Arriving at Vista Way

I woke up on Tuesday, February 8 pretty scared. I hadn't heard from Jeremy yet, and we had planned all along to meet up that morning at his hotel. We both felt it was the perfect situation. We already knew quite a bit about each other from the message board and chat room, and both of us were also leaving long-term girlfriends at home. We thought we would make good roommates, and we figured it would be nicer arriving at check-in with someone we already knew.

As it got later that morning, I thought about using this as an excuse to bail out of this whole thing. After all, my actual arrival time wasn't supposed to be until afternoon. Jeremy's check-in time was in the morning, so I thought I'd take my chances going with him. But if I didn't hear from him, I really had no reason to go early. Finally the phone rang.

It turns out he had been out late the night before with his dad, so he couldn't call. I agreed to meet him at his hotel about an hour before check-in. We figured it couldn't hurt to be there early. Little did I know that there is actually two Embassy Suites on International Drive. But after finally figuring this out we finally met for the first time in person. We were on our way to Vista Way.

We got there early, only to find that many others also had the same idea. We went from station to station filling out paperwork. This is actually a fun time because I got to meet alot of other people. And since we were the last check-in date, it was nice knowing others in the same situation.

Finally came the time to be placed in an apartment. Jeremy and I told them we would like to room together. We had both chosen a 4-person non-smoking apartment. I figured it would be much easier getting along with 3 other roommates rather than 5. Plus the extra $12 a week didn't seem like much of a difference to me.

We were rather disappointed to find out that all of the 4-person apartments had been filled. So instead they placed both of us in a 6-person. We grabbed our linens and keys and it was time to find our new home.

We found Apartment 3706 of Building 37 all the way in the back of the complex, right next to the lake and tennis courts. Jeremy and I were lucky enough to be the first ones from our apartment there. We took a look around, but couldn't find the 3rd bedroom. We finally found it behind the front door, and noticed this was the bedroom that had its own bathroom. We each threw our stuff on the beds in there, and it was time to start moving in.

Soon after that our new roommates walked in one by one. There was Matt from Seattle, Josh from Ohio, Aaron from Chicago, and Ben from Indiana. Matt and Ben ended up in the back bedroom, and Josh and Aaron in the third bedroom. We all sat down in our rather empty living room before unpacking and started getting to know one another.

To be honest, I didn't know what to think about these guys. But I guess it's hard anytime you get thrown into an apartment with 5 other people you've never seen before. We soon found out that this was Matt's second College Program, his first being in the spring of 1999. This turned out to be very useful in the beginning, because he could answer just about any question we had, and he knew how things worked there.

That day we also met Matt's girlfriend Stephanie who he had met the spring before. She quickly proclaimed herself the "7th roommate" and warned us that we would be seeing alot of her. And we knew this was true considering she lived just down the hall on our floor. We also met some of her roommates. The first couple of days are so much fun, because we could pretty much just walk into any apartment in our building and introduce ourselves to other new residents.

That night Jeremy and I met up with the rest of the message board crew and went to dinner as planned at the Rainforest Cafe at Downtown Disney. It was rather weird meeting these people in person that I had talked to so much on the computer the past few months.

So the adventure had now begun. I immediately felt comfortable and all of the fears I had before I left disappeared. Being able to only talk to my girlfriend on the phone was tough though. But I got to know my roommates quickly, and I knew this was going to be a great experience.