Pictures

I've been horrible about adding pictures to my blog posts... so here is a random collection from the last couple weeks! And sorry they posted backwards!

The peppermint cake pops steph and I made!

This little one hasn't left my bed since I've come home :)

I was so happy to see mountains! The midwest is soooooo flat!

When we set off the fire alarm :P

Baking cookies the night before I left... yummy :)

Shannon, Jin and Anna

My Brazil buddies. The professor took us to a Brazilian restaurant to celebrate the end of the semester. This was a really fun night!

Jin and I ready for winter! thanks for the door sign gramma mary!

Christmas

I'm home!! And grades just came out... and I'm really excited but have no one to tell since mom is asleep :/

I got an A in urban studies!!!!! I honestly thought I was going to get a C in that class! We were graded on three things... the two 20+ page papers (individual) and then the 30+ page group one. We were only told the grade of the first paper and she never told us what we got on the second one or the group one. So theoretically, she could give us any grade she wanted to... and since I didn't participate as much and she didn't really know me, I thought for sure she'd give me a C. But no! I GOT AN A!

Spanish also got posted today :) And I got an A-! I've never worked so hard for a grade in my life, so I am thrilled! I knew that the final would either push my grade up to an A- or keep it at a B+ so I spent a bajillion hours last week just studying for that exam. And it paid off!

I ended with a B+ in Calc and a B in my Brazil class. I'm happy with the calc score... and slightly confused by the Brazil one. The professor gave me a pretty low score on my final essay and I'm positive it was better than that. So I should have gotten a B+ or A- but whatever.

The last week has been soooooo great! I've loved being home! But I will readily admit that I do miss Wash U and can't wait to go back :) Quick recap on the last two weeks...

We didn't have class last week, so Mon-Wed was "reading week". I have to say that was my favorite week of the semester :) I loved getting up early, sitting in the seminar room down the hall with a cup of coffee and studying allllllllllll day. literally. i'd leave to grab lunch. and dinner. and maybe go to the gym. but it was so nice for the sun to rise and set and not worry about how much time i was spending studying... cuz that's all I had to focus on.

My two finals were Thursday afternoon. Spanish from 1-3 and Calc from 3:30-5:30. It was pretty killer to have them back to back - my brain was fried after the spanish one and I didn't know how I was going to manage to do calculus for two more hours. But before I knew it, they were over and my first semester of college was done!

My friend and I baked and decorated christmas cookies for the floor thursday night and managed to set the fire alarm off at 12:30 am... (and everyone else still had finals on friday hahaha) We learned later that it wasn't actually us who had set off the alarm, but everyone still thought it was us since we had been baking :) It was hilarious

I flew home friday morning and got to spend friday night with my friends from high school. We went to dinner and then to the homecoming basketball game... it was good to be with them and to see everyone... but it was very weird to be back at school. Everyone looked so young!!

Saturday and Sunday I spent relaxing and spending time with friends from church. I had a really great group of friends from church and I've missed them a lot - so it was great to spend time with them! My best friend steph came over sunday night and we made peppermint cake pops :) YUM!!

This week... I've been running around doing errands and christmas shopping and seeing more people. All great things and I've loved having a car and being able to do whatever I need to do! Although, I don't like having to share with spencer!! That is weird!!! The biggest problem is that he doesn't plan ahead very far so at 1pm when I ask him what his plans for the evening are and if I can drop him anywhere before I go meet up with friends, he'll have no idea. That doesn't work very well with your very organized sister, mr. spencer.

I finally saw the back specialist again yesterday. She was happy that i'm PAIN FREE FOR 2.5 MONTHS! But I need to get stronger before she'll let me play golf, or soccer, or run... all things I would like to be doing very soon!! I'll go back to physical therapy after the new year for the two weeks that I'm home and then will take those exercises back to school with me and hopefully get nice and strong :) My goal is to be given the okay to play on my floor's IM soccer team for this spring, then be able to play golf by May so I can help coach my old high school team, and then be able to run as much as I want by this summer!! Maybe I'll be so happy to run that I'll want to do a half marathon again :) They have a rock n roll one in St. Louis every October (happens to be during parent and family weekend cough cough) and maybe I'll be up for that. :) We'll see!

