9:59 p.m. - 2002-08-04
The CTYers
Quote of the Entry: "I love you all. I love the passionfruit." ~CTYers, to be later explained
Soooo... I'm alive. And I'm so, so happy I went back to CTY. Bravest thing I ever did. Here's the thing about CTY.
The people I meet at CTY and spend three weeks with know more about me than people I've known for three years at home. I've talked about my self-image, my former awful relationship with my mom, my depression, Marsha, how miserable I was at CTY the summer before, the shit David's gotten himself into. CTYers KNOW me and I feel comfortable around them and I feel like I actually know them. I can't imagine ever having a conversation with, say, Jackie, about the way Mom destroyed my self-esteem in ninth grade. The only persun here at home who actually knows anything about me is Missy. Everyone else are just people I hang out with and have classes with. I don't know what it is about CTY, but it makes me a persun.
My hallmates gave me confidence. They made me think I was beautiful and smart and fun to be around, and if I think that, then I AM. I haven't felt this good about myself in a really long time. I actually felt pretty.
I'm going to start from the very beginning. The only thing I won't go into detail about is my ethics class, and that's because I'm going to do a whole separate entry about it. I really want to go through my notebook and papers from the class, so then I can go into detail about what we actually studied. But that entry's coming.
Right, so Sunday the 14th. Dad and Alexa went with me to Siena. On the way up I played music and I drafted and then neatly copied over the four thank-you notes in French (Hugues, Francoise, Emma; Emma's grandparents; Elisa, Sergei, Marie; the family in Brittany).
My room was NICE. Holy shit. It was unbelievable. Really big, air-conditioned, nice big window, desks with lights, and a private bathroom with a shower right in the room. Can you believe that? Apparently the guys had really bad dorms, but hey, the girls were happy. :)
So Alexa and Dad helped me unpack and make up the bed and everything and we had a picnic lunch and then they left. I met my roommate Rachel; first time my roommate was there before me. Liz and Mer were both the last to arrive in my other two years. Rachel seemed nice. She had been there the session before, so she basically spent the day running around with people who had been there last session and last year, where she was also there for two sessions. I had thought that Siena was a totally new site, but instead it was moved over from Union, which in turn was moved over from Hamilton. So you had a LOT of returning kids, which was frustrating because that was what I was trying to avoid, but it ended up working out okay.
My RA, Karel, was really nice. She goes to Haverford.
After they left I read a book of stories on prejudice and wandered back and forth from the campus bookstore. We had our hall meeting and a big campus meeting and all kinds of other stuff. Our hall was small, only ten people.
EMILY: She was a nevermore (16, too old to come back). Beautiful curly hair, sarcastically funny, boyfriend at home who she constantly talked to on the phone. I really liked her, she was awesome. She hung out a lot with the other nevermores and people that she had known before, like Lily, who she knew for all of her four years. In the existentialism class. Roommates with
SARAH: Apparently she was really homesick and she spent all her time crying on the phone to her mom. A first-year and a nevermore, which is always sad. She was nice, a bit condescending at times, but nice. Super-long hair which was really split ends at the bottom and you just wanted to say, cut it, girl! I usually ate lunch with Sarah, Dana, and Dakota because most of our hall (Emily, Rachel, Hannah, Pippa) had been there before, and Taube joined the others easily, and Rosie made her own friends. Also in the existentialism class along with
DANA: Really, really quiet. She was sweet when she spoke, but that was so rare! Also a first-year nevermore. Roommates with
DAKOTA: Awesome girl from Alaska in my class. I spent a lot of time with her during breaks and such because we were the two in the ethics class kind of on the outside at times. We'd go outside and lie in the sun and I'd listen to music and she'd read "The Grapes of Wrath." She was a nevermore and she had been to Hamilton two years ago, and actually knew some people here from then, such as Rob.
RACHEL: My roomie. I could never decide about Rachel. She was such a sweetheart, but she was also such a flirt that it really pissed some of us off. Even while Pippa and Anthony were going out, Rachel would sneak up behind Anthony and feel up his pecs! While Matt and Sarah were going out, Rachel would still be all over him and walking with her hands in his butt pockets! It was a little disgusting, she just really wanted "action," as she told me. She went to synagogue on the weekends and hooked up with this guy named Gary and she ended up hooking up with this guy named Jason at camp. (Though that was also pretty shitty of her, because Taube really, really liked Jason.) But aside from the guy thing, she was sweet and nice and fun. Another nevermore.
