Nathan Xavier
April 01, 2016 7:32 PM
First Year Orientation by Nathan Xavier
Nathan Xavier stood, as he had two years ago, in the landing area for the flying wagons as they arrived from all corners of the United States. International students were responsible for getting into the country by their most convenient method, but once inside the US, they would also board one of the wagons for the final leg of their journey to the school. Also as he had two years ago, the heavy-set middle aged man offered directions to those disembarking."Hello and welcome or welcome back to Sonora Academy," he greeted again as another wagon landed and disgorged an assortment of new and old students. "Leave your luggage in the wagon; the elves will deliver it to its appropriate location. New first years, you can head over that way and collect a welcome packet, get some snacks, and get to know your fellow classmates until we are ready to start the Orientation." He indicated a nearby clearing in the Gardens where a reception area was set up with tables of food, a large banner ("First Year Orientation - Welcome to Sonora Academy!"), and a few piles of green folders on the table beneath the banner.
"Returning students, the Cascade Hall has some snacks for you if you're hungry, otherwise you can head up to your rooms and settle in. Prefects or Heads of House should be in the Hall if you need a password. The library is also open if you would rather spend the time until the feast reading." The students split off to their various destinations, and Nathan turned to address the next wagon load of kids with the same instructions.
Eventually, all the wagons were accounted for and he headed into the clearing where the first years had gathered. In addition to the green hedges enclosing the area, and a large maple tree shading the space, as well as the tables and banner, the reception clearing was also decorated with a handful of natural sculptures. They were not necessarily the top scoring sculptures that came out of last term's team event (some of which had walked away as soon as the judging was complete), but they were the ones Nathan had deemed most likely to endure the elements for a year or more. He'd liked all of the results he'd seen and was hoping these showcase ones would survive until the next school wide set of challenges was issued. Reinhardts had contributed to two of them, so there was a good chance those ones might make it that long at least. But even if they all fell apart at the end of the week (unlikely, since they'd made through the whole summer intact), they would, if nothing else, potentially provide conversation starters for the first years who were currently almost all complete strangers to one another.
He let them mingle for a little while longer, giving the last wagon group time to get their packet and a plate, then cleared his throat to gain their attention. Speaking in front of this group was not nearly as intimidating as speaking in front of the whole student body last spring, so his nerves were not nearly as apparent as they had been then. A keen eye, though, could probably note that he repeatedly wiped sweaty hands against his green robes (which were a lighter shade than their uniforms, but close enough that it was fairly clear he was trying to show school spirit).
"Hello, and welcome again to Sonora Academy of Magic," he began with a voice that was deep and loud enough to carry well over this small area without amplification. "My name is Mr. Xavier, and I am the groundskeeper and Head of Teppenpaw House here. I'll be giving you all a little overview of what to expect, then we'll break to continue meeting each other, then we will finish up with a tour of the grounds and school, which will end at our dining hall, the Cascade Hall, just in time for your Sorting Ceremony and the Welcoming Feast."
He paused a moment, less for dramatic effect and more to organize his thoughts and briefly pray he didn't forget any important parts of his rehearsed speech. "This is a school, so I'll start with academics. You should have a copy of the class schedule in your folders. All first years take the same core classes, and most of those will be shared with the second year class, and are collectively known as beginner level classes. In third year, you move up to intermediates and are allowed to select optional elective courses or begin independent studies at that time. In sixth year, you become advanced students and are allowed to drop the courses you don't want to take anymore." This time, Nathan decided not to mention the massive exams that took place at the end of fifth and seventh year, figuring it was too far off to bother scaring them about those already. He only kept in the part about advanced classes because it implied dropping classes wasn't a done thing until that point.
"Also, we have several student run clubs, some of which have an academic focus, like the science club or the book club. We also currently have an art club, an archery club, and House Quidditch Teams. If none of those cover what you would like to do as an extracurricular activity, you may start your own. In the past, we've also had cooking, fashion, and dance clubs. They just need a leader to volunteer to start them up again."
