First day at Meadowmount

I woke up at 5 am to make my morning flight to Burlington, Vermont, the only airport Meadowmount lets its students fly in to. On the plane, I sat next to a violinist named Brooks (20), who goes to Luther college in Iowa, and we chatted about Meadowmount and our music experiences and the like. It was nice to already have a friend by the time I got off the plane :) There were seven Meadowmount students on my flight, and we were met by a taxi driver employed by the music school. By that time, I had made friends with Harriet from Northbrook (15), Courtney from Peoria (17), Jarvis from San Diego (16), and Marla from Florida (20). After half an hour of driving through gorgeous New England (trees and mountains, oh my!), we got to even-more-gorgeous Lake Champlain. A ferry took us across the huge lake to Essex, NY, where we were met by a woman with a huge minivan into which we stuffed our huge suitcases and set off on the 13 miles to Meadowmount, a.k.a the Middle of Nowhere.

Soon, we pulled off the main road and onto a thin but long strip of forest-y land where the first white cabins of Meadowmount appeared. We drove by Lalo, Ysaye, Heifetz, Casals, etc, all the names of box-like cabins were students' rooms are located. Then we got to the Main House, which I have the blessing of staying in for the next 7 weeks! The Main House includes the infirmary, the dining hall, the lounge with interent service (score!) and an upstairs hall of spacious, twin rooms with wood floors and no bugs! I was sooo happy! I had to stand in line for two hours downstairs to get through registration, which was really frusturating but allowed me to meet two other students, violinist Justin from Vermont (17) and cellist Willis from Michigan (21). Afterwards, it took me over three hours to unpack everything and figure out where to put all of my belongings, after which I spent another good hour plastering wall stickers to, yes, the wall, as well as hanging hot pink streamers on some of the particularly empty looking sides of the room. Afterwards, Courtney (from Peoria) and I went exploring the campus, walking from one end of Meadowmount to the other. We took in all of the beautiful trees, the extremely fresh and fragrant air, the clouds and the cabins (which are tiny and bug infested, so the rumors say), and the setting sun, which was casting picturesque shadows on ground strewn with pine needles. We took one of the paths up the mountain (is it a mountain? maybe we're on a hill...I don't know yet haha), which really worked my leg muscles out. It was a beautiful little trek, and I felt very healthy afterwards.

After the walk, Courtney and I went to dinner at the Main House - I had a vegan burger, which was one of very few options. At least the bread wasn't moldy! There are so many rumors about food as well as accomodations that I had heard about, but everything seems to have been blown out of proportion a little bit ;p after dinner, I met my roomate Ruth (17) from Dallas, who was really sweet and a friendly. We talked for a while and played bananagrams in our room after curfew. Both of us were not very functional that late, and it was Ruth's first time playing the game, so we only got halfway through the game before we called it quits and went to sleep. So, that's all for today, folks!

~Lisa