I'm sorry I've been so horrible at posting lately. I promise I will post more. But right now I'm working on another blog: whatsthelodown.blogspot.com It's more about commentary on pop culture. But I will update this one more! That's my Summertime Resolution

Stuff from April (scroll from the bottom up)

Sting!

Sting was the last to perform! At this point we were about 6 rows back

James Cameron and his wife

Me and Maddie in the crowd while some musicians played. We pushed our way up to the front so we were really close!

Space suit

Maddie and I went to the Mall for a huge Climate Rally. 2 people there were dressed up as those creatures from the movie "Avatar"

Funny story: Kris Allen, the reigning American Idol champion, was on campus (yes, the guy from the poster I got)! He was there to talk to one of the high schools nearby about his trip to Haiti. If you know anything about me, you know that I love American Idol, so I went up to him and told him how big of a fan I am and asked for a picture with him. Somehow I was the only person who went up to him/knew who he was/knew he was on campus, but it was still pretty cool! And I had just gotten out of class, so I still had my backpack on. I also posted links to some of his songs at the bottom of this blog. "Let It Be" is a great performance-I would definitely recommend watching at least that one.

Colin, Leah and I went to a DC United Soccer game. Unfortunately, we bought our tickets at the game and we didn't want to spend a lot of money, so we got stuck in a really high section. It was also really windy that day, and Colin and I are scared of heights, so we were freaking out. Then we left at half-time (or whatever it's called in soccer).

I went to a record store one day with Leah and Colin, and they were giving away a ton of free posters, so I grabbed this one with 4 album covers from people

from American Idol. Try to remember the guy in the top left corner...

We went out to dinner for Maddie's birthday, so here's

Me, Maddie, and Becca posing in a Metro station.

Cherry blossoms

Cherry blossoms

Leah and I posing in front of the Maryland statue at one of the monuments (I forget the name right now). This was during the Cherry Blossom Festival at the beginning of April. The trees were beautiful, but there were SO MANY TOURISTS. It was so crowded. Plus I was sick and it was really hot out, so wasn't my favorite day ever.

Some random thoughts from this semester that I didn't mention below:

I found out my housing and I was randomly assigned to live with someone that I'm actually already friends with, plus her friend. And I'm in the dorm I wanted and some of my friends are in the same building on different floors so I'm really excited for that!

Today I registered for my classes for the fall and here are my classes I'm taking:

For my Political Communication major:

Research Methods

Public Opinion

Honors Classes:

Women in the United States

And an arts class where you go see plays at different DC theaters and write papers on them

and for my Foreign Cultures requirement I'm taking Buddhism, which should be interesting considering I wanted to be Buddhist in 6th grade.

And I don't have Friday classes for the 3rd semester in a row (well technically I did have them this semester and last semester but we rarely meet for discussions). Woo hoo!!

I had midterms the week before and after Spring Break, but I only had a test for Psych (I got a 98% on it yay!) and News Writing. I had an article for Science class, a paper for Honors Writing (I got an A- but I can do a rewrite on it for an A), and essays for Intro to Political Communications.

I also had a job interview for a position on campus this summer. I hope it went well but we'll see!

Start from the bottom of this post and scroll up!

I visited Arlington National Cemetery for the first time on Sunday with my friend to do research for a paper for my Political Communication class.

Me and Dad at the Botanical Gardens after the Kite Festival.

The Kite Festival last Saturday on the Mall--tons of people flying kites. And it was really windy that day so it was perfect for that.

Colleen, Maddie, and me at the Ben Folds concert in DC. He's a great singer who also plays the piano. But we had to leave early because I fainted :(

Emily and I on a rooftop restaurant our family went to over Spring Break.

My friends surprised me with a very delicious cake that they made!

With Leah and Becca

I went out to a thai restaurant for my 19th birthday with 8 of my friends. This is with my friend Krista.

We went down to the Georgetown waterfront that afternoon and took pictures there.

Mom came to visit the weekend before my birthday and brought me a giant cupcake cake!

Leah and I were trying to find her a sari one night, so I decided to make one out of scarves. Obviously it didn't look very authentic.

Me and Maddie one night before going to an 80's themed party-I cut up some old shirt and drew on it and used the scraps for my scrunchie!

We all had a couple of snowball fights, and here Becca was pretending to attack me with her "sled."

We all sledded down 23rd street. You can see the Lincoln Memorial in the distance.

We tried to make sleds out of random objects- i used the lid to one of my storage bins. It didn't go so well--I moved like 2 inches down the hill we were sledding on.

