I Won!

This morning the priests of the house held the Fall 'Room Lottery'.  This is a tri-annual ritual in which the lower class priest (new-men) vie for some 'upper-class'.  The new men, when they first come, are given rooms with the least 'property value' so that they can work themselves up year by year into the upper-end real estate at the Casa Santa Maria.  Now as you may remember from one of my first posts, my room was very much on the lower side of the 'real estate' at the Casa Santa Maria (I could almost touch both walls if I spread my arms out).  But today, I came out with a substantial upgrade (mostly due to lack of participation on the part of many upperclassmen who apparently were happy with their rooms, all the better for me:) 

I wasn't expecting much at first, seeing that my name was third from the bottom of the list.  The system is this:  Each priest is ranked according to ordination date and time spent at the Casa Santa Maria.  There are Seventy-two priests on the list of varying ages and backgrounds.  Now I have been ordained for three years and this is my first semester at the Casa, hence third from the bottom:

But lucky for me, most of the upperclassmen didn't show up to get a new room so the list ran through pretty quickly and I found myself with a choice of some very nice rooms.  I decided to choose room 202-204;  a double room with quite a bit of space (each of the rooms in this particular choice is bigger than my original room!!!)

Here are some pictures of the room before I moved in:

I will post some more when I get settled in and have things arranged.  Needless to say, I am happy with this little move as now I can actually stretch without being afraid of knocking something over!:)

Now of course this means I will have a different phone number.  I don't know yet how that works but I will make a post when that comes into effect.  Until then, you can still call my old number and I will check those messages.