He wiped his palms on his robes again, then went on, "For living arrangements, everyone is split into one of four Houses, chosen by some personal characteristics and values during our Sorting Ceremony later today. Within each House, you will room with those of your year and gender. Each House has three prefects, one from each of the year groups fifth year and up, a Quidditch Captain, and a faculty member called your Head of House, any of which you can go to with questions or problems."
He had decided not to go into which traits were characteristic of each House this year in the vain hope that maybe that would slow the perpetuation of House stereotypes, though the school literature they had received with their acceptance letters went into those details and had likely already done that damage.
"Houses serve as your family here as you will be seeing quite a bit of one another over the next seven years. Each House earns points for exceptional classwork, behavior and participation in school activities such as Quidditch. Likewise, misbehavior loses points. The House with the most points at the end of the year gets the honor of hosting the House Cup in their commons the next year."
He took a deep breath and finished off with the key facts people probably wanted to know but didn't fit together in any neat categories. "Small fare food like sandwiches and snacks are available upon request in the Cascade Hall at all times between 6am and curfew at 10, but larger meals are marked on your schedule and are only available then. All students are welcome on the House Quidditch teams; no experience necessary. I think most teams have openings."
"If you have any further questions feel free to ask me or one of the other staff members." He took a moment to nod at the other staff volunteers who had chosen to help him chaperone the group during the orientation. "In the mean time, enjoy the food and talk amongst yourselves. The tour will begin in approximately one hour."
OOC (Out of Character):
Welcome first years to Sonora! You can post a reply here to ask staff questions or meet your new classmates. This thread is intended for first year students to have a chance to try out posting and get a hang of the site before we throw you into the big Opening Feast next week, which is open to the entire school population and can be a bit overwhelming. So post, enjoy, have fun! Everyone here is happy to help out, so if you've got a question, put it on the OOC or try to catch somebody in the Chatzy and we'll try to get you an answer as quick as we can.
Subthreads: Is this really real? by Killian Everett with Farrah Welsh
Looking for a fellow explorer. by Lily Spencer with Jozua Sparks
♪ A whole new world! ♬ by Madeleine Dautin with Georgia Kirkly
From Paris to Sonora by Sébastien Évreux with Jocelyn Spencer
Welcome Home by Eliza Steinbeck with Arianna Valenti, Eliza
Glad to be here, I think! by Finbar Scott
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Nathan Xavier
First Year Orientation
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Nathan Xavier
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Madeleine Dautin
April 04, 2016 8:13 AM
♪ A whole new world! ♬ by Madeleine Dautin
Madeleine was feeling kind of finicky. She had done her best to stick close to Bastien as they had made the journey from France over together, doing their best to ignore Louis Valois who was, after all, the reason they were both being forced to attend such a sub-par school. It was ridiculous, really. However, in descending the carriages, she’d lost her grip on his sleeve and found herself in a magnificent garden. Previous thoughts left her head as she took in the general grandeur, but she still tried to maintain a certain air of superiority because after all she was a Dautin. She shifted uncomfortably in the new frock she had been made to wear, feeling naked without the floral crown she’d tried to sneak out the door when she’d kissed Mme Mercier good-bye and gone to the wagons for the first time.Her sharp eyes took in the surrounding company. There were various students who appeared to be from all backgrounds, but so far she hadn’t seen a single one that would live up to the roll of Léo in her life. He might have only been a third son of third-tier noblesse family but she was a second daughter and besides they had the best fun together out of everyone she knew! Perhaps, she thought to herself, she could find a Léo in one of her classmates, but she’d never do so if she just sat around and watched them interact, so in an out of character move, she walked up to the snack table and selected what appeared to be a croissant but which she was certain would fall short of anything the house elves back home could make.
