Update...Part one

Whew! The BC Calc test is officially over! It was (of course) hard, but I think I did pretty well. I've only just gotten up from my official post-test nap, which was much needed. Now I have a TON of English homework, mostly left over from yesterday when Calc was top priority. The Stanford Admit Weekend was SO fun. SO. SO. FUN. Me and college? We are going to be friends. In fact, we are such friends already that the recap here will take a couple of entries. I now present: Stanford--Part the First My flight left Tucson at 6 am, so I got up at (I kid you not) 3:45. This was inhumanly early. When I got to the airport, I stumbled sleep-deprivedly toward a self check in kiosk marked "Checking Luggage." Off to the side I vaguely noted a woman ranting to the gate agent that her name was not Mary. Despite the vague rumblings of foreboding, I continued with check in, and was only slightly surprised to find that it took far fewer steps than I remembered. Nonetheless, when I caught the eye of the baggage checking lady, she only held out a stub reading "Mary Humphreys: San Jose," which she began to loop around my bag as I headed off to security. Having confirmed that I was carrying no life threatening objects like scissors or, god forbid, nail clippers, I was released by the security guards and climbed on the plane. Four hours and several naps later, I arrived in San Jose. "That wasn't so bad," I thought naively as I headed towards baggage claim. When I arrived at the carousel with the 20 or so other passengers with checked luggage and had confirmed that my first shuttle buddy (Eric of Kentucky. He's not in much of this story, so although he was very nice, don't worry about remembering him.) had also arrived, I was very dismayed to find that there was nothing but empty bins waiting there. After about half an hour of the endlessly rotating baggage waltz, I headed grimly into the Southwest customer service office to hack out some sort of deal. No one there knew anything. At all. Not even a little bit. They couldn't tell me whether the bag had gotten on the plane in Tucson or Las Vegas, or even really what day it was with any reliability. To top it all off, in true Stanford style, I had no idea where I was living, or even where I might be found at any hour of the day. Having given the Southwest zombies my cell number and vainly tried to raise anything above a busy tone at the Admit Office, I set out to alert the main troops. I called Mom. She then began her surface assault on Southwest. Meanwhile, out in the terminal, Mindi of Ohio and Vivian of Alabama had arrived. Our shuttle group complete, we headed out to meet the driver. The ride into Stanford was uneventful, which is always good in an automotive venture. When we arrived, we were given name tags (the bane of my existence. I hate being labeled. It's so irritating when people read me while speaking.) and free T-shirts. Yay for free! Then we set out in search of food. It turned out that we'd missed the picnic lunches by about 10 minutes, so our best bet was to follow the vaguely gestured directions of the swarming Stanfordites. Despite their indubitably high IQ's, no one seemed to be able to get past a general sweep of the arm in the direction of the library, so we decided to wing it. We eventually found Wilbur Hall, home of the dining hall sushi. (The pic is of some special event. Ignore the flags.) Seriously folks, it was VERY posh as college food goes. Rumor is, Wilbur has the best day-to-day food. Keep it in mind if you're ever looking for grub at Stanford. Food found, we decided to wander and try to figure out where we were while awaiting the "University Welcome" in MemAud. (Memorial Auditorium. I thought the abbreviations were stupid, but really they're quite handy so long as everyone's on the same page. It's surprising how much less effort and more fun it is to call Hoover Tower HooTow and your room host your RoHo, not to mention referring to yourself not as a Prospective Freshman, but as a ProFro. It's a classic case of "everyone else's doing it.") The University Welcome was boring. Very Boring, and nearly word-for-word the same speech as I'd heard the week before at Penn, provided of course that you replaced every instance of "Penn" with "Stanford". They can't help it. It's in their University blood. After the speeches, we went back to Tressider Student Union, where our RoHos (room hosts, remember?) picked us up in groups as dorms. I was assigned to Alexis, who lived in Larkin. (For those of you who watch the news really rabidly, yes, that is the Larkin of the Freshman 12. Yes. I saw them all, and yes, they do actually live in Larkin. Um. Yeah. Let's not tell Mom.) After finding my room and a feverish pay phone call with Mom trying to locate my luggage (again), we settled in for dinner and "Dorm Programming," which is where I'll leave you for the moment. More to follow... Next time on Stanford--Mary kicks some serious Taboo butt and is introduced to the "back attack."