I'm back at Houghton

10:15, Saturday night:

Yeah, here I am, at Houghton again; I've been back for a week, I just haven't blogged at all. This was a semi-busy week for me, at least compared to how the rest of the semester has been. I had a geology test Thursday that I was studying for and freaking out about all week. When I actually had to take the test, though, I knew almost everything and went through it really fast, so it was way better than I expected. I also had two short soc. papers due on Friday, which I put off until Thursday night. That was a bad choice, but I got them written.

And then yesterday was Friday, and I was finally done with everything, and I watched Ratatouille with Adam and Eri after work at the dining hall. Today I went to the college play, Jake's Women, which was really good. Right now I'm watching The Italian Job with some girls on my floor, which is several of their favorite movies, although I've never heard of it. The main characters are in Venice right now, which is where I'm going in June! On Monday Nora and I are meeting for dinner to plan a little more about where we're going and how we're getting there.

2:55, Sunday afternoon:

I stopped writing last night because I got into the movie. It was pretty good, a fun, action/adventure movie. After that Jaela, Alexa, and I watched half of Harry Potter 6. Also this week, on Thursday after my geology test, I watched Where the Wild Things are, which the school showed in the chapel. It really wasn't what I expected; it was sad and kind of dark and even disturbing at times. I think it was good, though.

I also started a new job this week, vacuuming the fourth floor. I do that Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday while my other cleaning job is MWF, so now I'm working every day. It's good; I have the time for it, and I'm making more money.

The weather's been really nice here, which is great. And I guess that's it for now.

Blah

From an email:

My first week went pretty well, and this week is going okay too, but it feels like time is going by really slowly. I'm tired of school and ready to be done already! I don't have a lot of homework or anything, just reading so far, but I'm not enjoying my classes this semester as much as I did last semester. None of them are bad classes, but it seems like none of them make very good use of class time--for Principles of Sociology we just go over what was in the reading, so it feels like a waste of time because I already learned the stuff, and one of my poetry classes is mostly discussion, so people get to talking/arguing and we don't really get anywhere, and for Physical Geology the professor gives us the powerpoint slides beforehand, and then the lecture is pretty much exactly what's on the slides. So going to all of those classes kind of feels like a waste of time or is boring.

I am enjoying skiing. We just had our second class yesterday, and it was icy because the snow melted some, so it was a little harder to ski on, but it was still fun. I got to ski down the smaller hill backwards, which I thought would be really hard but actually wasn't too bad. It reminded me of backwards roller skating a little.

So, everything's going okay . . . it just seems like this is going to be a really long semester.

A new semester

Email to Mom, January 11 (first day of classes):

I'm a little nervous for my classes--Principles of Sociology has a lot of assignments, Modern and Contemporary American Poetry is just going to be hard because it's analyzing poetry, and for the poetry writing class we have to write a poem a week. We'll also be doing a lot of peer editing, and the professor was emphasizing the importance of reading poetry out loud, so it sounds like we're going to have to read our poems out loud to each other, which of course I don't want to do. But it still sounds like a good class. And the other classes seem good too. We're starting with Robert Frost for the other poetry one, and I'm really enjoying reading him.

Other random things (not from an email):

I had my first skiing class on Tuesday, which was hard and tiring but also lots of fun. I think I'm really going to enjoy it. I'm also working for the first time this semester, cleaning one of the stairwells in my dorm as well as cleaning floors one afternoon a week in the dining hall and being "salad runner" one night a week in the dining hall. The only one I've done so far is the stairwell, and it's really not bad. The whole time I think, "I'm making money, I'm making money," and I feel happy. ;)