PIPPA: I loved Pippa! She did, however, have some guy issues. She went out with Matt last year but he broke up with her and she still wasn't completely over him but he was, so that kind of hurt the first few days. Then she started to like Anthony, and they went out for a few days, but she broke up with him for a whole bunch of reasons. It was really tough though because she still liked him. THEN she started to like Wang, who had a girlfriend at home, and the two of them ended up hooking up a lot. But, yeah, though not exactly hard-to-get, Pippa was awesome. I talked to her a lot. Roommates with
ROSIE: An interesting case. At first I thought she seemed like a really interesting individual, but by the end of the session she was pissing me off more and more. She was kind of selfish and kept on taking other people's clothes and such without even asking. It's different if you know the persun really well from other years and stuff but she didn't, we'd get to class and Pippa would discover that Rosie was wearing HER pants. Plus, Rosie would always talk about the people she had sex with. She kept trying to hook up at camp but it never worked out. At first we thought she was kidding, but it was true, she has a LOT of sex to make her feel more secure. It was awful and made us all really uncomfortable.
TAUBE: Another interesting case. She had apparently been really popular at the LA site the past two years and she was determined to make this year like it. She was kinda insecure because she was overweight, but she was really outgoing and always introduced herself to people and ended up making a lot of friends. She was, however, really paranoid about the people in our hall and thought that we were teaming up against her all the time, in the end, Dakota and I were the only people she really trusted. She had a great voice but by the end we were all annoyed because she was SO LOUD, when she talked, when she laughed, when she cried. I think she was put under a lot of pressure by her parents because she completely flipped out over every quiz or debate or ANYTHING in ethics. COMPLETELY. Roommates with
HANNAH: Gorgeous sexy chica! (I wrote that in her memory book.) Very charismatic. She had a boyfriend who she loved in England named Joey but did hook up with this guy named Scott at CTY too, just a fling. She had been there the year before and she, Pippa, and Emily were kind of cliquey the first few days. I think every single guy in our class had a crush on Hannah.
Yes, for the guys in our class:
GARVEY: Annoying. Smart, but always interrupted and was rude about it. REALLY annoying. Our catch phrase became "Shut up, Garvey!"
JOE: He cross-dressed for the first dance and for the talent show. I concluded that he made a better cross-dresser than a guy.
RON: A really scary guy. He always talked in a monotone and is against gay people because he believes they spread AIDS and against abortion and against the ACLU because he believes they support NAMBLA and against Sesame Street and just a general overly-conservative guy.
ROB: Awesome nevermore. Beautiful blue eyes and curly hair and really tall. Really funny. He always wore a bathrobe and pajamas and carried a towel on Thursdays because that's when the world is going to end (go read "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" if you didn't understand that last sentence). He's read a whole bunch of good books.
ANTHONY: Another nevermore, and the only Asian guy in our class. Pippa went out with him for a few days. He was pretty cool, we liked a lot of the same music and so for some of the study halls we went and shared headphones and listened to the rap mixes David made me. Haha.
MATT: A ski racer from CA and former Macy's child model, which embarrasses him greatly. He went out with Pippa last year. He started the session with a girlfriend back home but somehow wound up dating a girl named Sarah at CTY. Interesting, no? Very flirtatious, but lots of fun anyway and another Matrix freak!
I've got to go to bed after this ridiculously stupid boring entry, but at least when I talk about people, you'll know what I'm talking about, right? Tomorrow I'll actually write about CTY. Schedule for the week:
Friday, August 2nd -- I got home from CTY.
Saturday, August 3rd -- Unpacked and worked with the two new computers. They're GORGEOUS, black, new everything, DSL, so fast, they're just incredible. But we have to transfer over our word documents and stuff and install AOL and AIM and virus programs (I've done a lot of that) so it's a whole shitload of work.
Today -- Kelsey got home from horse camp in Canada and we went to the airport to pick her up. It sounds like she had a good time.
Tuesday night -- Probably having dinner with Gramie.
Wednesday -- Lauren and Alexa are taking the train back from dance camp in the Adirondacks. We're going to pick them up around noon, the drive is a little less than an hour.
Sunday -- We leave at some ungodly hour (around 3 AM) to catch the ferry to Nantucket.
So my week plans -- more unpacking, laundry, talking to CTYers, talking to people here (tomorrow's call list: Missy, Katie, and Anthony from CTY because he left me a message). I promised Dr. Joan I'd go over to her office for a few days to type and I promised Dad I'd work in the office some to write checks. I really want to make a mix of my CTY music. I've got to catch up with Lauren and Alexa. Once they get home, there's going to be serious competition for the computers, so I'll try to do my real entries tomorrow and on Tuesday.
Until then!
-Jessica
