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!