The last exciting piece of news, and sorry this is so ridiculously long... is that I will probably be spending a big chunk of my summer in Mexico this coming summer! I've been debating what I want to do this summer... and for most of the fall, I was so homesick that I couldn't imagine being anywhere but at home this summer. But now... I'm loving living on my own. After just a few days back here, I'm already antsy! So... I talked to my momma and was running through my options, with different WU programs and such, and I knew that I wanted to go somewhere where I can use my spanish, because I'm in love with it now. And then she reminded me of all my relatives in Mexico... and it seemed perfect!! So there's a lot more to be done before any of that is final, but for now... I'm going to plan on spending a month or six weeks there with my family!

I think that's everything! Merry Christmas!

Love you all!

Done with classes!

Today was my last day of classes! It was bittersweet. I LOVE my spanish professor and I'm so sad that she isn't teaching next semester so I won't get to have her again... Other than spanish... I was definitely glad to be done :) Calc especially...ugh!

This week was pretty nuts. I had my big Brazil presentation on Monday and the Urban Studies one Wednesday. Brazil went well. We got to pick any topic and do a 15 minute presentation to the class about it... had to relate to brazil in some way. I chose sex tourism because 1- it relates to my interest in human trafficking and prostitution and 2- Brazil is a HUGE destination country for it. I enjoyed doing the research and found the whole thing to be pretty interesting. The presentation itself went really well. The class was quite amused that I, the quiet girl who sits in the corner, doesn't drink, doesn't party, the "good girl"... was doing a project on sex tourism. And I made it pretty entertaining with some "bad" jokes. Al in all... they were quite entertained.

After that was done, it was time to devote every hour between 12pm on monday and 2pm on wednesday to my urban studies project. It was a group semseter project. So theoretically, we should have started it like a month ago. But with the other 20+ page papers for that class and thanksgiving break... it just didn't happen. So, Saturday morning my group met at the library and spent the day doing all the research. We worked from 11am-5pm. Not too bad. Sunday, we met again at the library at 11am and started writing the paper. At 8pm, the boy in the group said he needed to leave. I said, okay, so when are you free to start working again tomorrow? And he goes, "I'm not. I have a really busy week and I can't work on it anymore" Blah. Well, you can imagine that the other girl and I did not take that very well. This project is 45% of our grade and includes a term paper and presentation. What did he mean, he couldn't work on it anymore?!

Well... long story short. He left us high and dry. Juliet and I ended up working nine more hours on Monday, and four more Tuesday before "he had time to join us". By that point, we had finished just about everything and just needed to rehearse the presentation. I thankfully, did not have to pull any all-nighters although I was up pretty late Sunday night, monday night and tuesday night. Ah well. Such is the life of a college student.

The presentation on Wednesday went as well as could be expected. Instead of a 20 minute presentation, it turned into 30 minutes but oh well. We've never known the criteria that the professor is grading us on... so hopefully staying within the time limit isn't part of it :) But when you write a 32 page research paper and spend 40 hours in 4 days working on it... you may as well just share all the info you've got!

Yesterday (Thursday), I was EXHAUSTED. I even got nine hours of sleep or so on Wednesday night, but I think all the stress of the week and staring at a computer screen for so many hours finally got to me. I honestly could hardly function yesterday. But I had no work to do so I was able to just crawl into my bed at 9:30, read until 10:30 and was soundly asleep soon after!

It's now Friday afternoon, classes are done for the semester, workstudy is done for the semester, and I have three (THREE!!) more things left to do before I go home! I have a paper for my Brazil class due Tuesday, and a spanish final and calc final on Thursday. Monday-Wednesday of next week is "reading week" and we have no classes and just "get" to study. It will be a nice break! I'm not too worried about my finals, I have some work I need to put into them but I feel pretty good about them overall. AND THEN I'M HOMEBOUND!

