Moving In
September 23rd, 2005 by BrianI finished my second shift as a DAWG move-in volunteer this morning. The entire move-in process this year has been far smoother than I remember it my freshman year. Last year, everyone was just told that the desk opened at 7:30 and everyone showed up at once, which resulted in a massive queue in the E1 lot. This year, everyone was assigned a two-hour window in which they were supposed to move in. The most cars I’ve seen in E1 at once was somewhere around ten. Either HFS has finally found a way to make move-in sane, or there’s going to be a mad rush on Saturday/Sunday when everyone who didn’t want to bother with the appointment stuff shows up. We’ll see…
My job was to stay with a big orange cart (which someone had aptly named “Not for the Faint of Heart” with a black permanent marker) for lower McMahon. Vehicles full of parents, new students, and possessions made their way up from the E1 lot to the parking garage in McMahon, where I assisted them in unloading their cars into the cart, getting them to move their cars out of the garage, squeezing it all onto the elevator, pushing the cart to their new rooms, and helping them unload the cart. Lots of loading and unloading and waiting for the elevator. I’d estimate that I helped about forty people (and therefore about forty cartloads) move in. It was interesting to see what kind of stuff people brought, how much of it there was, and how they packed it. Some people had everything nicely boxed up and it was easy to stack it all neatly on the cart, while others had literally just tossed stuff into the back of their car. Some came with a box and a suitcase, and there was one resident who required three orange carts for all of her stuff (I’d estimate the volume of an orange cart to be about 75 cubic feet; they are very large carts.) How she will fit all of that stuff into her room, I have no idea.
Meanwhile, I’ve been getting to know my own roommate/clustermates. I’ve met all but one of my clustermates so far. I can tell already that it’s going to be quite a different experience than last year. I didn’t dislike either of my roommates last year, but they pretty much did their thing and I did my thing; we didn’t really interact. So far this year, it looks like I have a roommate and several clustermates that will also be good friends.
Tuesday night, I had dinner with Ayumi (my roommate) and Takuto (Ayumi’s friend) after which we went to the FIUTS games night at the HUB and played some pool. I have a feeling that I’m going to end up knowing a lot of the exchange students on campus by the end of the year. I’ve already met at least three students from é’å±±å¦é™¢å¤§å¦ and several others from France, Guam, Korea, Japan, Belgium and a few that I’ve probably left off of the list.
So, it looks like my year is off to a good start, at least socially. I’ll see how my classes go starting on Wednesday.
Tuesday morning, I took a brief stroll around campus before my DAWG training just to see some of it again and see what has changed. It feels good to be back and seeing some of these familiar places again. The most notable changes are the fact that Raitt Hall is now wrapped in a giant white plastic bubble so that the asbestos cladding can be removed from the exterior of the building; and there’s now a chain-link fence surrounding Drumheller Fountain. It was surprisingly (given it’s state at the end of last year) full and running, but was all fenced off. I’m not sure whether that means they’re getting ready to begin construction, or whether they’ve suddenly gotten worried that someone’s going to fall in (the project page isn’t very specific, but it sounds like they’re getting ready to start work soon.) Maybe by my senior year there won’t be so much under construction (I realize that on such a large campus, there’s always construction, but many of the most prominent buildings and locations on campus are works-in-progress at the moment.)
I’m probably going to go for a little walk this afternoon; this time I’ll take my camera and hopefully post some pictures soon.
If there’s anyone who is actually still reading at this point, here are a couple of pictures from the past few days.
 | Cones in E1
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I took this photo while they were in the process of setting up the cone maze in the E1 lot.
 | Lake Washington
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I posted photos of my view at night; here are a couple taken during the day.
 | Lake Washington 2
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Last night I discovered that I can see both the baseball and soccer scoreboards from my room with a pair of binoculars. I can also see the entire soccer field and most of the baseball field (the catcher, batter, and pitcher are obscured by the seating behind home plate) so if I ever want to catch up on either of those two sporting events, all I need to do is look out my window.
 | Mount Rainier, from my balcony
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 | University Village
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That’s it for now. I’ll probably have more pictures to post (and more to say) later.
