June 24

Today I moved into my dorm room with my mom and dad. The dorms are really nice. Here is a description of Jones Hall that I found on the SAIC website:

"This national historic landmark was built in 1906 and achieved notoriety as the first building with a steel structure in Chicago. It houses 200 of our students and is located at State and Madison Streets at 7 West Madison, the exact center of the city. The corner of State and Madison was historically known in the early 20th century as the world's busiest intersection. Jones Hall is also located a short distance from Chicago's latest architectural accomplishment, Millennium Park."

Jones Hall (My dorm is on the 7th floor)

View of my roommate's bed, both of our desks, and our window

View of my bed and improvised nightstand (luggage)

View of our kitchen (fridge/freezer, sink, microwave, and stovetop)

While we were unpacking, my mom tried to put my fitted sheet on the mattress only to discover that a twin-sized fitted sheet won't fit on an extra-long twin mattress. 

After unpacking for about 15 minutes, we went down to the Lobby to meet up with some Summer Resident Educators (SRE's) and other students to walk over to get our student ID's.


When we got back to the room, we met my roommate, Nicholas, who's really nice. He's from New Jersey, right across from Manhattan. He also likes cold dorm rooms, which is unfortunate, but I'll get over it. Mom, Dad, Nicholas, and I walked over to the walgreen's 2 blocks over at State and Randolph. It's HUGE! It has two stories with two escalators. The first floor is entirely groceries, and the second floor is basically anything you would expect to find in a normal walgreen's.

After we came back from Walgreen's, groceries in hand, we finished unpacking and walked over to the SAIC building at 112 Michigan Avenue for orientation. There were about 3 people who worked for the school who talked about rules, class information, and locations of important buildings and stores. In the middle of the presentation, they had a buffet where we could make our own fajitas, which was time consuming, so by the time I got to the food, it was barely warm, but it was still pretty good. At the end, they passed around a microphone to anyone who had a question. Overall, the whole event seemed really long, and one thing that stood out in my mind was how many times they emphasized how hard we would have to work.

Exterior shot of the Michigan Avenue building

Interior shot of where the orientation was held (minus the wedding cake)

After the orientation was finished, everyone walked down the stairs and on to the street. Mom, Dad and I walked together talking about how much we will miss each other. Their hotel was north of my dorm room about 7 blocks. We walked northward toward the dorms, but when we reached Madison and State, I had to cross the street, while my parents stayed straight. We hugged goodbye, and when I turned right off of the crosswalk, I saw Mom and Dad looking back at me, and we waved and made faces at each other like big weirdos.