I leave Friday morning!! Woohoo! Can't wait to be home, with nothing to worry about, no homework to do and a kitchen at my disposal! I've seriously got a long list of stuff I want to bake :D

Yay! The end is in sight! But honestly, I've loved my first semester here. There were definitely moments where I felt like I was in over my head, couldn't handle the pressure and the work-load, and just didn't like being so far from home. But these last 3 weeks (albeit stressful) have been truely wonderful and as excited as I am to go home, I think I'm more excited to have a break from working so hard. It doesn't matter where I am... I just wanna watch a movie. Or read a book. Or work out for longer than 30 minutes.

But I'm getting the best of both worlds :) home AND no school work! It's going to be great!

Funny story

Anna's (my suitemate) mom posted this on her facebook the other night. She really did this... it's hilarious

I was at WalMart buying a bag of Purina dog chow for my dog , in the check-out line when a woman behind me asked if I had a dog. Why else would I be buying dog chow, RIGHT ??? So on impulse I told her that no, I didn't have a dog, I was starting the Purina Diet again, and that I probably shouldn't, because I ended up in the hospital last time, but that I'd lost 50 pounds before I awakened in inten...sive care, with tubes coming out of most of my orifices and IVs in both arms. I told her that it was essentially a Perfect Diet and all you do is load your pockets with Purina Nuggets and simply eat one or two every time you feel hungry. The food is nutritionally complete so it works well and I was going to try it again. (I have to mention here that practically everyone in line was now enthralled with my story.) Horrified, she asked if I ended up in intensive care, because the dog food poisoned me. I told her no, I stepped off a curb to sniff a poodle's butt and a car hit me. I thought the guy behind her was going to have a heart attack he was laughing so hard. Better watch what you ask me and be prepared for my answer. I have all the time in the world to think of crazy things to say. Thank you Lohna for the laugh!

Insanity

This will be the shortest post yet but I feel like you all should hear that I'm at least alive over here :) Barely. It's pure insanity here. And reading week/finals and all that starts NEXT week. Ah. I had a huge presentation in my brazil class today. It went really well and i'm happy with it. I'll give more details later. Wednesday i have my urban studies presentation. it's 45% of our grade and well... a massive research project. there's a whole lot of drama that has happened with that but i'll just leave it at 28 hours of work for me 23 hours for one of my partners (since Saturday morning!)... and the other... well he left us high and dry. Nevertheless, we finished the paper...all 20+ pages of it. Tomorrow we start the powerpoint and presentation. I'm running on pure adrenaline at this point since i really haven't slept much the last couple nights. ah well... its coming to an end soon. I'd appreciate any prayers you could send my way!! love you all and i promise a better update thursday night! :D

3 more days!!!

I am so excited to be home again :) Ahhh!! I can't wait to see all my friends, cook Thanksgiving dinner with Suzy and relax a little. This week was really busy... I had a Spanish literature exam Tuesday, which went well. I got a 93%. Very happy about that. Then Wednesday night was my calc exam. During class Wednesday am, the professor told us a whole bunch more things we should know (which I didn't know at the time) and as I only had a two hour break between that morning class and the night test (wednesdays are my busiest days), I got a little worried. Fortunately, as I was getting lunch my Urban Studies professor emailed and cancled class that afternoon! Yeah! So that gave me all afternoon to study and it paid off! I got an 85% on that exam. Still waiting to get the results of my spanish grammar exam back, I might get that Monday.

Yesterday I registered for classes. I had a very late registration time (its semi random, but because I registered early this summer, I was at the end) and therefore, I didn't get everything I had wanted. Oh well. At the moment, I'm taking two spanish classes (both 300 level classes that will count toward my minor in spanish), Writing One (the only required freshman class), Mexico and Immigration, and I'm waitlisted for a course on the Traffic of Women in European Cinema and also waitlisted for Accounting. I'm pretty confident that I'll get into them both, and then i'll probably just test out Accounting. Who knows if I'll like it, but I like numbers and spreadsheets, so I thought I'd give it a try! That's a total of 19 credits, which is a ton... not sure what my plan is, but I'd rather sign up for more and drop after the first week then not be able to get in to a class I want!

