change your place, change your mazel

We have completed our move into building four as of Wednesday, the day before classes started. Very exciting! Also, when I left, the bathrooms in our old building looked like this:



















Yikes (they're fixed now, don't worry!)! One of my former roommates and I cleaned the floor so that the girls just coming to Neve didn't have to deal with the war-zone looking floor. What happened? There was a burst pipe, which has now been replaced with a new, plastic, pipe.

Here are some pictures of my new room and the new setup. I was the only one of my three roommates to move in (the other two are madrichot - counselors - at a camp which hasn't finished yet), so I got to choose the arrangement of the furniture. Exciting!! See how I arraged my wardrobe to stand next to my bed, providing heightened privacy - a rare commodity in dorm life!




















Next, note the pink board above my bed? I like this much better than the red (the red clashed with my decor, and also, it's not my favorite color). It's the small things, right? Also, note that there are two shelves, not one. I love building four!! Now I can use one shelf for my books, and another for tchochkes, whatever, little pretty touches, which is critical as the nesting instinct kicks in.
















Here's the view from the doorway. There's a little table, with the gold cloth cover. On it I placed a little dish for our keys, a pretty bag with some flowers, a mirror. It's our foyer!! I must say, the room is getting pretty heimish, Baruch Hashem!!




















So there's my living situation. What of the learning situation? I'm so excited! The first day of classes was yesterday, and already we have homework, quizes, tests and a dvar Torah to prepare! Talk about being right up my alley! Plus, we get two hours of chavrusa (a learning partner), and two hours of tutoring! For my tutors I am working with Esti from Baltimore, who I worked with during the summer (she's amazing!) and for the second hour, I get to work with Bayla from Cleveland- who used to teach in St Louis - great!! I'm very excited about that. We translated some commentary on Mishlei (Proverbs) for R'Refsen's class. Also we're learning Yonah (Jonah) with Rebbetzin Bulman. We translated the Ibn Ezra for posuk aleph (the first verse). Then, there's a dvar Torah I'm to prepare for Sunday, using two of the main commentaries, besides for Rashi! This is great!

Needless to say, I'm going to be a little busy, but I'll try to update the blog on a semi-regular basis.

Good Shabbos!