped me with setting everything up and putting clothes and other things away, so it was fairly stress free. They left about an hour or two before the official goodbye time, so I talked to some new friends; one is as obsessed with historical costuming as me, though she actually hand-sews everything and goes for period accuracy and such, so I'm a little in awe, and the other is from California and came straight from a rodeo! We hit it off pretty quickly, and everyone else I've met, including my roommate, who is scarily similar to me, is super nice, so it's going well!!

After bonding as a hall and going over some rules, we went to dinner, where Lord of the Rings was on the TV and I had a lasagna sort of thing. I don't really know; it was kind of overwhelming and so I just grabbed it. Hopefully it was healthy. After that we went to the orientation, which began with a long game of Train Wreck. Basically everyone takes off their shoes and puts them on the ground in front of them. Everyone's in a circle, and someone in the middle introduces themselves and says a fact about them; if you share the fact, you run across the circle to an empty pair of shoes vacated by someone who has also shared the fact and run. This involved me nearly running into people, chanting "No, No, No" and running when someone's fact was "I'm wearing a T-Shirt." I was wearing a dress.

After that was orientation, so basically introduction to the program, descriptions of where we're going and stuff. It was interesting, and I'm really excited to visit all the places we're going (which includes Monticello, home of one of my favorite founding fathers). We also met with our instructors and seminar groups. It's funny how most of the guys are doing the Civil War program while most of the girls are doing the Colonial program; in my seminar there's about 10 of us, and there's only 4 girls.

I had homework already; reading an interesting passage on mobs and their effect on the American Revolution. It gave a negative connotation to the mobs of people who did the Boston Tea Party and had a part in instigating the Boston Massacre, but still acknowledged their usefulness in starting the Revolution. Tomorrow we'll be having a discussion on it as well as getting our William and Mary ID cards, Colonial Williamsburg passes, seeing Rare Books in the library, and watching Revolution in the Streets, which I enjoyed watching this morning and Saturday morning and will be happy to watch again!

Quiet time starts at 11PM, so I'm going to stop now. Hopefully I'll get some time in tomorrow to blog; it might be a brief message during breakfast, lunch, or dinner, but it'll be something! I'm a little nervous for the beginning of the program and the work involved, but I'm still excited, so here we go!!

-Tessa :D