Yesterday some friends and I went over to Blueberry Hill. It's a restaurant on the Loop that is extremely famous. Just about every famous person who has ever existed has been there. And there is a whole wall of pictures of all these famous people with the owner. The food was pretty good, the service extremely slow, but all in all, it was a fun evening.

This morning I woke up early and worked on my big Urban Studies paper. Yucky. I cranked out a good three hours early this morning then went down to get some breakfast and worked some more there... Then came back and worked for several more hours. I've currently answered 3 of the 7 questions and have 11 full pages. It's definitely going to be more than 20 pages, which is okay because she said 20 pages either single or double spaced. That doesn't make sense to me but whatever.

Then tonight, the College Central Christian group that I am apart of had a big Thanksgiving potluck. One of the families at the church invited us all over and we all brought a different Thanksgiving themed item and it was delicious!!! I made cranberry sauce in the kitchen in my dorm with Camden, one of the interns from the church and it turned out delicious! Suzy, we are definitely adding that to our meal this year! The whole evening was so fun and I definitely got to know everyone in the group a whole lot better.

Now its 10:15 and I'll probably go do more homework. Ah the life of a college student who doesn't drink...

Home!

So as many of you know, I flew home to surprise my family over the weekend :) It was a very short trip, but so worth it! And I know you're wondering now... how in the world did she make that happen? No, I did not just buy myself a ticket home. That's a little bit out of my monthly budget :)

My aunt Teresa is a new flight attendant and gets a certain number of free flying privledges each year. She had texted me the weekend before and asked if I'd like to fly home for a weekend. Obviously I said YES!! We anxiously watched the "loads" over the next week because I would be flying standby and could only go if there were enough seats. There were plenty of open seats on the "to seattle" flight but only 10-12 on the return. And if I didn't make the return on Sunday I'd be in big trouble. I can't miss any of my monday classes, and I had an exam this morning that I could not miss. Thankfully, it all looked good friday morning so off to the airport I went!

The Piehler's picked me up from the airport and took me to Suzy and Steve's house since I knew my family wasn't home. (Although I had told them I wanted to "skype" at some point friday night haha) Suzy knew I was coming, steve didn't... and his face was so great!! They took me back to my house where we waited for mom and spence to come home. I ended up just calling her and listened to her talk about her day etc. while I just tried not to burst out laughing :) I finally heard the garage door and after a few minutes of anxious waiting, I decided to just walk into the garage. I will never forget the looks on their faces!!!

We had a great day Saturday. We went up to the bellevue club to work out, had lunch at a yummy restaurant in bellevue (520 bar and grill, highly suggest it), spent some time down at the landing (bought some mittens and gloves to take back to school with me! Course, now it's like 70 degrees again), and finished out the evening making cake pops and a yummy ravioli dinner! Suzy and steve joined us for dinner and cake pops and we watched golf all night long :) It had been wayyyyy too long since I'd watched tv of any kind, let alone golf! I loved it!

Then up early and back to the airport sunday! It was a great weekend and I was so blessed to be able to spend some time with the fam! Thanks Teresa!!

This week is busy as well... I just finished my spanish literature exam. It went really well! The rest of today is dedicated to calc... that exam is tomorrow night. Then I'll have a spanish composition to prepare for, for friday and that 20 page paper due next tuesday. BUT THEN I'LL BE BACK HOME!!!

Looking forward to seeing all my friends next week :) NEXT WEEK! YAY!!

Oh Thursdays

It's been awhile since my last post... things have been busy around here! The last two weeks were slower "school-wise" but crazy on the social side :)

This week both of the groups I'm apart of are having their awareness campaigns, which means lots of "tabling" (selling things in the DUC) and then I have events to attend every night... n top of all my other meetings. So it's been a little bit crazy trying juggling all of it and then trying to study for my spanish exam tomorrow.