Snowball fight outside my dorm

Me and Leah in front of our statue during the Snowpocalypse

I'm sure you've all heard about Snowpocalypse (or SNOW MY GOD, Snowmaggeden, and eventually, snow-ver it). The first week of February we were hit with a blizzard, and then just when they were cleaning up from that one we had another one. i think we got around 2 feet. i was out of class for 11 days (counting weekends) so I was ready to go back to class once the snow stopped.

So......I haven't updated in a while! Rather than writing 50 pages on what's happened between January and now I'll just do a little photo montage.

Waiting to get our picture taken with Kathy Griffin

Sunday night that we went out

At the Museum of Natural History--we're rocking our horns alongside the triceratops

Going out for Becca's birthday

The candle plates that they used at the Indian restaurant

So classes are going well. I haven't gotten any grades back yet, but I have some stuff coming up soon. There's a ton of reading though, I'm definitely gonna be stuck in my room reading all weekend. Two weekends ago I went out Friday, Saturday, and Sunday (we didn't have school the next day) so last weekend I stayed in and didn't really do much. The weekend that we went out a lot was for Becca's birthday and we got to try this really nice Indian restaurant in Georgetown that was delicious. They served our food over candles which I'd never seen before. That Sunday Anna and her mom came to see my dorm because they were in town but we only got to hang out for like 20 minutes, but that's ok because now she finally knows what my room looks like. Later that day I went to a GW gymnastics meet with two of my friends and that was kind of cool because I'd never been to one. Although every time one girl fell or did some really crazy trick I would freak out.

So last week the best thing that happened was I got to meet Kathy Griffin!!! If you don't know, she's the most hilarious stand-up comic and she has a reality show on BRAVO and she's just the greatest. So I went to a book signing by her a couple of blocks from my school with Colin and Maddie and we got a picture with her and she was super nice! I would post the picture but it's sort of inappropriate for my blog. So anyways the fact that I got to meet her made my year, she's one of my favorite celebrities. That Saturday Leah and Colin and I wanted to do something DC-ish so we went to the Museum of Natural History, which was actually pretty cool. I'm not a big museum person but I forgot how many different parts of that one they had, like the gem exhibit and the dinosaurs and the oceans and everything.

On Monday and Tuesday I did psychology studies. For my psych class you have to participate in 3 research projects where you either do a test or an online study, so for 2 of mine i participated in experiments. they were really boring though i ended up staring at a computer screen for like 45 minutes for both of mine. Other than that I've been busy with my volunteering thing and doing homework. Although I did make time to finally watch the premiere of season 2 of Felicity, which I got for Christmas. All of my friends and I love Felicity which I have on DVD and is the best show made like 10 years ago about this girl who goes to college in New York City it's amazing. And I watched the show my senior year on DVD then brought it to school and rewatched it with everyone here, so now I've finally moved on to new episodes. And I watched High School Musical 1 and 2 with Colin, who has never seen either which is blasphemy to me. I watched the first one 33 times before I lost count, and I've seen the second one over 10. Oh and I watched Rent on Sunday or Monday, so it's been a week for musicals. Last night I went out to dinner with Maddie, Colin and Leah at this greasy pub nearby that was delicious and then we got to see some dorms for next year because I need to figure out where I'm living. Today I had Friday class and then I got lunch with Colin and then I went grocery shopping with Stef and I got soooo much food I'm so excited.

Pictures from Winter Break

I went to downtown Annapolis with my friend Spencer the week before I left for school. I'm posing in front of the water there.

My best friend Anna came to SP after New Years. We're holding up the presents we made for each other.

My friends from high school Joanna, Lauren, and I posing at a birthday party that was thrown for three of my other friends.

Cousins on the day after Christmas

Christmas

Showing off my new hat I got on Christmas

With Norman on Christmas Eve

With Grandpa on Christmas Eve

So I finished my first week of classes! I don't usually have class on Friday, its my UW20 discussion that only meets like 4 times a semester. So here's my thoughts on my classes so far:

News Writing & Reporting: It seems like a pretty straight-forward class. It's a lot of writing but they're pretty short articles so it shouldn't be too hard. My professor is a writer for the LA Times and he's seems like a really smart guy so I'm sure I'll learn a lot.

Social Psych: This class seems easy enough. My professor is really nice, she's young and super friendly. She has outlines of our lectures on BlackBoard (a website for college classes where professors post notes, assignments, grades, etc.) so we just have to print them out before each class, go to class and fill in the notes from her powerpoint. And it seems like interesting material.

