Shannon is nominally trying to memorize the school blueprints, and what she SHOULD be doing is looking for the kid who's with the Sacramento enclave so she can hand over 20kg worth of gear and stop carrying it everywhere, but in fact she's mostly busy being very overwhelmed. There are so many people! She hasn't been in a space with this many people at once since she was ten! 

The new arrival's voice startles her, and she jumps. "- Oh! Sorry. Hi." 

"No need to apologize. This is all a bit overwhelming. Did you not get a copy of the blueprints before?"

"No. Uh, my parents didn't go here." 

"Oh, that makes sense. Is there anything you know you don't know that you'd like to ask about?"

Shannon considers this. "- How do we find out our class schedule? Is there, uh, anyone I need to tell that I want to do alchemy track, or does the school just know?" 

"The school will slip a note with your homeroom under your door overnight, you'll get your initial schedule there when you look away from your desk, you get most assignments from the school that way. You can adjust your schedule a little to have what you want before you submit it."

"Huh. Why do they do it that way instead of just putting the class schedule under our doors to start?" 

"That's a good question, it would be easier to compare schedules that way, and you want to do that before trying to modify yours so you have an idea of what classes are at the same times."

Nod. "And then do we have homeroom again every day with the same people? Or just on the first day?" 

"I think it's just once per term but if I'm wrong I expect it'll be on your schedule. It'll be first thing in the morning, even before breakfast."

"Thanks!"

...And, wow, she must be nervous because she's really falling down on her friendly small talk right now. "I'm Shannon, by the way. From Vancouver, Canada. Where are you from?" 

"Mother and I live near Banff. Nice to meet another Canadian."

Nice! They have Something In Common! This is apparently an important component of Making Friends, which Shannon's parents tried to give her extensive advice on! 

"Oh, cool! That's not even that far from us - um, in the grand scheme of things, I mean, Canada's huge and all. Ummm, and - your name is...?" 

"I go by Ribo, it's technically short for Ribosome but that's a bit of a mouthful."

Shannon giggles. "Ooh, wow! Is one of your parents a biologist? ...Uh, my dad has a mundane job, he graduated a mundane med school and he's a university prof - that's actually how I got a spot here, he knows someone from the Sacramento enclave who's got a side gig as a biology prof at UC Berkeley... Anyway, so he made me memorize his textbooks too." She giggles again. "Not that it was much of a hardship!" 

"Mother has an affinity for biomancy, she's self-taught on biology but she keeps up with the literature."

"Oh wow, that's really cool!" If Shannon survives she is absolutely following up on that. Banff - in Alberta, right... And she's pretty sure there's not an enclave there.

She puts on her best Making Friends smile. "So you're an independent as well, then? How did you get a spot? I just had to carry in a backpack of gear for someone in Sacramento - I'm small for my age, I had lots of extra weight - and it included some healing potions I made. Apparently that's a pretty good deal?" 

...aaaaaaaaaah that was way too many words, she's supposed to say as few words as possible and Give Nothing Away but it's really hard to do that AND make friends at the same time... 

Ribo looks slightly discomfited by the question. "Mother made the arrangements I'm not sure of the details."

Oh no now she's made it awkward! Apologizing too much is awkward too, though. 

"...Um, anyway, what track are you going for? I'm doing alchemy." 

"I'm doing artifice, my affinity for wire lets me use this enchanted wire multi tool mother helped me commision." She gestures with the arm wrapped in wire.

"Oh, nice! That seems pretty useful. Um, is artifice track dangerous, though? My dad thought it might be." 

"A bit, the workshops tend to be in low levels so there's more risk of Mals and if you mess up too much the school will send your failed projects to eat you. The same thing can happen with Alchemy though, if you mess up an alchemy assignment the school might dump your mistake on you. Either way you have to mess up pretty bad for that to happen."

"Right. ...I guess my dad warned me about alchemy being really dangerous too, but I - well, I'm not that worried, I feel like I understand it decently well and I know how good I am? And I guess you'd maybe feel the same way about artificing, if your affinity's more that way?" 

"Yeah, I'm pretty confident, and worst case scenario it'll be an exciting way to die."

Shannon thinks she would much rather die in a boring way - it sounds so embarrassing to have everyone paying attention to you while you're getting yourself killed - but this doesn't seem like a helpful friendship-building thing to say. 

"Right. Uh, what languages do you have?"