Speaking of exams... ugh. Round two of midterms. I don't know why they are called midterms, they should really be called triterms or something lol... But nevertheless, we are right in the middle of the second wave. I have my spanish grammar exam tomorrow, spanish literature on Tuesday, Calc on Wednesday and then urban studies... drum roll please... ANOTHER 20 PAGE PAPER! AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

So as horrible as it sounds, I am actually happy that it is a "take home exam" rather than an in-class exam. I have NO idea what she would expect us to know for an in class exam and she would basically expect us to have memorized the textbook. At least for the take home exam, we can have the textbook in front of us. Thankfully, she's not assigning the paper until next Wednesday so I don't need to worry about it yet. For now, I can focus on the other three exams and then as soon as those are done, I can start the big paper. Gr. I was hoping I could slide into Thanksgiving break once my exams were over. Apparently not.

Let's see... other than that, life is pretty routine. Which I like :) I typically have class in the am, workstudy in the afternoon, then do homework from 2pm-late. I fit dinner in there somewhere and then most nights have meetings at 8 or 9. So typically my day is "finished" at 10ish and that's when I can fit the gym in. And I'm STILL PAIN FREE!!! It'll be 5 weeks on Saturday :) I feel like a pregnant woman, counting the weeks hahaha. But I am so happy to be pain free and not have to worry about that as much. I still have to wear the brace until I'm at least 2 months pain free, but my excercise options are opening up and I can actually sweat at the gym now! So normally I go to the gym from 10-11, come back and shower and finish anything else and then i'm asleep by midnight!

I can't wait to be home for Thanksgiving!! It will be so great to have some time away from school and to be able to relax and cook and bake and hang out with everyone I miss!!!

So happy!!

I am just so happy and bursting with joy and I have no one to share it with since everyone is studying, so I thought I will put all the joy into a blog post! Sorry it has been awhile, but I've been so busy!!

1) I'm 18 days PAIN FREE!!! I am so giddy with excitement about this that I started laughing really hard... and Jin now thinks I'm crazy.

2) JOSEPH GORDON-LEVITT was on campus tonight and was AMAZING! He is a very famous actor (500 days of summer, Inception, 50/50 (in theaters now), batman) and was our "Fall South 40 Week Speaker." Check out this link www.hitrecord.com to see what he's doing and to see what kind of show he did tonight! I'll post videos and pictures to facebook!

3) PARENT AND FAMILY WEEKEND WAS THE BEST! Seriously, I haven't been that happy in weeks!!! I felt so blessed to have both Spence and my mama come all the way out here for just a quick 48 hours! But oh it was so good to see them!!!

They arrived Friday at 5 and got to campus around 6. I walked them around campus and showed them where my workstudy job is, where all my classes are, where all the different places to eat are... Then went back to the South 40 (the area where all the underclass dorms are - looks like Hogwarts meets Paris) and we had dinner in the Bear's Den (the "cafeteria" in the South 40, where I eat most of my meals). Spencer stayed with me for the night and that was so fun!!! He had some homework to do so we went down to Ursa's (lots of explaining on this post! anyways, ursa's is on the South 40 too and it is open every night and has big flat screen tvs everywhere and you can get wraps or quesadillas and crepes and smoothies and ice cream and hot cocoa... basically its amazingly dangerous). So we hung out there and did some work and then got brownie sundaes and went back up to my floor to play Settlers of Catan with some of the guys on my floor! Spence slept in my suitemates' room because they were both staying in their parents hotel rooms.

Saturday we did lots of shopping! Target, Bed Bath and Beyond... the mall. I needed some real shoes for winter!! Saturday night we went to dinner with Gayathri and Anna and their families and Jin too. We went to this restaurant on the loop (this super funky street a mile from campus - named one of the top 10 streets in america!) and had dinner at Pi pizza, which is Obama's favorite deep dish pizzeria!! It was AWESOME! And so fun to be with all of our families!!

