Little Memories

This is completely random but I've decided to share it anyway in line with the other roommate stories Kirsten has posted. It takes place in our tiny little dorm room freshman year at Collins. Our room was smaller than most, but we felt fortunate because it was on the corner and thus and two windows. And unlike any other room in Collins, it had a trippy mural that spanned all four walls- left by the previous inhabitants. But the main point is, even with the beds bunked, it was small. Add to that two desks, a dresser, the mini-fridge, an overflowing makeshift milk-crate shelf and there just wasn't a lot of space.
Ada also had a Brita pitcher. (Because lets face it, nobody wanted to drink the dorm tap water and nobody really wanted to pay $1.40 for a bottle of water –even if it was only 1.4 meal points). This particular evening the lovely Brita pitcher was resting peacefully on top of the dresser. John was over and we all listening to some music a Honduran friend of mine had burnt. Salsa, bachata, merengue, somewhere along the line Ada and John began to feel inspired and decided to dance in the 1.5 square feet of free space left in the room. I decided to hide and observe from the only safe place in the room- the cave of my bottom bunk bed. Arms flying, bodies spinning, it was only a matter of time before the beloved Brita pitcher went crashing to the ground.
Ada was immediately on the ground in front of the shattered pieces. I'd only ever seen the girl so devastated one or maybe two other times in my life. Water was flowing everywhere and the rest of us were forced to clean it up while she mourned the broken pitcher.
Today I am also thinking about our school trip to China. There was Mr. Ren -reassuring our parents we would be safe ("In China there are no guns, people use knife, so it take like five minutes to kill you") And there we were, two silly girls traveling internationally with no parents, thrilled to be going and anxious to put our 25 word (mind you between the two us we MIGHT have known 25 words in Chinese) vocabulary to use.
For me it was the first time I could remember getting on a plane. And both of us were nervous about flying. Every plane we boarded (and there were lots of them to get to Beijing—Indianapolis to Denver to San Francisco to Tokyo and finally to China) I went straight to the airplane bathroom to pee (no matter how many times I had gone before boarding) and Ada went straight to her seat to find the little vomit bag (because she puked ever time without fail during take-off on that trip).
Everyday we negotiated relentlessly with the group about what time we would leave the hotel (8 o'clock please Mr.Ren, 7 o'clock is way too early) and also about where we would eat lunch…McDonald's? -PLEASE we CAN'T TAKE any more Chinese food. Or else we begged Mr.Ren to eat the fish eyeballs so our food couldn't look at us. We generally ignored the tour guides (always following 20 feet behind so we could discuss everything NOT related to the history of the Forbidden City or the Great Wall or whatever famous ancient piece of Chinese history we were supposed to be learning about) But mostly we just had a fabulous time.
All nonsense really, but those are some of my favorite Ada memories.
With love,
Katherine