The first thing I noticed about my room was that there was no key hole, just a knob-gizmo that serves as a deadlock for the door and needs to be activated by out transponders to lock or unlock from both inside and out. I do have a rather cool looking room key, but have yet to see a keyhole in North College to use it in (other dorms actually use their keys to get into their rooms,and no it's not a mailbox key or anything else). Ah yes, I should mention that North College is brand new and has only had inhabitants for 2 days, which I believe refers to the couple of Lafayette students living here (time is a little fuzzy for the first two days).
The second thing that caught my attention was the lack of any lights (besides a tiny bedside reading lamp) in the room. Luckily, after fiddling with the switches, lights that were hiddwn behind built in wall shelves came on, and surprisingly lit up the entire room quite nicely.
I began to unpack and noticed that there was an enormous amount of shelving and storage space in the room, including desk drawers, under the bed drawers, a compartment that opens at the head of the bed, shelves above my desk, shelves, a dresser for hanging things (but no coat hangers), shelves, drawers for clothes, shelves, and open a door andd....shelves behind a door, lastly, if you are seven feet tall, there are more sets of shelves just for you!! Even though I tried my darndest, I found it nearly impossible to find a use for all the storage.
At this point, going almost 30 hours with no sleep, it was time to tackle making the bed. The solution sounds relatively simple, a cover for the mattress, an oversized pillow in an oversized pillow case, and a comforter that slips inside a colored sheet that serves as a sheet and a blanket all in one. However, running on lack of sleep, a long day of traveling, and slightly delusional, making the bed was quite a daunting task, and many people didn't figure it out quite right, either collapsing on top of everything, or my personal favorite, climbing inside of the comforter-cover/sheet and falling asleep with their head sticking out.
Throughout the day and the follwing one, doors became more and more frustrating. No pushbar on one side and handle on the other like in the states, instead the doors have handles on both sides, and look practically identical from either side. Any attempt at appearing inconspicuous and not as one of the "new american students" is lost when you engage in a futile tug of war battle while beeping your transponder outside a building trying to unlock it until another student comes to the rescue...pushing the door that was already unlocked in the first place. Good news though! A couple buildings actually have "push" and "pull" stickers on them, alas mine is not one, and I continue to struggle down the hallways.
