It. Is. So. Confusing.
Stanford leases, from Magdalen College (pronounce maudlin, by the way), a House that consists of 6 Victorian houses put into one. Okay, you say, 6 row houses combined, doesn't seem that bad. Well, it is. Apparently, families in the Victorian times weren't fans of identical architecture, going so far as to have the floors of houses at different levels. So, even though they were six houses right next to each other, they had staggered floors. The ground floor in house 1 would be at ground level, as would houses 3 and 5, but in houses 2, 4, and 6, the ground floor was about half a floor higher (this part I'm making up from what I understand and the way the landings and floors work). So, to get to my room on the 4th floor (3rd floor British), I have to walk up 8 flights of stairs: ground to landing to 1st to landing to second to landing to third to landing to fourth. If I'm on the ground floor by the main office, and I want to go to the ground floor on another side of the House, I probably have to go up at least one flight of stairs and then back down.
Each floor is lettered, so our room numbers are a letter and a number, because just numbers wouldn't really mean anything. I'm in T7, which is one flight of stairs away from a kitchen upstairs, two flights to downstairs (on the 2nd floor). To get to a toilet I can go down two flights and then up another flight, and to take a shower I have to go down the stairs, across the landing, and up two floors. It's all very confusing and makes it VERY hard to give directions. I can tell people my room number, so then they know what level it's on, but trying to describe stairs and such gets confusing really really fast. The advice I was given was to memorize the artwork - there's some on each floor and landing, so you can memorize routes by poster. At some point I need to find my way back to the laundry room - I know it's by the study room, which is somewhere downstairs...I might just walk through the Garden to get there.
Because the House is 6 houses put together, there are 6 kitchens. One is fairly large and has a little dining area as well, and the others are scattered around the House. Like I said, I have two that are pretty close, and I picked one for my food and later found out it doesn't have a freezer, so my frozen chicken breasts are in the other kitchen. The Center provides utensils, plates, cups, pots and pans, etc, but we're in charge of our own food (though there is a meal allowance), and things like foil/saran wrap, tupperware, etc. I'm excited to cook for myself - there's a pot luck tonight, and it'll be my first time cooking in the House.
So, that is the House. I live very close to the two girls I knew fairly well before, one from Arabic/PWR2/Islam/Religious Studies (two of us from the major!) and one from my Fellowship for Religious Encounter. I live across the hall from a guy who lived on the floor below my freshman year and took Arabic with me part of last year. My freshman year suitmate lives somewhere in the House, and the girl I'm probably travelling to Italy with for a week is somewhere fairly close as well. I'm sure I'll learn where people live better as time goes on, but for now, the House continues to be a big maze.
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