so, my first week of classes is almost over. i've actually managed to survive it. i even did laundry! and my roomies and i are now mostly unpacked. we're still figuring out how to organize everything. we're thinking of going to the mall this weekend to pick up a communal bookcase since, as you can see, my desk area is a little cluttered right now:
the mall is fun. there are actually two of them, right across the highway from each other - an indoor mall and an outdoor reston town center-type deal. we went the sunday before class started with michelle, chiara (she's an italian international student with a fancy coffee maker - i took it as a sign that we should be friends), and renata, my neighbors. michelle's the girl from fredericksburg that i mentioned in my last post. freshmen aren't allowed to have cars on campus but she got her parents to drop hers off for the day so she could give us the grand tour/we wouldn't have to take buses. she's got the cutest car - it's a bright yellow beetle. i'm in love with it. oh, and while we were in downtown fredericksburg, i found the cutest vintage thrift shop. it specializes in nothing but audrey hepburn memorabilia. like, it tracks down posters and post cards and replicas of outfits she wore in movies. i probably don't have to tell you this, but i stocked up:
classes started monday. it was pretty easy. i have my biology lectures and lab that day, but it turned out to be a lot of review from high school. i had a lot of sophomore year/s-la flashbacks. oh, and we got to play with tapeworms. that was fun. our tapeworm had spots and cute little goggle eyes when we looked at him through the microscope, so my partner and i decided to name him fred.
i've got three classes in a row on tuesdays and thursdays. two of them are really fun and one of them is stats. my chaucer and his age class is amazing. the professor is just like my ap lit teacher last year, which means everything is automatically funny. today we started out talking about chaucer's life and the various references he makes to religion/history/literature/nature/astrology/your mom and somehow ended up talking about mimes and how she still can't pronounce virginia place names correctly. i'm happy, because it's a 300-level english class and my advisor was all "caution! danger! danger, will robinson." but it's all good.
my other english class is global issues in literature, which is, predictably, depressing. it's also my last class of the day, so we usually go straight from there to dinner. not the best idea. so far we've been focusing on famine and poverty. as you may expect, these aren't topic conducive to a healthy appetite. thank god for to go boxes, i suppose.
tuesday was pretty eventful outside of class, too, actually. on the way to dinner we ran into a guy dressed like this, which i'm sure s-la will appreciate:
and i stopped him to say hi/tell him how in love with his shirt i am. (the friends i was with were mildly bemused but i think i'm training them to get used to the weird). after that came the awkward small talk phase that actually wasn't awkward because the guy told us the cutest story about how he and his friend were going to the dodgeball club game (side note: there's a dodgeball club. oh, college) and everyone was a little afraid of going now because two people who graduated last year had met at dodgeball and were now married. and then he asked us to go to dodgeball with them. which...no. i'm holding out for an accent or someone with proven culinary ability. we all know what happens when i get near a kitchen. it's a good thing there are dining halls/restaurants/takeout.
the takeout around here isn't bad, actually. i still haven't found a good thai place, yet, but we found a yummy chinese place that delivers and had a movie night in on wednesday. wednesday was basically a girls' night, actually. to begin with, the momster came to visit/drop off more things that i forgot. we walked around downtown with the lulus. i miss my evil little munchkins so much. i wish i could smuggle them into the dorm with me. they're so tiny, it's not like anyone would notice. well, not until every pair of headphones in the hall ends up in lulus evil clutches, anyway. still, we had a good time, see:
after that, we headed to the wonderfully air-conditioned library to chill in the tree houses:
while there, we discovered that one of my hall-es likes to dance while she's studying/listening to her ipod. we got the funniest video of it but i've been banned from posting it. oh, we also invented the term hall-e. it's pronounced like wall-e and it's basically the people who live on your hall. idk, it's just fun to write out. plus we had just watched wall-e (one of the other hall-es was showing it in her room and we popped in) so we sort of had it on the brain. then we had more animal fun times. first, we tried to lure a squirrel over to say hi with trash:
and later that night we saw russell the cat again:
club fair was wednesday night, too, so now i'm signed up for all sorts of interesting things. i'm excited. after club fair was the laundry party. me and six of my hall-es grabbed our laundry and met up to combine our laundry and get it all done together. our laundry room is in the basement, so it was good to have buddies down there. we ended up bringing computers and ipods and speakers and having an exercise/dance party since it took, like, two and a half hours to get everything sorted/washed/dried/folded/sorted again. oh, and in the middle of it, s-la, jenibean, and meggo were all "get on oovoo"/melodramatically asserting that i'm dead (i'm clearly not - look at me bloggling!) so i got on oovoo and talked to them/let them creep on us. it was pretty fun.
and then after that was a bout of creepiness/general hilarity that i can't blog about but am mentioning so you can remind me to text/call/skype you about it sometime. it's carried over until...now, actually (two of my neighbors, one of my roomies, and a couple of my hall-es are stalking the fourth floor while i write this), so you'll want to hear this eventually. i might get to be james(ina?) bond after all! and to think my second grade teacher told me being a super spy wasn't a viable career choice. that
today i had three classes in a row again, so nothing too interesting happened. like i said, we took today to clean and organize and make a list of groceries to get (we're splitting breakfast and basic snacks with our neighbors so we can all have breakfast and decent coffee together early in the mornings instead of going all the way to a dining hall before class. i spent some more time studying in the tree houses with a few of my hall-es. oh, and we had a mini nail party in the lounge. there were so many pretty colors, i was a little overwhelmed. my fingers are now sherbet orange with a sparkle me silver top coat (OPI! i love my hall) and my toes are painted red hot chili pepper. after that we just chilled in my room and watched reruns of community and the office. oh, and we finally figured out the channel listings. that was exciting (well, to me, since we all know i'm a nerd). and now i'm blogging really quickly (in case you couldn't tell, i've been saving bits and pieces of this post as drafts all week long and was too lazy to finish and post it) before everyone comes back.
tomorrow i have my first revolution and cinema in iran seminar. i'm really excited for that class, in part because the kite runner is on the reading list for it and i really loved that book. wish me luck! and tell me how life has been for all of you. or get on skype. i'm sunandsilence (obviously). i need friends!
