I Want to Walk, not Run

My first day of school... one word: damn. I woke up at 5:15 in the morning, to catch the bus which was supposed to arrive at 6:08. Well it didn't show up, so mom went to check another stop, nobody was there. Then she called the people who were in charge of the busses and stuff, they said another 20 minutes, this all happened at about 6:30. While I was waiting, I kept on thinking it was 7:30, then I remembered it was an hour earlier. So the bus finally came, and I finally got to Enloe for my first day.

I went to the back of the school for my homeroom, it was supposed to last 20 minutes, with about 35 minute classes I guess. Well as it turned out, one teacher's room got flooded. Water collected on the roof, then the roof caved in. So we ended up hanging around in homeroom for about an hour, with only 20 minute classes. Good thing, right? Well, they let us out, and I walked briskly to get to geometry early. The teacher was cool, and he just briefly went over how the class is run, and a small summary of the class.

Class was dismissed, and I went to chemistry. The halls were SO CROWDED. People were literally shoulder to shoulder. I could barely do more than just put one foot in front of the other. So get to the room, and I sit down. Then a bunch of people come in right after me, they're all juniors, and one senior. I'm the only freshman. So we sit down and class starts, the teacher tells us to write some stuff on the board down. Then she explains what it is. We have a quiz Friday on lab safety and.... a quiz on half of the periodic table. That's today, tomorrow, and thursday to study. Man, I could already tell that she's one of those teachers who are super hard, and don't care whether or not you pass or fail, they just teach.

Okay, time for the run... gotta get to gym, other side of the campus. I slowly walk through the halls because of the crowds to hit the doors. I burst out of them, to find my theory is right: there are lots of people taking this back way. So I job a bit down the hill, then walk briskly along the path, then up some steps, around the building, run to the back door, run down the hall, going to get to gym... damn! the bells rings, and I'm not more than six feet from the door. One coach starts telling people "you're late, hurry up!" um... ya, guy, didn't you see me RUNNING DOWN THE HALL???!!! So, gym is usual, pass around the papers, intro, roll, then he tells us the class room part is out in a pod, an even further distance to run. Then lets us talk. I just talk to some people near me, where I'm from, blah blah blah.... bell rings, time to run.

This time, I tear out of the building, run around the building, run down the path, then job up the long slope behind the building, then walk to the back door, then carefully navigate through the halls to debate. By now, I am all sweaty -_- man, this whole operation sucks. If there was ONE thing I could change, it'd be this gym thing, because it sucks, big time. So he passes out another form thing for us to fill out, blah blah blah, okay, class over, time for the best part of the day, the reason I'm going to Enloe in the first place: Japanese. I hurry along the halls, fast as I could, to Japanese. I get there, and there's a seating arangement on a projector -_- shit, I'm in the back. So SHE passes out forms as well, only since her first language is Japanese, whenever she thinks outloud to herself, like, "where'd I put those papers?" it's in Japanese, which is pretty neat. So,, after going over some basic commands, and how to start of class (stand up, rei, sit down), it's time for lunch.

I heard you can eat on the breezeway, but I'm not sure (it's a path between the two buildings) so I just start walking. Eventually I found a spot, sat down, ate, then waited around... for a long time. Eventually I decided to go around the front, because it was nearer to my next class, C&C (a special class for both English and Social Studies). So I get there, more forms, more policies, and a book list. I gotta read chapters 1-9 by Monday. Meh. I look at the list, and as I suspected mom would like the list when I showed her. Well, this next part of it (the social studies part) should have been in a certain room, but it wasn't, because that particular room... was flooded. So, it was located in none other than... the west building. Meh. Looks like I'm gonna have to RUN!!!! *pant pant* Okay, experience (from that day) taught me one lesson: STAY OUT OF THE BUILDING OR YOU WILL NOT MAKE IT. You don't necessarily need to run, but at least get out so you can walk briskly. In any case, as I was walking outside, I saw a number of other C&C people doing the same thing, getting out of the building. So I got to the media center, blah blah blah... end of school, YAY!