Sure enough, as she bit into the pastry, the flaky outside crumbled a bit too much ad the soft inside was perhaps too greasy for her taste. Madeleine wrinkled her nose in disgust as she brushed away the flaky crumbs from her new dress which suddenly seemed much nicer and more elegant than before. She turned her careful eyes around her to spot someone she might be able to talk to. The witch who approached the wizard beside her was very energetic but despite her best efforts to approach them to engage in conversation, the outgoing mannerisms caught her off guard. French society was much colder at first, though distantly polite throughout and…wasn’t Pecari the Rosenthal cousine’s House? Purée! She hoped she wouldn’t be placed there! She’d heard the witch had been made prefect of that House. Oh là là, c’était pas possible!
The witch, seemed to really like exploring and Madeleine listened in as they talked, slipping back into that default “spy” mode she and Léo went into whenever they were in attendance at a dinner party. Exploring…did she like exploring? She supposed she did—other people’s business at lest. She wasn’t really allowed to, but that just made her want it even more. Yet…perhaps if this witch with the Quidditch Captain, Head Boy brother could explore then perhaps America wouldn’t be as bad as it seemed. And at the very least it would give her opportunity to improve her English, something a world class spy would need.
Just then, a voice interrupted her thoughts and Madeleine turned the other direction to see who she thought was a fellow first year. “Pardon,” she said, pronouncing the English as though she were using the French word. ‘Pardon’ was easy enough because it meant basically the same thing in each language. “I didn’t really catch that, I’m so sorry for my English, but I prac—non, I’m learning.” She smiled, happy with her success so far and wondered briefly how Bastien was getting on. She’d have to catch up to him later before the tour and see. Maybe they could even walk together. Back in France he wouldn’t have been her first choice for company but here they only had each other.
(Rough) Glossary:
cousine - female cousin
Purée - literally it means mashed, non-literally it's used kind of like "shoot"
Oh là là, c’était pas possible! - Oh no, not possible
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Madeleine Dautin
♪ A whole new world! ♬
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Madeleine Dautin
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Georgia Kirkly
April 06, 2016 4:02 AM
Yay.... by Georgia Kirkly
Georgia had had a whole year to get used to the idea that magic was real, ever since the discussion about where she’d go to school had got serious. She had always assumed that she’d go to the local high school along with all her friends (and enemies) from middle school but her dad had started pushing the idea of her sitting the entrance exam for his old school. That was when her mum had had to come clean, to tell them both something she should have told them a long time ago, which meant that neither of those would be an option for Georgia. Still, even being told it was real didn’t make it feel real. Shopping for her school stuff felt like they were just dressing up or playing a really elaborate game. The only bit that had seemed like it might be real was when she’d first touched the wand for her, and made it spark because that just didn’t happen. There were also a lot of things looking back that made more sense, like the time all the pens had vanished when she didn’t want to do math, or when Libby, the snootiest girl in her year, had got her new outfit splashed with mud even though there were no trucks going by, which her mum told her were ‘accidental magic.’ Having a reason for them was sort of comforting and helpful but it didn’t help her know what to expect now, or to really believe it. But now, here she was. Having been transported by flying wagon. Now it felt scarily real.She had tried several times on the wagon ride squeezing her eyes really hard shut and wishing she would wake up, back home with everything back to normal. Things hadn’t really been comfortable lately. She knew her parents had been fighting the last year, even though they tried to put on happy faces and only do it once she was in bed. The happy faces looked fake and strained, and she didn’t always fall straight to sleep, so sometimes she heard them arguing. A few times, when the fear of not knowing had outweighed the fear of being caught, she’d snuck onto the landing to listen. The rows were about her mum keeping secrets, and about her having to come here. It was confusing to be here, because it felt a little easier to breathe knowing she wasn’t going to have to hear that any more, but if she hadn’t had to come here, if everything had just been normal, the fights wouldn’t have started in the first place.