Sunday, I took them to my church (and we got starbucks beforehand, yay!!! I'm wayyyy starbucks deprived!) and then we went to Forest Park (its this massive park next to campus - its bigger than central park in NY and has 2 golf courses, a zoo, museums and a whole bunch of other cool things) I hadn't spent much time in Forest Park even though its so close, so we went over there and went to a restaurant on this little lake and it could not have been better!!! The weather was amazing! It's back to like 75-80 degrees and we sat outside and had a yummy brunch! It was a perfect way to end a wonderful weekend with my family!!

3) I'm going backwards in time here... So Friday I TURNED IN MY 20 PAGE PAPER! What a relief!!! If any of you want to read it, let me know and I'll email it to you :) It's a lot to take in, but it would give you a pretty good idea of today's social problems!

4) I had a calc midterm on Wednesday. Since I pretty much failed the last one, there was a lot resting on this one. I didn't get to study as much as I had wanted for it since I had that Urban Studies paper to write, but I still spent hours and hours studying for it Monday and Tuesday. I ended up getting a 70/90 on the multiple choice (don't know about the ten points of free response yet), which I was happy with. AND THEN... HE EMAILS US THE NEXT DAY AND SAYS THAT SINCE THE MEAN SCORE WAS A 50/90 HE IS GIVING EVERYONE 10 FREE POINTS!!! So that took my score from a 70/90 to an 80/90!!! Plus, I'm pretty confident that I got all the free response points, so I should get a 90/100!!! YES!

5) On the last post, I had mentioned that I got an A- on my spanish lit midterm. We got our spanish grammer midterms back last week... and I got a B+! I was sooooooo relieved! That test was really difficult and I am not very good at all the grammar stuff... so I am thrilled!

Okay! That was a lot of information!! Sorry it took so long to get a post up!! Miss you guys!!! I'LL BE HOME IN A MONTH!!!!

Oh, and I'm not going to post my pictures on here... because it takes too long and I have 50 pages to read for tomorrow... oops! But I'll get them uploaded to facebook soon!

Fall Break Adventures

Today we had the day off of class for "Fall Break," a whole one day off of class! Woohoo! In my opinion they should not give us this and give us the whole week off for Thanksgiving... but I don't make the rules, I just follow them :)

Anyways, we were all very grateful for the day off, especially as it had been a long two weeks of midterms. I've gotten two of my three tests back... got a B+ on my Brazil and Globalization midterm and an A- on my spanish literature one! I was pretty happy!

Next week is going to be awful. I thought these last two weeks were bad... but oh no...

I had no idea. My urban studies professor, who scares the crap out of all of us, gave us our take-home midterm exam/essay today. It is six of the most broad questions regarding social issues in america, and she wants them addressed "with specificity" and A MAX OF 20 PAGES. aka she's expecting like 18. And its due next Friday. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.

This scares me for two reasons, 1) I haven't written a paper yet in college and I don't think i'm up for my first one being 18 pages. And 2) I have a Calc midterm Wednesday of which i cannot do any of the homework he has assigned so i'm in big trouble, a spanish quiz Thursday, a spani

sh paper due thursday and now this paper due friday. gr.

But :) then my reward will be spence and mom!!! Yay!!!!

So before I knew I had all this work to do this weekend, Gayathri (my suitemate) and I planned to go to the arch today! Here are some pictures from our adventure! It was really fun! There are more pictures on facebook too...

Midterms are OVER

This last week was a bit insane...

last Wednesday I had my Brazil and Globalization midterm which ended up being really easy!

Friday I had my Spanish grammar midterm, which covered soooooooo much material (like seriously everything I learned from 7-10th grade in one test). It was definitely hard and I really have no idea how I did but at least it behind me!

