Books and Bougatsa

Ignore the probably-unknown last word in the title for now.

As we're gradually settling down in our new home, I finally got the chance to sit and write, to express my excitement about all that's currently going on!

Firstly, I suddenly realised, a couple of days ago, that, after learning what my first semester's courses would be, I had to start looking for the books. The whole thing is very organized: you can go to a particular section of the Davidson bookstore's webpage and enter your course (e.g. CHE 201-D), and that gives you a list of all the necessary materials for the specific course! However, since I ended up getting only two of the classes I wanted for sure (Chemistry and Physics), the idea of "stocking up" on books so early hadn't crossed my mind. But after comparing the prices of Davidson's bookstore to Amazon - and finding out that the latter had more interesting offers, I started to think that maybe ordering them from Amazon is a better idea. Moreover, I can ask the Amazon guys to ship my books directly to the Davidson warehouse and pick them up once I arrive in August. Pretty convenient, isn't it?...

I'm still skeptical, though. Despite being lower than the college bookstore's ones, the Amazon prices are still high; most of the books I've seen can cost from $70 up to - yup - around $200. At the same time, going back to the bookstore webpage, I saw that there is an opportunity to rent - I suppose at a much lower cost - some of your books for the semester. So, I'm still waiting to make my move; I'll probably end up with a combination of renting from the bookstore, buying from Amazon or maybe even borrowing from upperclassmen!

The second exciting - slightly stressful - thing that happened in the past week was, too, a sudden realization. I was pretty sure classes would begin on August 27th, but it turns out that there's an (online) assignment we have to do now (particularly due on Friday August 3)! It is called "Library 101" and it's the first section of the standard, compulsory Davidson 101 course every freshman here is taking. I find the library course very useful, as it's on how to search, use and cite sources correctly for any assignment; something we'll CERTAINLY come across eventually. Anyway, I've completed all but the last part of the excercise (which I'm almost intentionally postponing as it's the only one that actually involves some writing...), and I admittedly did learn something new from it. Now I only have to move my lazy butt and finish that last part!

Thirdly and finally (and I've left the best part for the end), today was a big day, and for none of the above reasons.  The most exciting thing was meeting my soon-to-be roommate, T,  this morning; and this, in no other place than here, in Crete! T lives in Pennsylvania, but there was this weird coincidence that she was vacationing in Turkey and Greece - and Crete - with her parents this summer. So we sort of arranged a meet-up which fortunately did work out despite the shortage of time available. We only had about an hour before T and her parents would go back to their ship (they were cruising), so my mum and I (my dad unfortunately had some work to do) took them to our favourite local café which happens to be near the port. We discussed a little bit of everything; ourselves, Davidson, practical dorm-stuff (YAY MicroFridge), our sleeping habbits etc.

The place is not our favourite for no reason; it serves one of the best bougatsa's in the island. If Gatorade is - ehem, supposedly - the drink of the gods, then bougatsa is surely their food! It's a hot, crusty "pie", filled with either sweet cheese or cream/custard, sprinkled with sugar and cinnamon; simply irresistible.

I was amazed by some things T and her parents told me about Davidson, such as that, on campus, you literally walk past students' bags, laptops, keys and purses that are just left there, as nobody steals them; I'd heard about the Honor Code, but I wasn't expecting it could really achieve that level of trust! Still, apart from that, I was in many other ways relieved and excited by our conversation. It turns out that there is a reason the Myers-Briggs test joined us two together, as we have much more in common than I had initially inferred from our Facebook interactions... My only regret; at the end of the day, she's a humanities person while I'm a science nerd... Hm. The war is on.

Just kidding... All in all, I can't say I wasn't excited by all that! I'm happy T and I got the chance to meet now, and I'm now even more eagerly looking forward to head out to Davidson... in exactly one month from now; August 18!