Greetings from Swatland. I am, in fact, alive. Although it's been close.

Finals are pretty killer. Four papers, and one exam for me. Luckily, I'm pretty proud of how disciplined I've been and I don't think I'll be too pressed for time. So no stress, but a lot of mental fatigue.

I have actually done some fun stuff this past week, though. I went to the winter jazz performance students played in- so cool. I don't know what good jazz is, but it sounded pretty to me. I also went to the a cappella concert featuring all of our a cappella groups. I hadn't been to one yet, and it was obviously mind-boggling. I was expecting some holiday songs, and was a little disappointed but it was bomb nonetheless. And then two days ago I went to a mini theatre performance. Different students did about 5 different scenes from different plays. It was a good variety, and made me think some more about acting. I think I want to take a theatre class here, maybe next year.

It's been raining all day today. Doesn't it know it's supposed to snow, not rain? I think the weather is having a bit of an identity crisis. Hah. Stupid joke.

Speaking of identity crisis...my roommate is forcing us to go Christmas caroling sometime next week. Only she's Jewish. Haha. It makes me laugh. She also wants to write her first letter to Santa. It actually looks kind of terrible...like the conquering Christians are at it again. Only it's really not. It's all her. But I guess she's going to teach me a thing or two about Hanukkah so I'm excited for that.

3 essays down, 1 and some studying to go.

Hope you all are enjoying your snow. or lack there of.

Loveeeeee.

Hola.

It's mee. In the library. Reallly not wanting to start on my finals. And thinking about you guys.

I had a sweet day today. Only one class, then met a girl on the soccer team I haven't seen in awhile for lunch. After lunch Alex and I played some tennis... we hit around for bit, did some serving and then played a few matches. He's in a tennis class for PE here and took our outing a little more serious then I was expecting. It was fun though, we got pretty competitive, but in the end he pretty much swept me. Although we are like the exact same skill level. It was just his day I guess. After tennis we swam at the indoor pool on campus and it was awesome. Just breaking the mold of the everyday routine. But in effect I didn't get much work done so now I'm paying for it.

I also went to work for an hour today. I got a job at the cage, if I haven't mentioned already. Pretty laid back... you just fold all the athletes laundry for however long you want to and talk (or listen) to the older guy that works full time in there while he watches you fold. Today I probably listened for 20 minutes about a scandal with the track uniforms. I honestly couldn't even tell you what he said. I have no idea.

Oh yeah, it was 60 degrees today. In December. It's nutsss. Nuts. But supposedly people are saying it's supposed to snow this weekend. So we'll see.

Lovve you guys.

Jeeeeesh. It's been a while. It's the first day back from break!And it sucks. It was so great to be home but that amount of time wasn't enough to miss school and more than enough to make me want to stay with family. Ugh. And these next three weeks are going to be intense. The definition of intense. But in a way I'm kind of excited to be likened to one of those olden day torturing machines that stretches your arms and legs in different directions until... i guess I don't actually know what the end result is. Well, in my case, hopefully a lot of cerebral stretching.

Haha that made no sense at all.

Anyway, Thanksgiving was a blast. Travel was pretty smooth for the most part and I got rides to and from the airport, making life so much easier. Jeff, Lynne, Trey, Payton, Grandma, John and Sandy came over for a big family affair, complete with way too much food, watching football, throwing the football, and playing cards. Wish we could have been with the Browns and Nonna and Papa too, but it sounded like they had a great day in tropical Arizona. I finally got to see my second Husker game of the season but there's no doubt where I'll be for the Big XII championship. That's right, monopolizing the dorm's TV surrounded by pushy Lost addicts. Right when I got back to Swat it was back to the old routine. Stayed up till 3:30 am writing a paper, went to class, and gave my first presentation of my college career.

I said "ethnograful." Instead of "ethnographical." Hahahah. Whatever. It went allright.

But I'm going to lunch with my roomie and a friend so I promise I won't be such a slacker at this anymore.

Byeee.

Yelloo strangers. Dang I miss you guys.

Just finished up class for the day and am thinking of seriously throwing down on some work. For those of you shamefully not following Swat Women's soccer, we lost in the first round of the conference tournament. It was pretty disappointing just because we had so much potential. The game unfortunately ended in a shootout going scoreless in overtime. A couple minutes before regulation time one of my teammates hit the crossbar on a shot but it evened out their crossbar shot earlier in the game. It's whatever though. I'm already pumped for next season and am curious to know what the off season is going to be like. Not having the seniors there next year is really going to suck, though. Really fun group of girls. Pretty awesome season.

I'm not sure I can really report on anything outside of doing work and soccer... I took a little trip to the Goodwill and I got a cooking pan, a sweater, snow boots and an old Polaroid camera. So that was very exciting. When I was checking out my treasures a man behind me saw my film camera and we started talking and he said he has a few lenses he wants to get rid of that would work for my camera and some interesting film he likes to mess around with. We have one big event on campus every semester which is usually bringing in a pretty big band and that's going on Saturday. Girltalk is the band coming, whom I don't know much of but kids here are really fired up about it so I'm really looking forward to it. From my understanding it's a dj-esk guy who mixes different music together, a really popular style right now. Yeah, it'll be fun. Aaaaand because we don't have a soccer game this weekend I get to see the Husker game! Hecckk yeah. Iz also wants to go to this apparently amazing house this guy made entirely out of cement and they give tours and stuff? I don't really get it but it'll probably be another one of her elaborate schemes she drags me off to. So it's guaranteed to be good.

Still flying under the radar of the swine, although more people are getting it everyday. Let's see if I can keep it that way. Hope everyone else is staying healthy. Lovee.

