*yawns* *waves to blog* Blog, where should I start? Should I go in order, from when we drove here, or should I just talk about the interesting things, like buying a yacht,* OTD (Obsessive Tweeting Disorder), lack of interwebs, and more? I'll give you the beginning in a nutshell.

Basically, when I got to college, I was alright. My family was still here, my cousin thing came along and tried to help me meet people (fail, mostly), and I was still in the mind set that I would be going home with them. It sucks when you realize that you aren't. It sucks a lot. My mom and I are really close, so when she was all, "Sorry, kid, we're leaving now. See you on Thanksgiving,"* I kind of freaked out a little. There were tears, and lots of tissues and lots of picture taking, because apparently on emotional days like these she decides that her actual career is as a photographer and she absolutely had to document this.

Needless to say, I wanted to keep crying for the rest of the night. I just wanted to go to sleep. Who cares about making friends, right? I have friends! Just because they're not here with me right now doesn't mean they aren't there. I actually told my mom that I was going to quit school, live at home, and get a job to support gas money and bus fare so that I could just constantly visit them.

This was all before she even left.

Clearly I was sooo prepared. But she made me go downstairs. It was time for dinner (wasn't hungry) and it would be a good time to meet people. My roommate was already down there, and I found her on the sidewalk. She had just said good bye to her parents, too, so it was kind of awkward and we were both really upset, but we went to dinner anyway. (Long story short about dinner: The line was long. We met a couple people around us. Ate with them. Went back to the room. She read. I watched He's Just Not That Into You. Fantastic movie. Except when you watch it three nights in a row.)

Here's the internet story. One of the first things I did after I unpacked and my family and I were just lounging around my room, was check to see how the internet worked. See, the thing is, it didn't. That automatically was a cue for a Freak Out. I had lots of those. If you saw my Twitter at all, you know I had at least eight. So here I am. In my room with my family. And I don't have internet. "But that's where your friends live!" you're saying to me. I know.

I went up to the tech room to figure out why this was happening, thinking it must have something to do with my computer, maybe they just needed to push a button. Hahahaha. In reality, we had to go to a 2 hour course two days later to install a program for security reasons. Do you know what that means? That means I had to wait TWO WHOLE DAYS in a completely NEW SCHOOL without ANY FRIENDS WITHOUT THE INTERNET. Do you KNOW HOW HORRIBLE THAT IS? When the guy told me, I almost had a freak out RIGHT THERE. I said thanks, left, and put my sunglasses back on because I thought I would start crying. Do you understand the seriousness of the situation now?

OTD:

OTD is a direct result of not having internet. It was the only way I could let people know I was alive (you know, other than texting them...). All I could do was update my Twitter via text messages. Thank god, though, I had Maureen Johnson's tweets sent to my phone. Only hers, unfortunately, but it was better than no one's at all. It was a healthy dose of insanity after much wanting to hide under a rock.

Because I didn't any form of internet available to me (at the time, I wasn't aware that the library was open. Oh, glorious revelations.) this was all I did. I didn't know you could tweet so much in just a few days. (It felt like a lot to me, anyway.) But it felt like I just fell off of the face of the earth.

Note to ALL COLLEGES OUT THERE: Get your internet stuff fixed before letting scared, friendless freshman come! It's MEAN if you do NOT.

Yacht shopping was all I could do.

The thing with new situations like this is that the people organizing it are convinced they must force you into groups and you will find your life long best friends there. See, you don't. The only reason I made friends was because of this weird situation.

We were waiting for the buses to come to go on a tour of the lake that's about ten minutes away. They were supposed to get there at 1, to take my group, and then 20 minutes later for the other group. Except that didn't happen. The buses were half an hour late, there weren't enough of them, and they took the OTHER group first.

We were put into these Dialogues Groups*** but once we got to the bus stop everyone started chatting and such. It was awkward. I tried to join in, but I'm awky, so it was kind of difficult. I mean, it's not that bad when you have one person who is just REALLY GOOD in situations like that and always keeps the conversation flowing, and the group I was in had one for a while. But then he tried to mesh our group with another one, leaving us to stand there uncomfortably when we didn't follow.

I tried to be the one who kept the conversation going by talking to Guy Who Looks Like Fishy.**** It wasn't originally supposed to just be to him, but he was the only one who really answered, even if his answers were short and kind of left the conversation hanging. It was just weird. I don't think any of us wanted to be there, so trying to force conversation was awky.

BEHIND ME I kept hearing a group of people mentioning I think it was Twilight to start with. I was tempted to join their conversation, but how do you just jump into it and expect to be accepted. So I just stood there awkwardly with the little group I was in. It felt like the only thing I really COULD do.

After a few minutes of silence, I finally heard the words Harry Potter, and right then I knew what I had to do. I didn't care if they were freaked out, I jumped up, spun around, landed in- when I say in I mean in the frame of- their circle, and said, "Are you talking about Harry Potter?!"*****

They said yes, and we hung out for the rest of the day. One of the girls I actually consistently hang out with, and we met a guy, too. We've got this little group, I guess you could say, and we just hang around, watch movies, and not eat food in my room. I don't know why. I have a TON OF FOOD BUT NO ONE WILL EAT IT.

SO IF YOU WANT FOOD, TELL ME AND I WILL GIVE IT TO YOU. *glares at box*

It was nice to make friends, though. Even if I really only have 2/3. I met another guy when we were getting the stupid internet thing fixed, so we sat next to each other for 2 hours, freaking out about everything. Runa, you'll appreciate this, he loves Harry Potter and is a Hufflepuff.

I'll post another one SOON, probably tomorrow, but I've got CLASS SOON. Grawr. Class sucks. More on that later. Au revoir, mon ami.

College Bound,
Ashley
Who didn't really proof this. Sorrooo

*I understand my metaphor is lame and sucks, and shouldn't actually be CONSIDERED a metaphor at all, but bare with me, please.

**Okay, so she didn't really say that. But that's what it felt like. Even though I am GOING to see her before Thanksgiving. She couldn't (alright, I can't either) live without me for that long.

*** We have First Year Seminars, and they put us into these groups based on which one we took. I'm in the Geology one (don't ask) so mine was with all of the Geology kids.

****Not an ACTUAL fish. It was the nickname my friends had for this guy I liked in... tenth grade? Oi. *pathetic*

***** Or some variation of that.