As everyone knows, the East Coast was severely affected by Hurricane Sandy.  Places not that far from my hometown of Voorhees, New Jersey were completely destroyed–houses all up and down Atlantic City were flooded and completely destroyed.  Part of the boardwalk, near the inlet, floated away due to the storm.  Parts of New York City were flooded out, including the subways!  However, at McDaniel College, we got pretty lucky.  Yes, we had heavy wind and rain for two days, but we managed to pull through and still have power the entire time!  Classes were cancelled on Monday and Tuesday, which gave a lot of students a chance to relax and catch up on sleep and homework.  However, things in our apartment went a little differently.  As a Resident Assistant, some of the responsibility of keeping students safe falls on me.  On Monday, we had a meeting about what to do during the emergency, and what to do if the college lost power.  We were supplied with flashlights and sent off with instructions to check in with our residents for things like refrigerated medications.  This way, if we did lose power, we could find a way to keep those medications cold.  I went around to each of my apartments to ask them about this and also ask them to not push their trash outside for now, so it wouldn’t fly around in the wind.  I also made sure that one person from every apartment had my cell phone number, so if they needed me, they could reach me.  All RAs were also on standby, because if we lost power, we would have to go on Fire Watch in order to make sure residents stayed safe.

Once my responsibilities as an RA were over, I was resolved to have fun, after being somewhat productive.  One of my apartmentmates and I had to watch Frankenstein for a class, so we paired Frankenstein with Frankenstorm.  We decided to keep the lights on while we watched the movie, since watching a scary movie during a storm like last night’s would have been really scary!  Trust me, the movie was creepy enough with the lights on! After watching the movie, we decided to play video games.  We went old school and played Super Monkey Ball on the Play Station 2 that sits in our living room.  It was so much fun to take turns playing the different stages of the game.  Even though it was a competition, we still had a lot of fun cheering each other on and encouraging each other with tips on how to pass the levels.  We resolved to play some more video games tonight while we were stuck inside, once we no longer felt like being productive and doing work.

This afternoon, once we all woke up, two of my apartmentmates made breakfast for us: a big breakfast of Mickey shaped chocolate chip pancakes, scrambled eggs, and bacon!  It was fun to eat brunch and just sit around and talk with each other after we were done eating.  Even though the devastation of Hurricane Sandy up and down the East Coast is terrible, it was nice to have a few days off to relax and catch up on homework and sleep!  I hope that everyone is okay after the Hurricane!