I found mom, went to the car, picked up my sister, then she dropped us off at home, then picked up Erik. Okay, which brings me to there. As of now, my mood is fluxuating about this whole Enloe thing. I'm very pessimistic one minute, then very optimistic the next. I don't really want all of these advanced classes, I think these unique classes help affect my schedule. I don't have the same people in any of my classes, and no time in between classes to talk to anybody. Thus, the equasion

No friends in class + no time out of class = no friends

Uh huh... so, I think my new motto is going to be, "Uh oh, looks like I'm gonna have to run!" Inspired by Strongbad in Dangeresque 2 and 3 (haven't found one yet).

Enloe Excursion

Okay, now this actually happened on Thursday, but I haven't gotten around to writing this up until today. Now, school starts on Tuesday, which is the day after tomorrow, and I have mixed feelings about that, but I'll talk about that later. This is the open house that I went to Thursday, to walk around my school and figure out my travel route, as it's more complicated that one might think.

The open house starts at 6:00 so we decide to leave the house at 5:20. Eventually we get there and we see lots of people parked on the side of the road. We then pull up to some guy, a volunteer dude who is helping to keep the parking lot in order, he tells us all the parking spots are full here, so we can either park on the side of the road, or go down to the west campus parking lot. Well the beginning in the open house is in the west campus auditorium, so we go down and park on the side of the road next to the west campus. We go in and lots of people are already there, but more people are coming in. After fighting our way through the crowd, we reach the auditorium at last. As we entered, some student volunteer person told us to fill in the front row first, but naturally mom wants to sit in the back, and NATURALLY she didn't see the OTHER student volunteer standing right next to her, who then tells us to fill in the front. Mom, however, wants to make a quick get away, so we decide to stand in the back and wait.

Eventually the head principle of the school comes up and starts talking, as we find some nice seats in the very back to sit in, and without the stupid student volunteers getting onto us. The guy starts talking about "You should be proud to be an eagle" and "enloe is the best" ya know, standard principle stuff. Mom however wants to go with 15 minutes left of the presentation, and go to the homeroom ahead of time. So we bail out, I tell a bunch of people to get out of the way or else... okay, I just say, "excuse me" and pushed through. We walk halfway across the west campus, then go out the back doors by the caffeteria, it turns out there are lots of people bailing out of that presentation. So we trudge down the slope, there was construction going on near by, so lots of debris, and we go down to those portable buildings (pods) where my homeroom is located.

I actually have two homeroom teachers (don't have my shedule at the moment, so I forget their names) one primary one, and one assistant one. We write our names down, and we start talking. Turns out there are about 2,400 students at the school, and mom tells them I come from a school of 35. They're pretty surprised about that. Eventually, some more people start coming in, so mom and I sit down. We look around, and mom says that she had to elbow somebody out of the way to get out of the auditorium. I ask her what she means, and she tells me I told some kid to move, and apparently he had this bewildered look on his face because of my deep voice, then mom comes by and says, "excuse me!" then pushes him out of the way. She says just enough to push him but not enough to remember her. Then I remind her that he could just as well pull a knife on me!!! Oh well, after a short briefing about the school and some questions, he lets us go, much to the student council representative's dismay, as he wanted to play some Enloe Bingo or something...

Okay, now this is where we spent most of our time, walking around. My first class, honors geometry, is in east campus, we are on the far side of the west campus, so time to walk. Because of her bad sense of direction, mom had put me in charge of the map and navigation, as she always had it turned the wrong. So, after walking for about five minutes, stopping periodically, we end up out of that building, walk down the rather long path, then end up in the east campus building. Found my geometry room, now onto chemistry, on the other side of the school. We start walking at about a normal pace, weaving in and out of the crowds, and end up near the chemistry room in almost 2-3 minutes. Mom asks me what my next class is, I tell her healthful living/gym, and it's all the way in the far end of the west campus, we're far end of the east one. Mom gives a sigh, and tells me to find my next class, Magnet Debate: intro to forensics. We soon find that way, but I mention I don't know if I can make it from chemistry to the WEST CAMPUS GYM in 7 minutes. So a teacher walks up to us, we were standing right outside his door.

