Part Two: Into the Forrest???

June 29, 2008

Yes, it’s been two weeks already. I can’t believe it. I feel like I’ve just gotten here/have been here forever. At this point, I’m not really sure which. I think it just changes by the hour.

Highlights:

1) It hailed. Yes, hailed. I checked my calendar, and it’s definitely June. But, as I’ve been learning, June in Vermontian means Winter in Californian. As in, the rain just doesn’t end.

2) “Medinat Middlebury”: I live 30 feet from a cemetery and 5 blocks from a bar. I think this is slowly bringing me out of my “I wonder what it would have been like to live in a town of 213 people in the middle of nowhere” phase.

3) Speaking in Arabic. Yah, it’s really hard and yah, I’m still pretty bad. BUT, I’m getting better, especially at understanding what people are saying even when they talk really fast.

4) Friends! Clare, Helen, Tova. Friends!

So, Middlebury exists in the dark ages of sketch wireless and apparently an age in which – mysteriously – not every student wears clothes…


This is a story about laundry.

At Stanford, two things are for certain about laundry – regardless of how many time(s) per quarter you so choose to perform the act:

1. Laundry is included in tuition, thus lifting the burden of quarters and other archaen methods of payment.
2. There are laundry machines in all student housing.

Neither of these are true at Middlebury. Instead of quarters, they have a special card that you put money on – but it isn’t, btw, the same card you for photocopying or the same card you use to get into your building. Unfortunately, not all laundry locations have card machines. And furthermore, the card machines are very particular. They advertise taking $5, $10, $20, but in reality they only take $5 bills.

I had it all figured out. I traded my last 5 $1 bills for a $5. I was in the know about the finicky machines, heheheh. After breakfast, I got the card thing done.

Then, I bought laundry detergent from the Tress-X equivalent, Mid-Express, on the way back from the gym. Efficient.

After dinner, I got all my laundry and put it in my suitcase. This is where things started to go turn sour. My suitcase is about the size of a bus. As in, when standing upright, it comes up to my hips. Large.

I knew this was going to be a problem from the start. I deliberated. What to do? Laundry, or no laundry? I had been posing this very question for the last several days. I had gone 2 weeks without doing laundry, and clothing levels were critical. I just had to. It also wasn’t raining, a huge plus.

Took my suitcase in the elevator because the stairs are two narrow (or maybe my suitcase is too wide…) Got out at the first floor. Not the basement. That is because there isn’t a laundry room in my building. But there is a laundry room in Forrest, on the other side of Route 125. Yes, that is the main road that goes through Middlebury. It also bisects the entire state. So the way I see it, I crossed the interstate – on foot with a whale for a laundry basket – to do my laundry. Baller.

Before I left the building, people actually laughed as I went by with the whale. One guy said “good bye” (in Arabic, of course), as if I were leaving the program. So apparently, a gaggle of first years now think that I am either crazy or going home. An explanation of why this bothers me so intensely would probably require some serious psychoanalysis. But the fact is, it does. Probably because it acts out the insecure part of me that thinks I can’t do things like learn Arabic, and because it makes me feel like a total lo-o-o-oser.

My Arabic teacher, Rasha, saw me with the whale and started yammering about how I shouldn’t leave and then – once she was convinced I wasn’t vacating the premises – about how I could clothe a small village for three years. Yes, that’s pretty much what she told me. “It appears that you can dress a small village for three years.” I don’t know the words for laundry, basket, detergent, sheets, haven’t done laundry for two weeks. So now she thinks that I must have a shopping mall in my room.

Got to the room, realized I forgot the card. Re-traversed the interstate, this time sans whale. Got my card. $1.25/ea.

Returned later in hopes of drying everything I own – I am currently wearing a button-down collared shirt and boxer shorts, the last things that aren’t dirty. And yes, I did cross the interstate wearing these. In fact, I went to dinner in them too.

Laundry machine hates me. Eats my money. Get Clare’s card. It eats her money too. A nice girl helps me make it work. I am convinced that it only works because of her presence. Because I did exactly the same thing three times before she showed up. Unfortunately, $0.50 only buys you 23 minutes in 1 dryer, so I guess we’ll see how that works out…

Arabic is getting kind of hard. The grammar is tricky because we’re learning about case endings, which means I actually need to understand grammar and how sentences work. Let’s put it this way, I failed the 7th grade sentence-diagramming test. Problem! (This word is actually really, really fun to say in Arabic – moosh-kii-lah.)

Also, why on earth would you make up all the rules for when you’re talking about two people? Two men, two women, a man and a woman. Why are all the verbs, nouns, and adjectives different?????? I’m really happy with using they and you (plural). I don’t really need 3 more subject pronouns.