Clean Sheets

I do apologize for the lack of blogging this week--it's probably a good sign, actually, means I've been keeping busy. :-) And it's getting late here and I'm almost done packing for Sicily and getting everything ready (but not quite), so this might turn out to be a short blog.... Not sure.

Okay, so I last wrote on Tuesday. What has happened since then? I don't think there was anything of interest to report on Wednesday. I took all my midterms this week, and I now know that I'm getting an A- in College Algebra. I'm not sure what my other grades are looking like, but they mail them home to the parents, so parents, you'll know soon enough. I wrote a paper for English class on Wednesday defending the respectability of country music. It was an okay paper, but nothing I'm particularly proud of. Wednesday was mostly studying

Thursday I had my Western Civ midterm, which I felt pretty good about. I didn't really feel insecure on any questions, with the exception of a primary source question on Anaximander (sp?) and an identification on Mycenae. But other than that I felt it went pretty well. I also turned in my country music essay in English class, and we discussed lots of random things, I'm sure because that's what English class is. Not much happens in it. After class I went back down the hill, then went back up the hill for the 6:00pm lecture, which I really liked. It was all about Sesame Workshop, which is, essentially, Sesame Street and how they bring it to other countries. It was really interesting--all about how it's pretty much local production companies and educators who build the programming for any given country. So in South Africa, for example, they have the first ever HIV-positive muppet; in Egypt they focus on strong female characters who enjoy reading, etc. because they have problems with female literacy; in Japan they don't need to work on cognitive whatnot, but they need to work on socio-emotional development. And there were video clips too, so that was cool.

After the lecture Christina, the Writing Center Director, took us writing consultants out for dinner. First we went over to Italy (Ponte Tresa to be exact) but the Chinese restaurant we were going to go to was remodeling and therefore not open for business. So we walked back over the border into Switzerland and went to a little grotto. It was a lot of fun. I think I found my people--I'm going to need to continue working in Writing Centers. We spent a good long time laughing about the thesis statement... Just to give one example. I would relay more of the hilarity, but I have the feeling that you had to be there. I didn't get back from that until like 11:30pm. I know, crazy writing consultants. Then I had my German midterm yesterday (Friday morning) and then Marketing. I went to the Writing Center for an hour to "work" and was the only one there for some reason, Christina wasn't even there, so I left after an hour and got lunch and went back down the hill. And I've pretty much been getting ready to leave ever since.

Deniz and I went to the train station to exchange money. The exchange rate sucks, I might add. Before that though I went grocery shopping, got a few things to sustain me until we leave tomorrow morning. We also had a bit of a "food-fest" last night in the Common Room kitchen, and a ton of people showed up. I made Bademjan Kookoo. It turned out all right, nothing special (there were a number of obstacles it faced during production, so it was impressive that it was edible, in my opinion), but everyone loved it and ate it anyway. They were highly delighted by my eggplant. I also made oatmeal raisin cookies, which I finished baking today (I didn't use all the cookie dough yesterday). Alauna made an amazing tiramisu, and Alyssa made potato curry and rice. And lots of other people came downstairs too and started cooking; it seemed like a mad attempt to get rid of any food that might spoil before Academic Travel.

And then I watched Gone with the Wind, the first half, last night and then the second half today. I love that movie. And that book for that matter. Then today I've pretty much been cleaning and doing laundry all day. Dishes all day, I swear. Washed all my sheets, all my towels, all my clothes. Everything's clean and organized for the most part, with the exception of my desk, which should be clean by the time I leave tomorrow. I'm really paranoid about forgetting some important part of the puzzle on my way out the door tomorrow morning. I think I'm going to get up around 6:00/6:30am to make sure that I get everything in order. I also made a list, of course. Okay, I should really go to bed, so that I'm not tired tomorrow...

But before I go, here's what my travel schedule looks like for the next month or so:

>October 15-25, Sicily (Taormina & Palermo, if you want specifics my mom has the itinerary)
>October 26-31, Munich (staying with Tobi & Gerlinde)
>November 3-4/5, Neuchatel (Switzerland, staying with Bardia)
>November 23-26, Barcelona

I may or may not have communications available in Sicily... I'm bringing my Swiss cellphone and possibly my US cellphone too. So you can always call my Swiss phone with a phonecard--I think it works the same way? And then I may or may not be able to find an internet cafe or two. They're supposed to be everywhere in Europe, but Lugano has shaken my faith in that belief.

And Happy Birthday Michele! I hope you guys have a great time at the pumpkin patch!! I miss you!

Smile, Ari