This teacher turns out to be the chemistry teacher, and old black man, but still seems like a pretty cool guy. He traces his finger around a back way, through a large bunch of blank space on the map, which is behind the school. He says there's a back door near the chemistry hall, which I can take, down near the parking lot, then cut across the back of the campus via a small path, then around the west campus to the gym, then I can backtrack to that hall again for debate. Mom wants to go check it out, as do I, so we both go. We exit the east wing from the side, then walk down to the parking lot. We then see if we can locate the back door. We walk around, then we see a door, we go up to it, and it's really an entrance to some back room. Not our door. Then we continue walking until all we see before us are some pods and a bunch of trees. There's another door which we take, but it's the wrong door AGAIN, but closer, we need to continue. Past the pods was a small sidewalk, which led up to the back door of the chemistry hall, that's the door I'll need to go out for 3rd period and into for 4th period.

Now, time to trace my trail, we beging to go back down the hill, followed by two girls on cell phones who left the back door. As we get to the parking lot at the bottom of the hill, we see two or three people emerging from the trees. We go up closer, to see a small dirt trail, covered with stones (as gravel). A man comes out off the trail, looks at the map, and speaks to his daughter saying, "yup, this will shave a lot of time off." It turns out I'm not the only one who needs to cut across the back way. We go down the rather steep and loose path, almost slipping from the rocks, then up some stairs, to some new pods on the west building. It's easier to see the trail from the west building than from the east building, so no wonder other people found it more easily.

As we orient ourself, this pretty big man, about 6'4" or something, walks up to us and asks if we need help. He then tells us there are two ways to get to the gym from there: I can go inside, loop around then go into the gym, or I can go around the outside of that building with the loop, then come around to the gym. We decide to go around the outside, we continue on through the back of the west building to the gym. Next we go around the inside route to see the times; the outside route is much faster. So, I'll be cutting around the back of the two campi to get from 2nd to 3rd and from 3rd to 4th. That's nice, I'll be going along the trail where people hang out in the back and sell drugs and all that pleasant stuff -_- joy.

We then go to see my Japanese classroom, and I meet my teacher, she's glad I know over half the hiragana chart already, and I know the full katakana chart. Though as I suspected, we'll be doing the hiragana first, so we can also read and write sentences we learn, which is still fine with me, I'm very excited about that. Then we leave that room, and we find out from yet another student volunteer (they're EVERYWHERE, litterally, bugging you about whether you need help or not) and she tells us you can either eat lunch in the caffeteria, all the way in the west wing (my god, my classes after lunch are in the east, another hike) OR I can eat on the breezeway, that path (not the hidden one) between the two buildings. So I'll probably bring my lunch the first couple of days. Then we forget about my last two classes, I'll have to find them on my own I guess, somewhere in the east wing, and leave.

In the car on the way back, mom suddently exclaims, "Oh my gosh, I totally forgot about rain. Well, if it rains you're just going to have to go the inside route to get to gym, who cares if you're late?" She obvioulsy didn't see the part in the little booklet "... tardyness in class can result in detention." I guess since school gets out at 2:15 they'd probably keep me until 4... that's how long I stayed after school last year... then again that may NOT be as long they keep you. Oh well, we'll see... we'll see...

Okay, now just last night, I was talking to a friend of mine by the name of Scott, whom I met at a video game design class last summer (like, last year) and we just talk online sometimes. Well last night, he sent me an IM that said, "hey, when do you have lunch?" I told him, and he said, "yeah, me too I think." Then I said, "you're going to Enloe?!" He said he was, and we should meet for lunch or something. We set up a rendezvous point (I only know how to spell it by pronouncing it phoenetically) and I said if he was lying I'd kill him. Well not really, but I wouldn't feel too great. And that wraps up my Enloe Excusion.