A couple of weeks ago, when I was doing the calls to early action acceptances for the admissions department, the most frequently asked question was, “So, what do Caltech students do for a life?”
Answer: Meet the antics of Avery House. We are an eclectic mix of personalities and are proud to exhibit out personalities whenever we can (all in good humor, of course).
First, meet the honorary resident of room 138 (aka Bob’s Lair).
Bob in his awesome throne (a folding chair won at an athletics event). He rocks a time turner.
Bob has left his mark. We also have some Avery spirit.
We first explore Alley 3.4 (my home since September 18, 2011) and get a taste for the different types of people.
Our neighbors to the left: Grace and Vivian
Our neighbors to the right: Pinting and our UCC Julia.
The two other frosh in our alley (represented by their colorful door and innovation): Cedric and Copernicus (Nick).
Cedric and Nick’s neighbor Eric, represented by his culinary flair (yes, he made all of that, and it is vegan).
Julia, Winnie, Jeppe, and Ishan, who is the other alley UCC.
The people in Alley 3.4 whom I see the most. George and Jeppe (the two in the front) are foreign exchange students from England and Denmark. In the back is David, a graduate student from Australia.
The above two pictures were taken on our trip to the mall in Santa Anita, about a 20 minute ride by bus and a 1 mile walk from there. Our alley used the tickets we won from the pumpkin carving contest and watched The Adventures of Tin Tin (which was awesome).
We all are kids at heart. George decided to express himself while “no one” was looking.
The outing was extremely welcomed because I had a pretty exhausting week. Grace, Cedric, many other frosh Averites (and non-Averites) and I were up late Thursday night working on problem sets and lab reports, and, when in deep slumber after a night of intellectual toil...
“WAKE UP FROSH! IT’S DITCH DAY!!!!” <insert banging of pots and pans>
Well, not really. It was a “fake ditch day,” and the seniors set up a “stack” <read: puzzle/game involving collaboration and creative inspiration> in each alley to do in an hour before classes generally start.
Seniors administer the stacks. Wesley (facing forward) and Vivian (facing back) had many underclassmen to deal with.
Some stacks were quite sweet <read: picking out Craisins from whipped cream without your hands>.
Others went a little wild <read: lack of inspiration to associate rubber duckies to something>.
Ours was quite striking <read:finding mini bowling balls and pins in the bushes/trees/flowers of Avery, the fire house, Steele House, and Annenberg>.
We needed extra precaution for this mission, as Cedric demonstrate the safety protocol for the stack.
Our alley was pretty groggy searching through bushes galore for bowling pins, as none of us really completed the prescribed number of REM cycles. The moral of Fake Ditch Day, “Go to bed, frosh! Tomorrow’s Ditch Day!”
The overall moral of our antics: Caltech students have a pretty sweet life (even without the whipped cream).
Quote of the day: 新年快樂! <Happy New Year!> CDS had another themed dinner for Chinese New Year. The next few blogs will exhibit the wonderful fortunes they bequeathed upon the Caltech community. Mine was, "In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is."
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