Well, here we are. I've been in Concord for a week and a day, and man, was that an overwhelming week! Two Friday's ago my parents and I drove down the impressively charming Main Street of Concord, MA. I successfully got the key to my apartment and just like that, we were moving my stuff in. It was dank and dark at first, but once there was a steady flow of air from the continuous opening of the door, the stuffy feeling soon cleared. The reason for the dank came from my apartment's location: it is in the basement of one of the boy's dorms (called "houses" at CA, so that is what I will now refer to them as), and called the "garden apartment," since that's more palatable than "basement apartment." It's quite nice, actually; just two rooms, a bedroom and kitchen/living room sorta divided by a bar-type thing. It used to be the school bookstore, so shelves line almost all the walls. It's nice for displaying pictures and small decorative items, but when it comes to storing clothes and the like, it's a bit irritating. I've gotten used to it by now, though. The place has truly become my own, though at this point I still lack a comfy chair or couch. I'm working on it.
Other than making my apartment livable, I attended several meetings, all of which lasted from 9am to 5pm. The first was the new faculty orientation meeting; I was surprised to see that there were three other young ladies joining the crew this year as well, in addition to a new head of school. We spent the day trying to process several tidal waves of information, ranging from emergency procedures to campus diversity. I staggered to my apartment for dinner, struggling to comprehend everything that had been thrown at me that day while attempting to prepare for the next day's all-day meeting. Suffice to say, the next three days were fairly overwhelming; full faculty meetings, house faculty meetings, one-on-one meetings with the deans...all in addition to dealing with the fact that I was now far from home and all things familiar, the fact that I now had to deal with just about everything on my own, that when anyone said, "The adults deal with this.." that meant me, too. I'm not too ashamed to admit I spent a fair amount of time trying not to cry, especially since I had no internet and no cell reception in my apartment and thus felt truly and completely isolated from everything I knew.
Things have settled down a bit now; new boarding students arrived on Friday while I went into Boston to visit Bryne and Scott at their lovely apartment in Somerville. Classes start on Tuesday and I am both excited and terrified. I am teaching two classes, Latin I and Latin II, one section of each. I have one class on Mondays through Thursdays, and two on Fridays. Not much, but enough for someone with no experience whatsoever. In addition to that, I have house faculty duties, which means that on Thursdays, I am responsible for the boarders who live in Hobson House. It should be interesting, since it's basically a parenting job, and that's something I have no experience with either. hmmm...
I'm looking forward to the coming days very much and will definitely be giving a detailed report of how much first few days go, so stayed tuned!
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