UBC First Year Move-In Day

August 26, 2019

UBC First Year Move-In Day

As I sit in my new bed writing this, it's 6:30 am Pacific time and I can't say I don't wish I was asleep. Especially because, despite it not being an unreasonable hour in Portsmouth, I didn't seem to fall asleep on the east coast's time the way I woke up. But now I'm up, so I figured I'd use this time to share some of my move-in experience before the day's activities begin.

I'll start where I left off, which was a short five days before I left for Vancouver. I wrapped up back in Portsmouth with a few days of work and a lot of goodbyes. I won't lie: trying to see everyone before leaving was a little stressful, especially as I also had people to see who were headed off before me. I'm glad, though, that I got to spend my last few days with my closest friends and family doing the things that I love and associate most with that part of my life.

Once Friday rolled around it became a whirlwind of suitcases and clothes as I tried to pack up my life, though not for the first time. Somehow this round of packing was much more stressful than when I packed for Norway, but maybe that's not true at all and I've just blocked that stress from memory. This time I was traveling not only with clothes and a few things for the room, but also a guitar and my skis. Altogether we had a lot of baggage, and I'm not really sure how I managed to use so little when going to Norway.

Friday afternoon we left our house and headed for Boston, where we got on a direct flight to Vancouver. It seems as though direct flights are almost impossible to come by, but I'm glad we had one for the flight with the most luggage! The trip itself went quite smoothly, and about six hours later we landed in Vancouver. It was dark, so I couldn't see much of my new home in summer, but the views I had seen in March when we came out to visit were enough to make me excited for the sun to rise in the morning.

When the sun did rise, I woke up in an Airbnb in my current favorite neighborhood of Vancouver: Dunbar. It's homey but practical in terms of stores and services, and in the spring, it had the best cherry blossoms. My mom and I went out early to find breakfast before we headed to a bank on campus to set up Canadian accounts. By the time that was done, move-in had officially started, so we moved the completely full car closer to my dorm to begin checking in.

I received my room key and some basic information, then attended a short orientation going over how the rest of move-in would go. We went *all the way* up to the fourth floor (my building has 20 floors and the rooms only start on the third so you get some looks when the elevator stops within one second of having started and you get off), and tried to get into my room. Except my key didn't work. So I had to go back down to the main desk and get it fixed. At this point my order from IKEA was ready to be picked up, so we made a trip out to Richmond to pick my dorm stuff up. We also stopped at a Walmart Supercentre to pick up some of the less glamorous room essentials and bathroom products.

When we got back to campus again, I was finally able to bring my stuff up to the room and see inside. It was weird to look at a very much blank room and imagine myself living there, but I am extremely lucky when it comes to my living situation. I have a beautiful room in a building that is only a few years old, and I was provided with quite a bit of furniture but also wall space to make my room my own. We began moving furniture around to get it to my liking, and started to assemble various IKEA pieces that only led to minor insanity. Once a bit of work had been done, we made another trip out, this time to get lunch at a Taiwanese noodle place that I will definitely be going back to, and then closer to downtown to do some last-minute dorm shopping. Around 5 pm we finally returned to do a little more setting up before getting dinner with my bathroommate (a word you'll be seeing a lot) Amy's family in our dining hall. First impression: food was okay plus, but more on that to come.

After dinner we made a quick trip up to the 20th floor lounge where we gawked over the view of the mountains and water and sunset and made plans to do all of our studying there. Then Amy and I came back to our rooms before heading to the first real programming of Jump Start, which was a branch meeting and ice cream social. Basically, a branch is the three floors that share common spaces like a study room, branch lounge, and little kitchenette. It was nice to get to talk to more people that I'll be living with, and to see where in the world everyone is from (hint: a lot of continents were represented). When we finished our ice cream, we went back to our rooms with two new friends and walked through our new living spaces getting inspiration for the various ways we could decorate. Amy and I then spent a while doing some more unpacking and just generally getting to know each other better before going to bed for the first time in our new rooms.

I won't sugar coat it—I've slept in more comfortable beds, but so far I'm happy with how my room is turning out and I'm excited to spend the year living here. Now, in true college fashion, I can hear someone's alarm going off (it has been for the past eight minutes), and I'm going to wrap this up before it gets too long. I'll have some pictures of my room from before and how it is now, but expect more finalized dorm pictures as I get settled in! I'll also hopefully have a little more ~emotional analysis~ in the next post, once I figure out exactly how it is I feel about this whole thing!