Homecoming

I was in Virginia this weekend for my 10 year college reunion. I graduated from the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg. (It was established in 1693. We love to get that date in).
This is the Wren building. It is the oldest academic building in continuous use in the United States. Some of my friends got to have class in the Wren (too bad for me, no science classes here!) (photo from wm.edu.)

What a beautiful place! As I walked around on Saturday (a very average day, weather-wise, with a few drizzles) it was hard to believe that I actually got to live in that little slice of heaven for four years! When I visited the campus as a high school junior, the Sunken Garden was the place that sold it to me. It was one of those picturesque spring days where the air is crisp and the sun is just a little too bright to seem real. The dogwoods were blooming, students were studying and playing frisbee in the garden, and my tour group walked across one of the paths.

The sunken garden is pretty long and is kind of hard to really capture on film. There are 6 academic buildings called "old campus" which flank it, so I always found myself with these views on my way to (always 8am--I was a bio major!) class. The view from the bottom of the steps shows the Wren in the background.

As you can see, even on a below average weather day, William and Mary is gorgeous. I guess I could have said that the Crim Dell bridge was the prettiest place on campus. It was apparently voted the most romantic spot on a college campus by Playboy sometime in the 90's, but I wasn't really aware of that fact:
Lots of legend surrounds this bridge. If you walk across with your beloved, you are supposed to be together for life. In order to break the bond, the woman must throw the man off the bridge. . .Michael had heard this story and intended to propose here. The ring burned a hole in his pocket so he proposed at home. . .but we walked across the bridge the next time we were there together. (photo from wm.edu)

Here is where I got to live for three of my four years:
Our house is a cute little colonial that houses 16 girls. Mostly just the officers and roommates live in the sorority houses, though the chapters have about 100 girls. Our house is across the street from the quaintness that is Colonial Williamsburg. We could also make it to Baskin Robbins during a commercial break of Thursday night TV. But I digress. During Saturday's football game, I broke off from the group of old friends to take a stroll by myself. I walked past all the familiar buildings and quite a few new ones. They have really been fixing the place up while keeping the history intact. I was feeling a little wistful. I remembered sweet times in my college years, but I also wished I had been mature enough to really take full advantage of the opportunities that were right before me. I was thinking, "College is wasted on the young!" Now that free time is so hard to come by, I was brainstorming all the great things I could have done with my time: form great relationships with the professors due to small class size, finish that Spanish minor that required a paper, spend more time seeking the Lord and less time in mindless social pursuits. But I know that W&M was still a great place to grow and learn.

My college friends seem as familiar as home even when we have been apart for years. We have taken different paths, changed, grown, even grown apart. But we still laugh at old jokes, we tease about the same old stories, we remember the tough academic work as well as the crazy study breaks. In place of old awkwardness or hard stories I felt only warmth and good memories. Thanks, old friends. It was so good to see you.