Housemates

This blog is about my life in England. Since I spend roughly 97.36% of my time with my three housemates, I thought a blog post about them would be nice:


The housemate that lives closest to me is Robyn. When I say she lives close to me, I mean that my room has a removable wall, and her room is on the other side of it. We often open up the divider and chat as we "do homework." Here is Robyn:


Robyn is originally from California, but she's lived in Peculiar, MO, since before high school. (I was going to continue this paragraph with something along the lines of "She likes history and Reese's Pieces, loves to laugh, and knows more about composers than most music majors," but I decided that sounded like a bad personal ad. Then I got this song stuck in my head: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVdhZwK7cS8. (Disclaimer: in posting this song, I am not supporting infidelity. I am supporting Shrek.))

Robyn takes a very long time to get ready in the morning. No one really knows why. She "gets ready" for two hours, actually puts on her shoes, clothes, and make-up in the ten minutes before we leave, and still looks like a movie star. It's one of those mysteries of life. (Side story: when I was younger, my brother Reid would always take forever to get ready to go, and we didn't know why. My mom finally checked on him one day, and discovered that it took Reid 36 minutes to tie his shoes, because his shoe-tying process went something like: tie, un-tie, re-tie, un-tie, re-tie, un-tie, re-tie, un-tie, re-tie, un-tie, re-tie, un-tie, re-tie.)

My second roomate is Sabrina. Here she is:


Sabrina lives in Branson, and before that, she lived in Nashville. Her parents have no connection to the country music business, though. Sabrina and I share an affinity for show and Disney tunes. She knows the words to nearly every musical ever made, including the new Legally Blonde musical (seriously. They made it a musical). Sabrina is the over-achiever of the house. If A++s existed in Britain, she would get them. I suspect her tendency to listen to show and Disney tunes while working contributes to her success.

My third roommate is Erin:


Erin, to use a favorite British phrase, is epic. She's a very modern-day renaissance woman. She's from a small town in Colorado, which means she could probably climb Mount Everest while carrying her sherpa. Also, she's a philosophy major, so she talks about things that are so over my head it's like her brain climbed Mount Everest. She also takes award-winning photographs (the awards are yet to come, but I know they will), and someday I'm going to write for National Geographic and she's going to be my photographer (maybe we'll go to Mount Everest, where she will carry the sherpa and me and a huge camera up the mountain). Most importantly to my life, Erin and I have a regular backrub-exchange.

So those are my three housemates. I really enjoy living with them. Quite often, I'll walk into one of their rooms to tell them a quick something, and I'll end up standing there, leaning against their door, talking for an hour about grad school or religion or politics or philosophy (those are short conversations) or food (this conversation happens a lot) or just about homework and how our day is going. We like to dress up, we mostly eat pasta or curry, and we tend to sing songs about America whenever we feel especially patriotic. We sometimes find ourselves all sitting or lying in the hallway, we're pretty good at procrastination, and we have all developed an attachment to "House."

As four girls who live in a (slightly drama-filled) house together, we decided that we were like a very small version of a sorority. So we formed our own: Beta Rho (as in Banbury Road, get it?).


The four of us knew each other at Jewell, but I didn't know any of them very well before I moved in with them. I feel very blessed about how well our living arrangement has worked out. We spend most of our time together, and we get along really well and complement (and compliment, for that matter) each other. We're all kind of mothering each other (since our moms are, sadly, not in the same country as we are). It's been great.

So there's a really important part of my life: the wonderful girls with whom I live.

Also, on a totally unrelated note: I saw an billboard in the London Tube that made me very happy. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do:


Coming up next: a post about rowing (I know I've promised this post at least twice. I promise it's going to happen next).