What Dorm Life Is Like

For the past two months I have been living in one of the dorm buildings on campus. Today I would like to tell you a little about what that is like.

You can see the building I live in, in the picture above. In total, there are three buildings like this one, and a fourth one of a different shape on the other side of campus. Ours is the one where all of the single students and volunteers live. Each of these four buildings are named after famous missionaries, and ours is William Carey. He was an English missionary who lived near the end of the 18th century and was famous for encouraging participation in world missions, rather than only spreading the Gospel to his own countrymen.

Coming inside, we enter “The Train Station”. And yes, I was confused the first time I got invited to meet someone in “The Train Station”. If you go to through the left door you go into the gent’s corridor, while going up the stairs would lead you to the single ladies living space. (If you want to know more about what that is like I would have to bring in a guest writer, as I’ve never been there.) The Train Station is significant, not so much because I pass through there multiple times each day, but also because of the activities we have there. Usually when we hang out with both the single ladies and gents together, we will invite them to the train station. This often happens on a Friday or Saturday afternoon. And we’ll play a few boardgames, or someone will bring a guitar so that we can sing worship songs.

So, heading into our corridor, there are seven gents living here. Before we get to their rooms we pass some communal rooms though. First of all there’s a storage room here where students can store things they don’t need every day, but also material for the weekly evangelism booktable is stored. Next, there is the boiler room – the engineering of the heating on campus is quite impressive, but I’ll save my engineering stories for some other time. There is also a shared gents-only bathroom.

Next is the gents lounge. We use this whenever we want to meet with just the single gents. Most importantly, we have a prayer morning here every Tuesday at 6 AM (yes that early), and a small Bible study every Sunday evening after dinner. We also sometimes use it to play games, eat together, or watch a film on the projector. Technically, women are allowed in here during the day, but for mixed groups we tend to use the train station.

Then there is a shared kitchen, but we rarely use it. All the singles get their food from the dining hall, which cooks two meals every day. So all we need the kitchen for is storing our breakfast supplies and to cook during the breaks, when the kitchen is closed.

And then, finally, we arrive at the personal rooms. Each is big enough to house a bed, a large closet, and a small desk. Which is all that is needed seeing how many other nice places and things we have here. There is a total of seven gents living here, which I think is right about the perfect amount in comparison to all the other rooms here. Nevertheless, there are still multiple bedrooms that are unoccupied, and in other years there might be a lot more single gents living on campus.

Prayer

Of course I am immensely thankful for being able to live here on campus, and not having to worry about renting a place in town. Also, the facilities here are all very good and going to the classroom is only a few minutes walk.

Other than that, I appreciate your continued prayer for my classes here. It is quite busy, and there is always more of the Bible to research than there is time. But I am thankful for being here and try to make the most of every day.