first day of school

it's not as exciting as when i was younger. i didn't get new shoes or tons of new supplies. i just went to walmart yesterday to get a bunch of notebooks. this morning i hastily grabbed some pens and pencils. there were no classmates to see and catch up with, no surprises about which teachers i would have (i got to pick them beforehand)

as i was going up, i met two girls i know who just came back from Israel, leaving. they both looked kinda shell shocked. they informed me that it wasn't the teacher that freaked them out, it was the students. to their credit, it is a bit of culture shock (to say the least) to go from bais yaakov schools to community college, but i almost laughed at them. and then i realized that i probably looked worse when it was my first semester, because i didn't have a friend with me. that sobered me up.

and as i walked down the path, trying to dodge the clouds of smoke and word bombs that were flying around me, i realized that i had become used to only being around frum people again. it wasn't as nasty as last year, but it still took some readjusting.

of course there was the usual mix-up. a female teacher came in and wrote psy 103 on the board, when the class was statistics and supposed to be taught by a male. but my college always double s the classrooms. so things got straightened out and i survived the first class of the semester.

i thought i was in school for a long time-until i met two chassidish women who have been here for four years-this is their fifth. they're somewhat of a novelty in this school-aside from their mode of dress which obviously makes them stand out quite a bit, they're a mother-daughter team, both married with little children. the mother started here by getting her GED, because she could barely write English. i guess if they survived, I'll survive too....