My First Week at PLNU

Monday morning: Today was my first day of classes at PLNU. It’s been pretty rough. The day began with my roommate waking me up, saying “Katie it’s 7:40, don’t you have a class at 7:30? Your already 10 minutes late!” I replied, “My alarm didn’t go off! No! oh no, no, no, no, did you hear it go off? No? I can’t be late my first day of college!”
I flew around the room changing quickly and throwing a hat over my crazy frizzy curls. Then I jabbed on a bit of mascara, and I ran out the door and began charging up the hill from Klassen to the linguistics building. My feet had been blistered from my previous two days in my new flip flops, so as I ran to class in my normally comfortable flats, the shoes sliced open the fresh scabs. By the time I got to class, breathless, sweaty, frizzy, and overall, humiliated, the insides of my shoes had blood stains.
The teacher responded, “Buenos dias Katie!” then looked back at the class and said, “Katie es tardes!” Then he realized there was no extra desk for me. So he disappeared behind the door I had just entered. I stood awkwardly at the front of the classroom, clutching my little white folder and I suddenly became very interested in the square tile floor I was standing on. The class simply stared in bewilderment at the strange sight before them and their thought bubbles read, “What the heck?”
After what seemed a lifetime, my teacher reentered and placed a desk in a row of its own in the very front of the class. I sat down and waited for class to be over and as soon as it was I bolted for the door.
Theatre was next. I found the room easy enough and tried to make small talk with some of the kids. Either they had been in my last class or I still appeared as if I had been in a fight with my blow dryer, and lost. I gave up and soon after, my next professor arrived. He seemed the typical theatre persona. He was an older man, and thin with glasses. Interesting I thought, he had an artistic atmosphere about him. He asked us what we thought the reason was for taking introduction to theatre. My peers responded with intelligent answers, but the teacher seemed intent on making sure we understood that Americans have no interest in learning, lacked culture, and further more liked it that way.
Next was chapel. I walked to Brown Chapel alone. I saw few people I recognized and the few I did, I was to scared to talk to after my experiences with other people that day. The day became very lonely and chapel was hard to enjoy. My boyfriend originally had plans to sit with his hall in chapel but I could find no one to sit with, and though I protested, my knight and shining armor came to sit with me on the far edge of the chapel. He prayed with me and gave me hug. Of course being a girl, I got all choked up and the embarrassments of the day came crashing down in droplets on my cheeks.
The rest of week went much better. In fact I had a very good week! I solved each problem I had on Monday. First of all I set three alarms, at intervals of 10 to 5 minutes apart. Because I had time, I was able to dress well, contain my hair and walk to class. I had sliced up my feet pretty bad so I solved that with two bandaids carefully placed each morning. I got to Spanish early and found a seat nearing the back of the classroom. Theatre improved by God’s grace, or the professor had suddenly become patriotic over night. Tuesday I had art classes and my day started at 9:30 instead of 7:30, just those two things alone could have saved my week. I also made friends with some sophomores, who now even drive my boyfriend and I off campus and too church on Sundays. They are a lot like my friends from home and made me feel at home here!