Sorry I'm such a failure at this...I've been busy? Ahh that's no excuse.

As far as soccer goes, we had a really big couple of conference wins and then lost a doozy. That put us in a scary position for the conference tournment, but after some other loses by teams we officially have a bid. I'm so excited because I know we can beat every team in our conference. If we play well. That's a big IF.

School has been pretty nuts lately... 4 am, 6 am, 4 am nights. So i turned in two papers and then did absolutely no work yesterday because I could. Today it's back to the old routine, though. The leaves here are amazing by the way. Just glanced out my window and it's pretty freakin incredible. Fall in an arboretum? Can't get much better. Everyday there are more students here infected with the swine flu. There are a couple in the basement of my dorm and one on my hall, that I know of. It's freaking me out. If you are confirmed to have it you get quarenteened in a room in the health center. No way am I doing that so keep your fingers crossed for me. 

A couple nights ago I went to the opening night midnight showing of the Michael Jackson "This is it" movie. It was pretty incredible- the background dancer's saying what it meant to work with him, all of the rehearsal footage, seeing the artist in his element doing what he has made such an impact on. It was awesome. Now in the next couple days I'll be finishing up work and getting my Halloween costume together. The seniors have decided we are going to be S.W.A.T. team officers, like the cute play on words because our school is called Swat. The idea is a lot better than the costume is going to look. A couple freshman and I walked to Target yesterday and bought black gloves and hats and t-shirts while we ran into a few girls from our school not on the team who had legitimate S.W.A.T. gear in their Toys-R-Us bags. So basically we're going to be shown up hardcore. But whatever. I'm going to see if I can make one of those bullet belts and maybe a few other accessories. We'll see.

Off to the dining hall and then borrowing a bike to go on a little ride with a friend.

Love and miss you guys.

Jeez it's hard getting back into the study mode. Luckily I can afford to have a sluggish start because I don't have much work to do.

A couple weeks ago one of my hall mates, Mariam, and I made a list of things we want to do this year. One of them is to get on top of every roof of every building on campus. So she came to my room last night dressed in black and Emily and I got into similar apparel and went out into the night around 11. We passed the dining hall first and giddly attempted to boost each other up but the gutter was too flimsy and we were giggling too much. We downsized with a roof I've been on before of one of the dorms. It was easy because you can climb out of this one window right onto the roof. However we had to endure some embarrassment as there were a bunch of kids sitting in the lounge. We debated for awhile whether or not to do and finally without a word just opened the window and walked right out, being as inconspicuous as possible. The black outfits didn't help with that, however. The next one was trickier. We found a staircase in the main building in campus that led to another and eventually to metal stairs on the side of the building, and there was number 2. Number 3 was the Science Center which we conquered easily. After that we called it a night. We want to knock out a few more before it starts getting cold.

Haha and also tonight I was leaving the dining hall and I saw my roommate some distance over at the chocolate milk with her back to me. I was eating an orange and about to climb up the staircase when I decided it'd be fun to hit her with a slice of orange. Surprisingly I nailed her in the back of the head and as she turned her head to look for the culprit...it definitely was not my roommate. I casually proceeded up the stairs. Ahh. Good times.

We have a big game tomorrow that I really want to win and I'm off to practice.

Love.

Hello and goodbye Becca. It was a short visit but we loved every minute of it. I tried to get her to write a blog but she wouldn't. Typical.

Sooo. NYC. After we got in and stayed that first night with Jess at her Uncle's in The Brox we slept in and were off to Gisa's house. Freakin public transportation. We got on the bus, got on the subway and then got lost. And it was freeeezing. Not snowing but pretty dang cold. Gloves and hat and coat cold. But of course we had fun nonetheless. Jess and her friend Jane were with us and while we were lost Jane taught us the moonwalk. I'm actually pretty good and Becca's getting there. I already showed it off in the dining hall the first day we got back to Swat. So we finally just grabbed a taxi to get to Gisa's little brownstone- thanks dad- and then she wasn't home. After a little moonwalk practice Gisa came home. She had gone to the bus stop to wait for us :/ It worked out though. 

Gisa is one of the most incredible people I think I've ever met. She ushered us into the basement apartment of her little house, showing us everything- "This is my boiler room." "This is my closet" "This is my bathroom. I have toothbrushes. Do you need a toothbrush?" Gisa, her husband Benek, Becca and I sat through a lunch of bread and cheese for a good couple hours talking. Benek has dementia and it made me pretty sad but he would laugh when we'd laugh so that was happier. But Gisa makes sure she talks enough for both of them. Stories started pouring out with philosophies and theories and conclusions. It was too good not too get out the video camera. A little inappropriate for the dinner table, I thought, but too good to not tape. She doesn't seem to mind, though. For the rest of the day and the next morning we listened to story after story and saw pictures and letters from an unimaginable past. We did run out of tape but there's got to be some good stuff in what we have. We spent a lot of the time at the dinner table eating cucumber and cheese and meatballs and for breakfast, lat and bagels. I can't bring myself to think of that meal now but Becca really liked it. It was all in all an amazing experience. Once in a lifetime.

We said our goodbyes and spent our last day roaming around Manhatten, doing really nothing to mention. We took at least 5 different subways all over the city, thank goodness Jess knew what she was doing. We finished the day off with pizza and hot chocolate in Brooklyn. Jess's uncle dropped us off at 5 and we found a cute breakfast diner downtown to burn time before our bus came. My friend drove Becca and I to the airport to drop her off this afternoon. It was unbelievably good to have her here. I miss her already.

Love ya'll.