Today I had part 2 of my spanish midterm, for the literature and composition part of the class. I was pretty burnt out after all my studying for the test on friday so I kinda put off studying for this test until last night. Not exactly the best idea when you've got over 400 vocab words to memorize. but... thanks to this fabulous website called quizlet.com where you ca

n make all these flashcards and play games with the words you need to learn, I think I did really w

ell!!! It was 10x easier than the test on Friday, so I feel pretty good about it!

To celebrate the end of midterms week 1, my suitemates and I went out to dinner, froyo and a movie on Friday night. There is

a little theater on "the loop" (which is a pretty neat street - it is named one of the 10 Great Streets in America - and its only a mile from campus!) Anyways, this theater shows mostly low-budget films... sundance film festival films etc. They were playing one called Happy, Happy which was supposed to be about this little town in Norway

and a new family moved into town and how they solved all conflicts in the town... Yeah. Not really. The movie was actually about how all the people cheated on their sp

ouses and all the conflicts that arose. It was the exact opposite of what we were expecting to see! We seriously sat there just laughing at all the horrible things that were happening in the movie! Oh well... it was a fun night out!

Sunday night my friend Shannon invited me to go to a concert with her, at a really cool venue on the loop. It was this group called Beirut and they were FANTASTIC. I had never heard of them before, but they are this indie group who has become really popular. Their music was so cool! They are phenomenal on the trumpet and the tuba and other brass instruments... like SO good. It was a really fun night and although I was pretty exhausted yesterday, it was definitely worth it!

Here's a link to one of their songs :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WzORRh6lzg4

That's it for now! We've got fall break this week! Woohoo! No class Friday! I don't have any big plans except to work on some group projects haha... oh so fun.

Love you all!

Fall

So we aren't quite to the "leaves change color and fall slowly to the ground" stage of fall here in St. Louis, but these last two weeks or so have been absolutely beautiful! Last week it was about 75 dreses and sunny, this week we're back into the mid 80s and it is so

perfect. I honestly don't think I've had this

many days of sunshine in a row... in my lifetime! When in Seattle can you count on ONE hand the number of times it has rained in the last month? Never. The month of September: twice.

I know that as soon as I publish this post, I'll check the weather and I'll have jinxed it and the forecast will change to rain for the weekend or something... no no no!!! But, in the meantime, I am soaking up the sun!

I have class at 9am Mon, Wed, and Fri and 10am Tues, and Thurs. So on tuesdays and thursdays I normally go to the gym and do my "ten-minutes

on the elliptical- whoop-de-doo!" But as that has gotten a little boring and my back isn't healing as quickly, I thought I should maybe stop the elliptical and just try walking in the mornings. So Tuesday I walked over to a little coffee shop about a mile from campus and boy, was that the perfect way to start my morning! Here are some pictures since the morning was so beautiful!

These houses here are like castles!!!

The "secret" archway back onto campus... I feel like Alice in Wonderland or something.

Back in the fight against human trafficking

Despite the busyness and intensity of this week because of several midterms, this has been a really, really good week :)

Monday, I presented my human trafficking powerpoint to the Not For Sale group. It went extremely well! All the information came back to me and I think my passion for the issue was definitely apparent. Not For Sale is primarily focused on raising awareness and raising money to rescue girls and to provide shelters... but since most of my research was on the Demand side of the issue and I really feel like that is essential in this fight, I wanted to be sure and make that a big part of my presentation. I did, and I really opened up their eyes to that part of the issue. During Human Trafficking Awareness week (first week of Nov) we are going to have several events to raise awareness... and I suggested doing one focused on the demand side - maybe addressing how pornography fuels the induesty. They really liked the idea and asked me to spearhead that event!

On Monday nights, the International and Area Studies Dept hosts different speakers and event from around the country. Incidentially, the people speaking this week were some journalists from the Pulitzer Center who cover 3rd issues, specifically women and children in crisis. It was a fascinating presentation and I'm so glad I went. The journalists also spoke in my International Leadership seminar Tuesday afternoon so it was neat to hear from them again - in a much smaller setting. One of the journalists works primarily through photos and documentaries and he showed this short documentary that he made. It was incredibly powerful and left us all in a numbed silence. Here is the link to the video: http://pulitzercenter.org/video/haiti-child-prostitutes-survival-sex. I highly suggest you watch it and maybe pass it on to friends and family... It's a powerful way to spread the word about the reality of prostitution and trafficking.

