The part where I stop being a big baby, and random awesome people

I'm sorry I'm sorry. After the last post I got like three messages from people, worried. I promise it's better, the first day was just an exhausting mix of missing my grandma, being stressed about the flight, and being hungry. I've pretty much just been a big baby. The room is fine, the people are fine, the teachers so far are fine. It's all just fine.

This morning as we were walking out to go to UVP for the first time to take our placement test, I ran into a girl who was moving out of the same dorm room. She was this typical southern belle ("where y'all from?" skirts and bows and all that), very polite, very nice. She mentioned that she was selling some of her things before she left, and I said I would check it out.

Tonight as we were eating dinner on the stairs of the dorms she passed us again, so we talked for a bit, I found out she was selling a water boiler for 5 Euros (TEA!!!!!) and said I would consider buying it, but I had spent all my money on food (REAL FOOD!!!) so I didn't know if I could scrounge the money up. I found 4.50 Euros and walked over to her room (which had its own kitchenette, I might ask if I can switch to that room instead). She actually had intended to sell a boiler that you put on a stove top, and not an electric kettle, but ended up selling me the kettle anyways. But she needed it the next morning, so she'll leave it in the kitchen along with her leftover cleaning supplies.

This seems really insignificant, but she was just so nice, and so helpful. I felt like I was talking to a village elder or something, she was just very wise. I realize I've been quite negative, but the rooms aren't so bad, and the people so far are pretty awesome. I sort of wish I wrote down everything she said, but in a nutshell: this experience is what I make it, it's short, it's up to me to make it good and leave without any regrets. She made me realize that it's really, really huge waste of time and opportunity complaining about stupid things like room size, etc. It's really not that bad. She told me that when she first moved in they put her in a  room just like mine, but the bathroom (same size) was shared by 15 people. She felt so horrible she went to a hotel for two nights.

We must have talked for an hour or so about what to do and see, where I can go to get connected, how to find a babysitting job, how to figure out how to set up my cell phone, the cheapest markets to buy food. She gave me all these pamphlets, her email, etc.

I know, I sound like a fortune cookie, but sometimes I have fortune cookie moments, and they seem important enough to write down. It'll probably be difficult, but it'll be great. Now I'm getting all these ideas of where I want to go and what I want to see that four months seems too short.

Now if you excuse me, I'm going to go watch 30 English-speaking students get drunk on the stairs and see if anything interesting happens.

Note: nothing interesting happened.