Orientation/move in

At this point orientation is sort of a blur. It was almost two weeks ago now.
We were hoarded into this lobby. It wasn’t a big lobby, but it wasn’t quaint. We were standing there sweating, our suitcases at our feet. It had to be eighty or ninety degrees, and most of us were coming from JFK, where it was five below when we boarded. Looking out at the kidney shaped pool through the French doors, I was lost between my desire to jump in and put on a parka and go home. The heat was beating us, and the flight had drained us, and all I can remember is feeling like my mouth was dry from small talk.
Where do you go to school? Where are you from? Are you here alone or with friends?
Where did you request to live? What floor is your room on? Did your suitcase make the weight limit or did you have to pay extra?
Do you like your school? Have you been to the East Coast? Do you know what time we have to get up tomorrow?
Are you going out tonight? So what is authentic African food anyway? I’m really sorry, I’m so bad with names...
When I found someone that I could talk about more than the weather with, I took a mental note, and I hoped they felt the same way about me. However, I could never be sure, so I clung to no one. The next three days were talks and talks and tours. We were shown the campus and the surrounding area, bought cell phones and called home for the first time. We were given talks about how we would be perceived; we met the people we would be living with. Our leaders were called SOLmates or “Students Orientation Leaders.” They live with us in the houses and in the dorms and ran our orientation. They act sort of like RAs, and are from all over Africa. My two are Ken, from Kenya, and Bothle, from Botswana. There are a great number of them from Zimbabwe, Tanzania and Namibia, and a few from Johannesburg. There’s even one from the States who loved the program so much last semester that she stayed for the spring.
After three days in the hotel, three days that felt like six, we left and moved into what would become our homes for the semester. I was placed in a CIEE house, off campus but close by. In reality, there are actually two houses on the property, one that sleeps nine and one that sleeps eleven. There are twenty of us living in this “house.” When I told a local South African where I was staying, he asked me if MTV was involved. Sometimes I wonder.
We chose numbers out of a hat and I was the seventh person to run into the house and pick my room in under sixty seconds. I got lucky enough to grab a room at the very front of the main house with two windows…one looking out to the mountains. There are hardwood floors and double doors on one side of my room that lead out onto the front patio. When I open them on a Friday afternoon like today, I get an incredible cross breeze that cools everything down. That and the sun that crawls over the mountain and through my window in the morning cause this space to qualify as the nicest place I’ve ever lived in.
I can’t say this is what I envisioned when I signed up to come to Africa.