Orientation!! (and My First Week Without Luce!)

This was one of the most exciting and overwhelming weeks of my life!! AHH! I hardly even know where to begin! It was completely jam-packed, so this might be a long post, but I’m going to tryyy hit on the highlights rather than giving a play-by-play of everything.

Tuesday was move-in day! I checked in then – with much assistance from Mum and Q – got three full trolleys of my stuff to my dorm room!

 I met my roomies, Katie and Sierra, and the three of us get along SO WELL! Which is awesome and has definitely made the adjustment to college life waayyy easier. We all set to unpacking our stuff, which actually wasn’t too much of a challenge because our dorm room has heaps of space! We also have a lovely bathroom with a turquoise theme and a Singin in the Rain shower curtain! The room already feels like home :)

On that first day Mum and Q ran out to Walmart for me to pick up some stuff that couldn’t fit in the car the first time, and one thing they got was the new bike I had picked out! Yay!! I love it! Although I am still getting used to the whole back-peddling instead of hand break situation…

We had dinner with Katie and Sierra and their families, then it was time to say goodbye to Mum and Q for the night and head to my room for my first night at college! My whole floor is Performing Arts kids, so I met heaps of fun people and got to know some of the theatre majors I’ll be spending the next four years with! Everyone from 1st floor west had a meeting that night with our RA, Lord Ryan (yea, that’s his first name, it’s kinda crazy and kinda awesome) then called it a night.

On Wednesday we started off with an Opening Convocation where some of the faculty spoke and our whole class sat together for the first time – it was a really nice ceremony and a great way to mark the start of the year.

(I'm Right in the middle of the front bench facing the camera)

(And this is my room all done!)

After that everyone got into small groups based on our majors for some bonding time, had lunch with our parents, went back into our small groups, then had a big meeting with the COPA (College of Performing Arts) faculty and got heaps of information about the year coming up. Dinner was a welcome reception for COPA families, and it was also the last event I had with Mum and Q before they had to leave to catch their flight! Waahhhh!! It was a tough goodbye, but I know I’ll see them soon – Thanksgiving’s only a couple months away!

Playfair, the next event of the night, got me totally pumped up again!! All the new Freshmen ran through a tunnel of the Orientation Assistants and made the tunnel longer themselves, then we linked arms and the OAs led a charge snaking back down the tunnel – it’s kinda hard to describe but it was fun and loud and exciting! After that we did ice-breakers en masse and met SO MANY people!! It was completely hectic but so much fun!

Thursday and Friday had a lot of informational events but I also got to explore the Orange Circle and its cute shops and restaurants, and there were fun events on both nights. Thursday night was an evening at the Segerstrom Center for the Arts which was INCREDIBLE. The building was SO BEAUTIFUL and they had all sorts of activities and live performances – there was a hip hop class, a Polynesian dancer, arts and crafts, a beat boxer, and (my favourite) a drum circle. Around 1000 of my classmates and I all went into the auditorium, everyone had a percussion instrument, and this awesome hippie lady lead a sort of call and response thing with all of us. It just made such a loud sound and it was really unifying. The best moment was when she had students from different areas of the US stand up and make noise, then students from other countries – so I repped Aus and stood – and because there were so few people she had us say where we were from in front of everyone and I got a huge cheer! Yay!! It was such a boost and really affirming.

On Friday – and also Wednesday - night, Sierra and I got dressed up and went out to a couple parties at houses close to campus!

Friday was the highlight, though, because there weren’t too many people there and the guys were playing guitar and Sierra sang and they had a really cute dog, it was just a really chill vibe. I was pretty exhausted by Saturday, though, so I just hung out and recuperated.

Sunday, yesterday, was great! There was a pool party and the Chapman Radio guys were there playing music and giving away some prizes – I owned at limbo and won 2 tickets to a frat kickoff party on Friday which was a bit of a surprise to me! Man, I went so low, I was actually pretty proud of myself!

I had dinner and another RA meeting to get all ready to start classes the next day! 

Today was my first day of classes and it went really well! I’ll go into detail on the next post, though. It’s been such a whirlwind; moving in and starting to adjust to college life! It’s been tough to be away from Luce but we’re seeing each other this weekend, so there’s a light at the end of the tunnel! A lot of this is still scary and surreal but I’m feeling so fortunate to be at this incredible school with amazing facilities and inspirational faculty! Woo Panther Pride!!