You Don't Have to Go Home But You Can't Stay Here

Today started off much as I imagined it would.  I woke up, went on a tour of the buildings on campus, made a sandwich with Ben's panini maker (which makes good sandwiches into GREAT sandwiches), bikeshared over to Tyler's to feed and hang out with Baxter the lonely cat, and got back to campus in time to go on a tour of the library.

This was the first time I had been in the library, and it was everything I expected it to be: enormous, beautiful, and intimidating.  After the tour I was walking with Parker, Jack, and Chelsea and we decided to go look at the mini-cafeteria which was supposedly on the ground floor (the library entrance was on the second floor so we hadn't seen the ground floor on our tour).  We descended the staircase and passed a group of 2L or 3L students doing some sort of work in a glass-enclosed room.  Then the walls and ground started to move and it felt as though a five-thousand pound person had just fallen down the staircase.  I suggested we exit the building and there was general agreement.  The 2L or 3L students who were doing some sort of work in the glass-enclosed room saw our panic and laughed at us, though I still can't figure out why.  It's as though earthquakes hit the library often and it's just something we were supposed to get used to as students.  Silly us.

So we walked out of the library and into a sea of people who had also been busy walking out of their respective buildings.  Then we were directed to move across the street, away from Georgetown's large buildings and directly underneath other, larger buildings that were not Georgetown's.  After standing there for about half an hour and trying (unsuccessfully) to make text messaging work, we got some surprisingly low-priced street food (sweet tea and a hot dog with chili for $3) and went to go sit in the middle of a park away from all the buildings.  This made more sense to us, in general.  It also got us away from the horde of people.

Once in the park we kept up with the status of the school via e-mail updates,  which mostly told us that we wouldn't be allowed to go into any campus building for any reason until further notice.  With that in mind, we started playing a game of 20-questions.  Some of the best and worst objects-of-the-game from the following three hours:

Barack Obama (six questions- fewest questions to an answer)
Moby Dick (twenty questions exactly)
A Scooter (first that took more than twenty questions)
A Treadmill (nineteen questions but most heated argument between guessers about the last few questions)
CJ from West Wing (more than twenty questions and a terrible realization at the end that we never asked "is this a FICTIONAL person")
Elmo (more than twenty questions due to complete inability to ask good questions after "is it a man-made object" was answered in the affirmative)

Around four we finally got the all-clear to head back into our building.  Parker had some reisling and I had some cards so we went to the eleventh floor outdoor seating area (which is a great, great place) to play various card-games.  Most of these games involved slapping the table violently, because, as one of the six players put it: "we do not play bridge."  I forced Parker and Jack to pose with their wine so that I could take a picture of them to show off the view from the 11th floor.

It's not a great picture I took, but it's a great view.

We had a hall meeting (first rule- no alcohol in public areas of the building including outside areas) and then the RFs (resident fellows) took us out in groups to Chinatown.  I ended up eating with Ben and some other guys at Busboys and Poets, where I had a delicious falafel.  Didn't feel like going out to a bar so Ben and Matt and I went back to our room and played a game of Settlers of Catan, which I won by a comfortable margin.  

More orientation/summer-camp fun for tomorrow.  Hopefully no more earthquakes.  I do hear that a hurricane is on its way, so we should have a nice rainy weekend at the very least.