I endured a few days of dull and repetitive meetings about rules and regulations and all sorts of other expectations. Though, these meetings weren’t quite as dull as Wellesley’s because they all had free wine—a nice touch. Meetings here seem to go a little differently than the dorm meetings back at Wellesley. For example, we had a meeting for all new students living in Devonshire the other day (so it was mostly Freshers). This, like most meetings and pamphlets I had encountered so far, outlined mostly the same things about safety, common sense, and various rules to be followed. What I found exceptionally strange, however, was the way the staff decided to demonstrate the lock your door constantly “suggestion”: at one point during the meeting full of several hundred students, the president of Devonshire displayed several items taken by sub wardens from rooms left unlocked by students. You either had to publicly claim the item or the staff got to keep it! It was sort of shocking and felt like a violation of privacy. I mean, I guess it taught those students to lock their doors, but still, that feels a little extreme.
After a few days of meetings, however, my friends and I were able to let loose a little at a silent disco! For those of you who don’t know what a silent disco is, essentially it is like any sort of club or disco, but instead of blasting the music through speakers, everyone wheres bluetooth headphones, thus making the club “silent” allegedly. It was loads of fun, possibly even better than the roller disco! There were two DJs each playing different music, and you could switch between the two channels on your headphones. Both DJs played great music as well—everything from classic bass-heavy dance music, to 80’s ballads, to early 2K pop throw backs, to The Lion King. It was amazing. And one of the best parts was taking off your headphones, and watching everyone dancing neon lights, singing along to music that wasn’t actually playing. I took a video, dedicated to Vickey (we’ll get to 30,000 plays!), of a what it looked and sounded like when a Linkin Park song came on. You can see that, even thought the music isn’t pumping through the air, the “silent” disco is fairly noisy.
We finally left when it became just a tad too crowded, and started to make our way back home. One of my friends, Sara, said that in just 2.5 hours, we had taken about 9,000 steps according to her step counting watch. Needless to say, we were starving. Luckily there are several late night restaurants on our way home. We ended up stopping at this place called Mahmood’s (except the o’s in the sign were silhouettes of burgers), which served a mixture of knock off McDonald’s and KFC combined. We ordered our 2 am burgers, which were beyond satisfying. As we sat there at the counter, eating in silence, I stared at the off-brand KFC they were selling in boxes plastered with a happy rooster giving you the thumbs up and a slogan stating it was “lip lickin flavour”. It was a poignant moment: 2 in the morning, silently eating warm, satisfying, yet also gross burgers, and staring at an imposter rooster on a cardboard box.
We finished up quickly and headed towards Devonshire, but halfway back to the residence, it started to precipitate. Then it started to precipitate harder. Now, I had checked the forecast, and it was only a 20% chance of rain that night. Yet, as we were walking down the street, we found ourselves cowering under a tree, as the rain started to fall in thicker, heavier drops. Even though it’s only September, this was not a warm rain. At home, when it rains in the the summer, it’s not always unpleasant: if might be a welcome relief to the sweltering, swampy weather, a warm shower that feels like a present from Mother Nature, cleaning out the gunk from the air. The rain in England, where it is perpetually fall, is cold. It makes you and everything around you damp and chilly.
So there we were under a tree, which was becoming increasingly insufficient coverage, facing a decision to wait or to forge ahead. The catch was that it was 2:30 am by this point, and I had a meeting at 10 am the next day, so we couldn’t really afford to wait long. Of course, we continued, and of course, about 2 minutes in the rain became even stronger. By the time we reached the residence, my clothes and hair were soaked through, and I was chilled to the bone. The rain stopped just as we reached our courtyard (what else would I expect, though), and even though I took a steamy shower, I still woke up with a sore throat. C’est la vie…
