I know it's a Tuesday when I return to my room at night and find the invitation has been slipped under my door. It's a different colored piece of paper each week, but it invites me to the same thing -- the weekly "manager's reception" held every Wednesday from six to seven, where the managers of the Washington Suites Hotel serve you beer and wine (or Coke, in my case), as you snack on fruit and crackers and mingle with the other guests.
For the past three weeks, I called this hotel "home." I stayed here with my dad while he's on business and I was in the middle of an internship. It's always had been fun to stay in a hotel for a night or two, but I was not sure how it would feel to live in one for a month.
I am happy to report that hotel life suited me just fine. It seems perfectly natural to me now to hop in an elevator for all my comings and goings, that I entered my "house" through automatic glass doors and unlocked my room with an electronic card. Besides the manager's receptions, there were tons of other little niceties here that added to the experience. My father and I were staying in a suite with a little kitchen, and on the first night of our stay we were greeted with a canvas bag jammed full with a variety of food to stock our kitchen shelves with -- everything from canned ham to tomato sauce (The canned ham was one item we certainly left behind).
Each morning, juice, muffins, and a full selection of Kellogg's cereal awaited me in the breakfast room. When I returned to the hotel at night, urns of hot, spicy apple cider were waiting in the lobby. And anytime my sweet tooth needed attention, I simply inquired at the front desk and the night clerk opened a little oven behind the counter and handed over two cookies. Sometimes chocolate chip, other nights, double chocolate -- either way, the chocolate chips were always warm and melting, always in a little paper bag that says Martha Washington used the same recipe when baking for George. (The cookies were delicious even if the presentation was a little cheesy.)
These nice touches aside, allow me to extol the amenities of hotel living that I experienced as luxuries every day. I never had to worry about making my bed, or washing my sheets and towels. I could watch HBO on the TV (a big deal for a girl who has never had cable). There was a tiny exercise room that I always had to myself (which meant I could sing along with my walkman as I trotted on the treadmill).
But my favorite thing about hotel life was the feeling that no matter how tired and groggy I was as I stumbled down in the morning, I was always greeted by smiles and calls of "Good morning!" and "Have a good day!" And when I returned through the same doors after a long day, I received the same pleasant welcome, more smiles and invitations to grab a cup of cider on the way back to my room. I loved this feeling that the staff was looking out for me, even if they only knew me as the girl from room 812. One evening, I had an argument with my father on our way back to the hotel and I started crying right before we entered the lobby. My favorite doorman was on duty, and the knowing smile he gave the both of us was enough to stop our argument -- or at least until we got upstairs.
Cheer and smiles in the morning, fresh cookies and warm apple cider at night, people keeping watch, and fresh towels -- I muse now as I sit in my dorm room, the muffin in hand reminding me of the hotel -- what more could I have wanted?
By the way, I never actually met another guest at one of the manager's receptions -- I usually just popped in to grab a plate of strawberries. In fact, I only met one other fellow guest in the entire hotel. One day three fellow elevator riders were eyeing me with interest. Just before the doors opened at the lobby, the man asked me, "Are you from New Hampshire? That's where we're from, and we noticed you're wearing a Ragged Mountain fleece." (Ragged Mountain is a peak in the Granite State.) "I'm actually from Albany, NY," I told them, "but I do go to school at Dartmouth " "Oh, wow!" exclaimed the youngest of the trio. "I'm a '98!" "Awesome!" I shouted, "I'm a '03!" And we had ourselves a little Dartmouth reunion right there in the lobby. The hotel really felt like home after that.
Now, several weeks later, I have returned to campus and am appropriately living in Dartmouth's own "hotel," East Wheelock. Unfortunately, though, I am back to making my own bed.
