Living at the 429

Alright guys, so this year four of my friends and I are renting a house in Ada. It is our first time living off campus and we also have a new addition to our living situation. Last year four of us were living together in a apartment on campus and we have added our friend Ben as our fifth roommate. If you are asking yourself how this relates to life at ONU I'll explain. College is all about growing up and becoming responsible and experiencing things you never have before. SO....living in a huge house without your parents helping you out is exciting and scary all at the same time! It's only been a week of living there and so much has happened! The most recent was a bat. Our Saturday night unfortunately was spent mostly trying to get the bat out of the upstairs of the house! It sounds easy but it is a ridiculous process. It took seven of us and there were plastic bags, broomsticks, foil balls and extremely large comforters involved. Needless to say we finally got him out and are hoping for no more surprises!! Our house is very large and very pretty but we have maybe the creepiest basement I've ever seen in my entire life. It goes for miles! So we have a had a few frightening nights dealing with that as well. Stories too embarrassing to go into on my first blog.

The other challenging thing different this year compared to last is being responsible for bills and rent. When you live on campus everything is included in your tuition so although you are paying a ton to be living in that nice apartment with the air turned down all the way to 65 you never see it actually come out of your wallet.  This year we have divided the bills up evenly so that every person has a bill in their name in order to keep things organized and help all of us earn credit.  This concept takes a lot of money management skills that I don't always have. So this is for sure something new to get used to.

Any other issues I can foresee is just keeping the house clean and everyone doing their part.  I think we have had a pretty good handle on the cleaning so far but then again it has only been a week. So we will see what will happen when it's week 9 and everyone is crazy busy!

Besides all the responsibility I'm having a blast so far and really what doesn't kill us makes us stronger! I think it's going to be an interesting and exciting year! I can't wait!