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