Hurricane Wilma hits Miami

Hurricane Wilma ushered in the week.

Most of the freshmen were snatched home by frantic parents at the beginning of the weekend so most male floors were half empty and girl floors only had a handful of girls left when the hurricane hit Monday morning.

It was a dry hurricane and a non event for my residential college. We lost power for most of Monday but had backup generators in powering the lobby, hallway lights, and elevators. By Tuesday afternoon it was determined that no one would be electrocuted if they went outside and everyone crawled out of their dorm towers to look at the “damage”…which consisted of a bunch of downed trees.

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By Tuesday evening class was canceled for the rest of the week so flights were booked and road trips were planned. By Wednesday night I only had five or six (out of 41) residents left.

The RA’s huddled together Tuesday night and planned programs for the rest of the week – the hurricane had hit the rest of the South Florida area pretty hard so there was nowhere for residents to go off campus at night (no one had power) and an 8pm curfew to prevent them from going there.

Wednesday night we had a cupcake decorating party and showed “The Wrong Turn” (a bad horror movie from one of my guys). Thursday we had a coffee house where people sang along to acoustic rock/pop songs, sat through musical theater students belt out show tunes (after show tune …after show tune)…

… the night picked up once a black girl got up and performed a Bob Marley song, then there were several impressive poetry readings, Evelina Galang read a short short, more show tunes and acoustic performances (including an explicit version of Ben Fold’s “Brick” with a ringing “FUCK ME!” in the middle of the song when the performer forgot the lyrics) and then of course free style rapping.

The highlight of the evening was when this boy got up and put a rap song in the CD player and didn’t rap along but instead just screamed out the most vulgar parts of the song. Nothing was better than watching the head of the musical theater department’s face (this was in his apartment since he’s our resident master) while some guy is standing in his living room screaming “AND I MAKE HER SUCK MY COCK!” “FUCK!” “MY NIGGA WHAT! WE GONNA SHOOT IT UP!” “WHAT DO WE DO? WE BAG THAT SHIT! WHAT? BAG THAT SHIT!”

Oh my.

Friday night was game night – Aparna and I were sitting on the floor cackling most of the time. We were teammates for scrabble and absolutely brilliant. We kept scoring obscene amounts of points for strategically placed words.

“Jinx” was like 80 points. Score.

Saturday was the blow out program for Hurricane week: the Halloween Costume party. It was upstairs in the dance hall and DJ Rico hosted. It was really hard to get people the first few hours because small groups of people would come, see that there wasn’t anyone in the massive dance hall, and leave.

…and it’s hard to accumulate people when no one stays.

By 10pm there were about 40 or 50 people there and we held a costume contest. I was allowed to be one of the judges.

Beyonce and David Beckham won. E-yeah.

By the end of the night the music got a bit too hard and the crowd a bit too dark for most of the white students and it had become Club Hecht: CRUNK!

WHAT? OKAY.

There were a lot of people who were stuck here alone because all of their friends went home or on road trips. There was a county wide curfew all week so these people would have just sat around alone in their rooms every night so I decided I’d just show movies.

I hosted movie nights every night after the programs in the study lounge. After the cupcake/scary movie night on Wednesday we watched Harold and Kumar go to Whitecastle. After the coffee house we saw Sin City. Friday it was Donnie Darko and Minority report. And last night we watched Mean Girls, then the new Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and then Blade Trinity. (yes that went on forever, but it was fun.)

I didn’t get much work done during this week – I’d get up in afternoon after a long movie night, go to Subway and read for a few hours and then come back to help set up the night’s program and then hold a movie night.

Repeat.

JHR stayed with me for most of the hurricane and for a few days until he got power back. It’s was sort of nice when we were both studying (and distracting each other) outside during the afternoons earlier this week.

By Friday he got power back at his house and left.

Anyway, I’m behind..time for Subway and… time to catch up on work!