Roanoke and a Saturday Off

I don't really talk too much about the actual city that serves as home to Hollins because I really don't get out much. But today, two of my classmates and I ventured out downtown and saw the sights.

Roanoke really is a cute place. It has a pretty active downtown scene with several museums, a thriving market and the usual array of specialty shops. We are actually going to see the play Into the Woods down there later this week. I'm especially excited because I found out, after researching the play, that my old classmate Natalie Newman will be playing the part of Cinderella. She graduated with me at NBHS and I probably haven't seen her since the summer of 2000. She has had a pretty steady career on stage since graduating from Elon University's musical theatre program so I am excited to see her perform again.

Today we just walked around, wandered into a few shops and toured "the hotel" also known as the Hotel Roanoke and Convention Center. For a relatively small town, Roanoke has this bizarrely huge Swiss-esque hotel by its main railroad tracks. It is owned by Virginia Tech now but it really is an amazing structure.
Very fairy tale like. They were doing a bridal photo shoot while we walked around, which was a little bizarre because they had two brides but only one groom.

We then got lost. I was driving, so it really doesn't take a lot of imagination to figure out how that happened. We eventually found our way home again but I was very lucky to have two of the sweetest human beings on the planet in my car because they totally didn't care that we went through two extra towns to get back to our part of Roanoke.

After dinner and a lecture on campus, we went for a walk and we actually went up this dirt road to a graveyard that is home to some of Hollins' most famous families (i.e. the ones the buildings are named after). It was incredibly creepy and maybe a little stupid for the three of us to be walking around in the dark in a remote graveyard that is on a knoll that is a pretty good clip away from the campus proper. I was comforted by the fact that there were three of us, but we didn't hang out long.

When we got back to the dorm, we made No Bake little cupcake things for our Potluck dinner tomorrow at Amanda's house. We misread the directions for both of the desserts and I still have some peanut butter on my pants from our hapless attempts at cooking in our non-kitchen, but we laughed up a storm.

I have been very lucky this summer to meet two people whom I mesh with very well. They both live in Greenvilles (one in SC and the other in NC), and we have a great time together. We all live upstairs in Carvin (convenient) and I find myself very thankful that things worked out the way they did. I had tried, in vain, to get a room in Sandusky (the other dorm), but I had missed it by a day. Now I can't imagine being anywhere but Carvin with such cool people. I typically don't have a lot of female friends. I can't really say why that is--I just don't know a lot of women who share my interests or personality traits. Being at Hollins certainly gives me better odds because our program is dominated by women but most of my friendships here have never gotten past a superficial level. When I think about all the time I spent on my own last year, this past week has really blown me away because I have been able to be a lot more social. I think it makes the whole experience more rewarding and I find myself a little sad I will not get to see these two women (perhaps :-)) on my London trip next year. I'm working on one of them, so we'll see.