The Big Move

3 weeks of packing,
2 round trips to New York on Saturday,
1 additional trip on Sunday

... and I'm all moved in. Big belated thanks to moiji's family for their help -- to Bruce & Winston for doing the heavy-lifting and furniture assembly/disassembly, Aki for one last, furious round of move-out cleaning, and moiji for bubble-wrapping, taping, packing, lugging boxes the size of small children to the post office, and spending 3 hours scrubbing the shower (which contrary to Winston's assessment looked great & did not need any more cleaning after she was through). Here's my room after our trip to Ikea on Sunday:

The door and sink are to the left of the bookshelf.

Closet is next to the dresser.

After moiji dropped me off at the train station yesterday morning, I rode the Northeast Corridor up to New York & watched the last 5 years flash before my eyes: Edison, Metuchen, Metropark, Rahway, Linden, Elizabeth, Newark -- stations all too familiar to me now.

But I didn't have too long to dwell on the past. Once I got back to the dorm, it was one thing after another, and before I knew it 5 pm had rolled around and I had to meet my orientation group. Immediately following icebreakers, there was a barbecue, where I realized that my reputation (or rather my sister's) had preceded me. One of her friends from grad school (Matt) is in my class. Another student randomly walked up to me and introduced himself as Zack, a student Q had TA'd at UCLA. He recognized me in the facebook because I looked like her. He's a second-year and was super-friendly, giving me the "inside-scoop" on P&S. In his observation, the even-numbered classes (like mine, class of 2010) tend to be more party-going than their more sedate odd-numbered counterparts. We shall see. After dinner, we headed downtown to the Fat Cat, a game/pool hall, where I learned that though my classmates may be highly intelligent, we none of us are very good at pool. :P

I spent my first night in Bard and am very glad that I got a room on the north side of the building, since the riverview rooms get noise from racing motorcycles on the West Side Highway, and the streetside rooms get construction noise. This morning, we sat through a boring 2-hour presentation by the administration. I went grocery-shopping at Gristedes afterwards and took a nap. In half an hour, we leave for dinner & a Broadway show (Avenue Q).