First Day

How weird does it sound if I say that this still doesn’t feel real? As I write this, I’m sitting on my bed in my room at Capernwray, thinking back to last night and how it felt unreal.

Saturday 26th September
My parents dropped me off at about four. Dad had never seen the place and one of the last things he said before they left was “It’s a lovely place; I’m glad you’re here.”

I’ve got one of the new rooms around the courtyard, opposite the Beehive. Nice and near the coffee shop, outside of the main house so there’ll be a sense of getting away from it all if I need it (thank you, God!!) and because it’s new, we have our own en-suite bathroom!! Well, it’s more of a shower room because there’s no bath, but anyway – I really need to stop being so finickity!! There’re six of us in this room: two Dutch girls, one Swiss, one Australian and one Canadian if she arrives. No sign at time of writing.

There was a handbook for each of us when we arrived – I finally have more of a clue about the syllabus!! Said handbook also came with two Quality Street (did I mention how much I liked this place?) and a little card written and signed by two of the staff families. I think the ones who signed my card are going to be leading the small groups I’m in.

Rob Whittaker, the principle, gave a bit of a welcome last night in the lounge. Now, the lounge is a pretty big room, very impressive to look at. But when you’re trying to fit 180 students plus a load of the staff into it, it suddenly becomes very cosy. I heard on the holiday that they were expecting 180 for winter school. It turns out we have 18 nationalities (and yes, I am in an ethnic minority – not that I’m complaining!) represented by 123 women and 57 happy men. Rob’s words. The reason we know that’s true is that when he announced there were 123 women, one of the happy men started applauding – to the amusement of all and even agreement of others!

Sitting there, trying to stay conscious (hey, big day and I was tired to begin with!), I wondered why it felt unreal. I think it’s because with it being the first day the schedule was fairly lax, which is a good thing when you’ve got 180 people arriving and settling in at random times during the day. It’s the same on the holidays but I keep forgetting that. When things get going on Monday and maybe even tomorrow, it’ll probably start to feel all too real!

When we meet tomorrow evening, we each have to stand up and say who we are, which country we’re from, what we did before and what we want to do after Capernwray. For those of you who don’t already know: I’m Hannah, I’m from England and before Capernwray I was an Egyptologist working in a bank and when I leave I hope to be a writer – although while I’m here I’m also hoping to get ideas of a more practical fallback option.