Scientific Reasoning: I had this class last semester so it's pretty much the same thing. Actually it should be better because last semester was all about climate change which can get boring really fast, while this semester is more a mix of topics and he said we're gonna do more things in DC which I'm excited about.

UW20: I have a new professor for this class this semester. She's really nice and seems sort of eccentric but I like that. You can tell she knows exactly what she's talking about. We have to read a TON of books this semester though. This week I already had to read the gospel Mark and write a summary on it. These are the books we have to read (although some of the books we don't read the whole thing, just a few chapters if that):

Confessions-Augustine; Legend of the Grand Inquisitor; Notes from the Underground-Dostoevsky; Consolation of Philosophy-Boethius; One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich: A Novel-Solzhenitsyn; Letters from Birmingham Jail-Martin Luther King; poetry by Rumi; Parliament of the Fowls-Chaucer; The Prince-Machiavelli; Henry V-Shakespeare; Second Treatise of Government-Locke; A Season of Migration to the North-Salih

Intro to Political Communication: I think this will be my favorite class, which is good considering it's the foundation of my major. I've already learned a lot. My teacher is young and very energetic and uses a lot of modern examples of things we're reading about. There's a TON of reading for it though so I have to make sure to keep up with that.

Nothing extremely exciting has happened this week besides classes starting. Oooh American Idol started this week! I'm sure everyone has heard of the "Pants on the Ground" guy, if not Youtube it. It's a new classic. And apparently the guy singing it was a Civil Rights activist? It's Becca's birthday weekend so I think we're going out to a Mexican restaurant tonight to celebrate so that will be fun.

Hey everyone, I know I haven't written in over a month, sorry about that. When finals came up I was super busy, and now that I'm at home I haven't had much to write about. With the new semester starting this Monday (!) I'll try to keep up with writing regularly. I'll add that to my resolutions for 2010, along with going to the gym more often... or really at all, considering the last time I went was my second day of college back in August. That's just not healthy.

So, on the school front: I did really well my first semester. I got 4 A's (my school doesn't do A+'s) and an A- (in my UW20 writing class) so my GPA is currently a 3.92. Sweeeet. I got some of my textbooks today for next semester because I rented them from a website instead of buying them from the bookstore which saved around $100, woohoo. My classes for next semester are:

Honors Scientific Reasoning & Discovery

Honors UW20

Intro to Political Communication

Intro to News Writing & Reporting

Social Psychology

I'm most excited for my Political Communication and Psychology classes because I'm really excited to start learning more about my major and I love Psych stuff, but I'm sort of nervous for my News Writing class because I'm afraid I'll be surrounded by kids who all write for the school newspaper and are really good journalists when I don't have much experience with it. I've already taken a semester of the science and writing classes so there's not much change there, although I do have a different Professor for my UW20 class. Right now I'm trying to figure out my schedule for the next 4 years which sounds really excessive but I'm deciding how/if I can fit in grad school classes if I do a dual degree program and whether I can double major or minor in something. I think study abroad is out of the picture now-plus I can't really see myself somewhere so far away for a full semester. And I'd only want to go somewhere English speaking so I don't think I would get the full benefit of cultural immersion. When I'm older I'll just travel where ever I want to for like 2 weeks and then I won't have to worry about tests and studying while I'm there! Also, I'm looking for a work study job this semester, so that should be an interesting search. I need to get my resume together so I can find something.

So during break I really haven't been doing much of anything, but I'm enjoying it! Christmas was great, I got lots of wonderful presents and I hung out with lots of relatives. Now I've been catching up with my friends and even hanging out with high school friends that I hadn't seen since graduation. Two days ago Anna (my best friend from North Carolina) came up to visit with her sister Emma and I hadn't seen the two of them since our trip to Bethany this summer so I was really really happy that I got to see them. Today I went out to lunch with my friends Elise and Erin and tomorrow I'm going out to lunch with my friend Spencer, who's going to GW next year! I'm so excited that I'm going to have an SP friend at my school. I don't really have anymore plans for break other than seeing my close friends and hanging out with Emily, who's moving back to NY on Saturday. Almost everyone is going back this weekend like me, and I'm definitely ready to go back. A month at home is a nice vacation but I'm ready to go back to my GW home with my friends there, although I don't know if I really want to get back to all of the schoolwork.

Songs I'm Listening To (linked at bottom of page):

Colbie Caillat - Droplets

YouTube video (I put it in the link under "A Whole New World Cover":

This is fantastic. Just keep watching, once you get a little bit past the 1 minute mark you are going to laugh so hard, or stare at the screen in disbelief, I promise.