In a weird sort of way, it's warmed my heart to be working on this issue again. I think that is part of why I have loved this week so much... This is definitely one of my passions.

Heading into a busy week!

Quick update on my week:

I joined a group on campus called Not For Sale a few weeks ago. The organization is based out of California and they have student awareness groups on college campuses all over the US. After all my work last year with human trafficking, I knew I wanted to join a group on campus that dealt with this issue. I'm really looking forward to working with everyone at NFS to spread awareness about human trafficking (especially domestic) to everyone on campus. So... long story short, we have another meeting tomorrow and I am giving a presentation to the group to get all of the group members up-to-speed on the reality of this issue. I was working on the powerpoint tonight and I was so happy to be back, working on this issue again!

Wednesday I have my first exam for my Brazil and Globalization class. Not too sure what to expect with it. And I'll be honest... I didn't study at all for it this weekend!!

Friday, I have a big Spanish exam. Like BIG. It covers pretty much everything we learned in 7th, 8th and 9th grade. Although most of it is review, it's a lot of material and it's at a much higher level. I studied for a solid five hours for it this afternoon... and i'll be doing the same every day this week.

I am extremely glad I am not taking General Chemistry. I'd guess maybe 60% of the freshman are in gen chem and they have their first exam on Tuesday. They are all freaking out because apparently everyone gets like 35% on it. I am VERY happy that I am not doing the science route!

Okay, it is now just about midnight and that means it's bedtime!

Beginnings

I'm loving Pandora these days... Absolutely loving it. I have three stations that I rotate between. The "starting" artists are: Jon McLaughlin (definitely my favorite artist of all time), Mumford and Sons (when I need a more relaxing-lose myself in the music kind of station) and what I'm currently listening to - Gabriel's Oboe by Ennio Morricone. Oh my gosh. I'm in Heaven right now. It's funny that I write that because I was literally just thinking about how incredible it would be to go to a symphony concert and just sit there for hours... and then I realized that in Heaven, we'll probably be able to do that :) Or, heavenly music will just be constantly playing and it will be amazing.

Ah. Someday....

In the meantime though, I'm still here - sitting in my dorm room, 1,000 miles away from my friends and family, writing a blog to distract myself from the calculus that is sitting in front of

me. This last month has been a very interesting time for me. I like college - don't get me wrong - but... it's hard! Classes are difficult, the homework load is intense and the academic level here is so high! And I miss home. A lot. I never thought I would get homesick so fast. And it's weird things that I miss... Thai food, tv (sports especially - I didn't realize how much I missed just having sports on in the background all the time until today when we went to a sports bar and grill for anna's birthday!), casseroles and grilled cheese, having my puppy curled up at my feet, having a comfy place to sit outside in the sun...

And of course I miss my momma and spence! I think we probably talk more now than we did while I was home! I am SO excited to have them out here in three weeks! I can't wait to give them a big hug and spend 48 hours or so with them! Ah!!

Today Anna's family flew up and surpr

ised her for her birthday. It was so much fun to plan this behind her back and then have it finally happen today! And can I just say how good it was for us to all have a mom around again :) This may sound weird but mom's have a distinct (but good!) smell about them. I swear the moment she walked in, the air smelled different! She smelled like my mom :) And I've missed that smell!

We went to our favorite cupcake p

lace after dinner. The Cup in the Central West End has the best cupcakes ever! Normally I've gotten the

Peach Cobbler Cupcake ever time I've gone there, but that was a special flavor the the month of september :( So no more. But today I tried their pumpkin one... So so so good!!!!

Well, I've wasted enough time... gotta get back to calc :/

Love you all and miss you!