For the last 6 months or more, I’ve been talking San
Francisco, thinking San Francisco, researching San Francisco and dreaming San
Francisco, but none of those things can compare to actually living San
Francisco. Officially, the adventures have begun.
For starters, dorm life has a lot of potential for fun and
friends. GGH has four floors above the lobby; three for our rooms and the top
floor for common areas (kitchen, lounge, etc). Each of the three inhabited
floors has a theme: first floor is Pokemon, second is tea, third is pirates. I
was lucky enough to be assigned to the tea floor (by far the most dignified).
This means that the name tags on our doors are shaped like teacups, and all of
the rule posters have pictures of the Queen underneath them. I share a room
with a girl named Elizabeth, a vocal student from Pennsylvania.
I have met quite a few people already. We had a floor
meeting on the third night where the RAs went over the rules and gave us their
contact info. Everyone had to tell the group their name, instrument and what
kitchen utensil they would most like to be. I was going to say I would be a
spatula, but that seemed too mainstream, so I said bundt pan. The kid next to
me said window, which resulted in dead silence from everyone. Maybe, being from
Chile, he didn’t understand the word “utensil”?? All the Asian kids were saying
chopstick, until Jason (Dean of Student Life) told them they couldn’t all be
chopsticks.
Friday was apparently the birthday of a girl named
Stephanie, and so she invited a whole lot of people to go to Off the Grid at
Fort Mason. This is like a roving market, with lots of different stands and
food from different countries. They congregate in a different spot each week.
Fort Mason used to be an army base, and now it’s home to a lot of museums and
businesses (even a music school). Sort
of like Currie Barracks in Calgary. I met several grad students, including the
chap who won the composition competition last year and whose piece we will be
performing at the first orchestra concert.
It’s pretty exciting to be living on my own means, and to
know that no one is making dinner for me anymore, and therefore if I don’t make
it myself I will starve. I thought at
first that running thousands of miles away from home just to shop in another
Safeway would be somewhat anticlimactic, but it’s still an adventure to do
grocery runs myself. (Those of you who have been doing your own groceries for
10, 20, 30, 40 or 50 years, stop laughing.)
Advising and registration appointments are next week, so
that’s when I’ll decide what classes to take. I auditioned for the baroque ensemble,
and also placed straight into 2nd year music theory and out of
keyboard skills completely. There was a dictation exam as part of the
musicianship placement test. I’d never done dictation before, and found it a real
listening challenge, but fun as well.
Tonight Elizabeth and I are going to a local choir concert,
doing Brahms Deutsche Requiem. Before that, I still need to practice violin and
find a cache, so I better not write anymore. Please let me know if you thought
this entry was too long, or if there’s something I should have told about but
didn’t.
-Antisocial Violinist
