This is really different...

So, most of you probably know that I'm currently starting my first year at the University of Dallas.

This is a wildly crazy change, being down here and all that. I got my first hint of just how strange it would be when I stepped out of the airport at 11:30 at night only to get blasted with a mass of hot air. I've never known it to be this hot this late at night before, particularly not in August.

The campus is rather pretty in a strange way. The trees are intensely deciduous, and rather tropical looking.There are flowering shrubs everywhere. But outside the campus it's very big city-ish, and Irving is certainly not at all to my taste. Everything is so flat that the land looks like it has been ironed. The buildings are short and sprawling, not at all like the more vertical cities up north. There's pavement everywhere. From the airplane, it looks like one giant parking lot, occasionally punctuated by a neon sign or a chain restaurant or a strip mall. The highways are literally dozens of lanes wide in places.

My residence hall is pretty nice; it's air conditioned, which means a lot.

I've been running around a lot for orientation. This year's freshman class is the biggest in the history of the University - 423 students, I believe. So there's a lot of business and lines and behavior reminiscent of an anthill.