At first, my giant free apartment was great. Then I came home one day to a flooded bathroom of questionable sanity. I had the pipes fixed, but I took on the clean up myself, after purchasing a few vats of Purell (I’m a bit of a germaphobe, for those who don’t know).

Then, the bug situation. Sure, up until this point, there had been a few…a fly here, a spider there, but that’s what happens in a place like this when the weather changes. And then it happened. I was making breakfast one morning and saw a very, very tiny bug with many legs crawl across my sink. I grabbed a shoe to kill it, but it returned…or was it a different one? As I pondered this, I looked down to see the same bug but A MILLION TIMES THE SIZE crawling towards my feet. A huge centipede, a few inches long, was scurrying toward my living room as I shrieked and jumped onto my furniture.

I had the OSU exterminators spray that day, but then had to scrub down all my dishes that had been exposed to the spray. Ugh. I figured at least I could always escape to campus to visit friends. Which I tried, in the rain, without sidewalks, for 45 minutes. Why would I choose to live so far away?? I found myself crossing my fingers for an offering of a building transfer.

Ok, so I was needlessly annoyed with my free apartment for which I should be incredibly grateful. By the way, I love the privacy, but it’s hard to meet friends/residents when no one answers their doors to my knocking! This is a lot easier to overcome in the traditional residence halls…I mean you’re sharing a bathroom for goodness sakes.

The one thing that made it all better; I attended a “Speed Friending” program that was put on for the graduate students at Buckeye Village. (It’s basically speed dating but without the romantic implications). I ended up sitting with a circle of a few people. As we talked, I got the details of their lives. It turns out the circle consisted of one man from Columbia, one man from China, one man from Brazil, and another woman from Iran. And they were all basically new to America.

Here’s where I have my cheesy end-of-blog-entry happy life realization: I saw in front of me an incredible opportunity that I would not have had back in my tradition halls. These were truly unique college students with inspiration backgrounds and stories. This was a chance to learn something new…the exact reason I came to work at Buckeye Village in the first place. Hopefully I will get to spend more time getting to know my new international friends…but not so much the centipedes.