She went to collect a welcome pack, and considered getting a cupcake. There was a girl standing near the snacks, picking at the croissant she’d selected. Some of the girls in Geogria’s year had already started fussing about food this way, saying they were dieting and things like that - Libby always proclaimed it loudly, saying she didn’t want to end up looking like Georgia. Georgia had always known she was a little chubby but she had never thought it was a problem, until Libby started saying things like that. These days, she considered herself downright fat because that’s what she was told she was. So, she waited. She didn’t want to be that fat girl that was desperate to get at the cake. She really, really wanted to be liked, although from what her mum had said, there might not be too much chance of that happening. Apparently, there was this thing called being “pure blood” and they were always the in crowd. At least, they always had been, at her mum’s east coast school. She hadn’t wanted to send Georgia there, which was she’d ended up way out west. Because maybe it would be better here. Her mum kept telling her that she was sure it would be, whilst looking anxious and worried. It wasn’t really super reassuring.
She edged a little closer. She wanted friends, as well as a cupcake, so perhaps getting chatting to the witch at the snack table was a good way to start.
“Hi there. How’s the food?” she asked, immediately regretting her question. It was just the first thing that came to mind as small talk. Luckily, fate gave her a second chance, as the girl seemed a bit tuned out, or not quite fluent with English. “I just said ‘hi, how’s it going?’” Georgia smiled.
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Georgia Kirkly
Yay....
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Georgia Kirkly
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Madeleine
April 06, 2016 7:48 AM
I take it you aren’t excited either? by Madeleine
Madeleine returned the American girl’s smile, imitating the way it turned, not being used to such open friendliness with strangers. Americans smiled way too much, she thought to herself privately. How’s it going? she could do this, it was basic English. She wouldn’t complain, she would just answer politely and see where the conversation went. “I’m okay and you?” As eager as she had been to tutoyer Bastien, that was different. He was noblesse and this witch was a stranger (in both the French and English forms of the words). She suddenly hated not having the more distant for of ‘you’ to use. It was funny, Madeleine thought to herself, how one missed the things they normally took for granted when they didn’t have them anymore.She forced herself to break off another piece of the croissant and eat it. She might not have liked the mal fait snack but she was French and the French never wasted food. Jamais. And then, before the window of time ran out and it was awkward to ask for a name, Madeleine offered hers and enquired after the other witch’s. She had been taught the American way of introductions, but found it overly pretentious and wasn’t interested in following through on her parent’s wishes. Her eyes flitted over to where Bastien was talking to someone and sighed. He was probably being a perfect example and she couldn’t let him beat her.
“Madeleine Dautin, from France,” she said with a quick smile, one that graced her face easier than the wider one she had attempted earlier. “And you?” ‘And you’ was a phrase she could see herself using quite frequently. It allowed her to redirect the question without much opportunity for mistake, something she did not really like making. She ripped up the croissant into two last pieces and popped them into her mouth one after the other, wondering if she would try her hand at something else after she’d had such a big disappointment the first time. There were cute little cupcakes on the table beside her, amongst other various baked goods, and she thought those might be safer since the cupcake was a more American invention in comparison to some of the other treats that had been laid out which were likely to have been bungled in the way only an American could bungle things.
But the other witch wasn’t eating anything. And she was American. So perhaps she didn’t trust any of the food on the table either. If that were the case, that would be a good indicator for Madeleine if she ought to try something else. But she was also so very hungry. That was when she noticed that her new accquaintance had a green folder and she did not. A lot of other people had green folders too. Come to think of it, she had seen them on a table on their way into the Gardens but she had been too occupied with looking for Bastien to realise she was supposed to take one and it seemed to late to grab one now.
“I-euh, well I did not receive one, would it be bothersome if we could share?” She was aware that her sentence was a little off, and she did her best to stifle the slight blush that rose in her cheeks even though she knew that at the very least her cheekbones had a pale pink spreading across them as she could feel the warmth as it moved over her face.
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Madeleine
I take it you aren’t excited either?
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Madeleine
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Georgia
April 09, 2016 6:22 AM
I'm a lot of things but I don't think that's one of them by Georgia
Georgia took a cupcake as the other witch introduced herself. The girl was finishing her own snack, which helped, but mostly she just couldn't resist. She licked at the big swirl of icing whilst the other girl talked, the chocolately goodness working its magic and making her feel more relaxed.“Nice to meet you,” she smiled, “I'm Georgia... Kirkly,” she added, with only a slight hesitation. The new girl hadn't introduced herself as 'of the such-and-such family' and she didn't say it with a nasty tone, or one like Georgia should know who she was, which were the warning signs her mother had told her about, but she wasn't very used to giving her surname when meeting anyone who wasn't trying to fill in a form about her. “From Ohio, here in America,” she added, again feeling a bit awkward. The other girl had said what country she was from but as they were in America it seemed weird to just say 'America' but equally it seemed weird to say a state when the other girl had given a country. Normally, Georgia didn't worry so much about these little details, but she was feeling kind of edgy after the warnings her mother had given her, and with being in a whole new world, it was all doubly confusing.
“Sure,” Georgia nodded, holding out her pack so the other girl could inspect its contents “Though I think you'll have a chance to pick one up later – I don't think he said we had to do it right away or anything.
“So, you're from France? What's that like?” she asked, taking a bite of her cake having asked something that would hopefully yield a nice long answer, without much thought as to how she would sum up her home country in a few sentences if put on the spot in a similar fashion.
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Georgia
I'm a lot of things but I don't think that's one of them
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Georgia
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Madeleine
April 11, 2016 3:43 PM
Well then, that makes two. by Madeleine
Madeleine watched with careful eyes as Georgia took a cupcake from the table and licked the top of it. Disgusting. But she refrained from wrinkling her nose and kept the polite smile on her face, nodding when she introduced herself and said where she was from. She even bit her tongue and didn’t say something snarky about knowing where Ohio was because Maman always said that no one liked a know-it-all and besides that, she wasn’t meant to care about the United States right in that moment so knowing where one of it’s least exciting states was probably didn’t fall under that category.She flipped through the pages, taking the time to look over the pictures in the brochures and shuffled them back together as Georgia said she’d be able to get one later. It was very important to Madeleine that she have one of the packets—she had read up on Sonora before coming, thinking it was very important to know what exactly it was that her parents had gotten her into, but additional reading material could always be of use. “Thank you,” she said, returning the packet back to the other witch. “I’ll do so.”
The photos (and the garden she was currently in) did nothing to inspire her to be happy with where she was. She missed Paris and it’s beautiful buildings, it’s many gardens, it’s long and windy roads. She missed her house with the creaky floorboards and the over-elegant furniture and the nervous house-elves. She missed her room and Léo and even Mme Mercier! And the other witch seemed to know exactly what to say to make Madeleine feel even more homesick.
“It’s marvellous,” she returned, frustrated that her range of English vocabulary went deep in some areas while other times she forgot basic sentence construction though more often than not it was the pronunciation of certain words that were spelt the same way but pronounced completely differently that she abhorred. At least she had never said anything as ridiculously stupid as some of the children of her father’s German business contacts. To hear them talking about ‘becoming an apple’ at the table made Madeleine always feel very good about her English.
She didn’t want to wax on about her country though she already had a list forming in her head about what was better in France than in America, and she didn’t want to let on that she was homesick either, so she left it at ‘marvellous’ adding only that it was a country rich in history and in art and that every where she went was full of story. She said all of this only slightly implying France was better than America since she didn’t want to have her first ever conversation end in an argument—that wouldn’t do well at all for the diplomacy she was expected to be proficient in.
“And how do you like O-hi-o?” she stumbled slightly over the word only because she was unsure on which syllable the stress was supposed to go on. As Georgia answered, Madeleine carefully selected a cupcake from the table, one that didn’t appear to have as much frosting on it as the others though it was sprinkled with coloured sugar. Unfortunately it wasn’t chocolate which was Madeleine’s usual stuff-her-face-to-deal-with-negative-emotions choice of food, but the excess of frosting (something she had never really been a fan of) had turned her off the chocolate cakes and besides that, she supposed the coloured sugar made up for it.
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Madeleine
Well then, that makes two.
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Madeleine
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