classes

Classes have begun.
Yesterday was wonderful. I was rather apprehensive about choreography because I much prefer to be told what steps to perform, where exactly my head and arms should be at any given moment and what emotion/character I should be displaying. However, I was quite pleasantly surprised. I really enjoyed the first class and all of the though-provoking questions we discussed. I already have some ideas for choreography and I'm really excited about making an inspiration book (one of our long-term assignments for the class). Then I had 18th Century Literature and Restoration which I've been terribly excited about since last spring when I was first told that I was approved to take a class even though I'm not an English major...yet. (Hopefully, I will be in the next few months). The first class was wonderful. We discussed the many, many books we will be reading, research projects we will be presenting on life in the 18th Century, and 12+ page papers we will be writing. Everything I missed so much last year is back and all in one class on my favorite time period :) :) :) My last class on Wednesday was ballet. My teacher is the new professor (in the Dance Department) and I'm really excited to have her this trimester. She has a lot of energy and enthusiasm and also makes you work to the best of your ability all the time. There was such a drastic difference for me between my first ballet class last year and my first ballet class this year. Last year, I didn't know anyone and was therefore full of nervous energy and really shaky. This year, I was calm and comfortable and actually pretty balanced. Last year, I hadn't danced for most of the summer so everything hurt and felt/looked terrible. This year, I had been dancing all summer and working gently, but firmly with my hip and felt like I had so much more control over my body. Overall, I was really encouraged by how much I have grown in the last year and I'm excited to continue that progression this year.
Today, however, was another story. I started Human Anatomy and Physiology today, and, while I'm already encouraged by how much better this teacher is at presenting things in an organized manner than my Functional Human Biology teacher was, I'm not at all excited for the hours I will spend every day trying to memorize every muscle and its action and its origin and its insertion. This will be a course that I really have to dedicate a lot time to even though I would rather being doing my 18th Century homework.
I start Jazz tomorrow (it's only a Monday/Friday course). I don't know what to think about that yet. It's definitely current jazz and I much prefer old school jazz. Also, I met with the teacher who oversees the theater, where I do my work study, and he already gave me a verbal list of every prop and set piece we will be building this year and all of it's components.
It's going to be a busy year, but I'm excited for most it :)

the weekend

Sooo, I already failed at posting once a day, but here are some updates from the weekend :)

On Saturday night, Kathryn and I made our first dinner in our new kitchen. It was delicious.

On Sunday afternoon, after Church, Kathryn and our other roommate, Ali, and Ali's boyfriend, Blake, and I went to the a near-by beach on Lake Erie. We got delicious frozen yogurt cones that I forgot to take a picture of and spent a relaxing afternoon in the water and on the sand.

Kathryn, Ali and Blake 

Erie clouds :) :) and a calm beach :) 

reading, note-taking and floral prints on a gorgeous beach with a nice breeze blowing and my feet in the sand = wonderful afternoon :) 

 other people (and logs) on the beach

After the beach, we met Ali's parents at the Polish Festival and had cheese-filled pirogi and potato pancakes for dinner. Polkas were playing all evening. Dancing was necessary :) 

The Quote of the day is from the lead musician. During dinner he stopped between songs and said, "Now we're going to play a song off our new album it's called, I Don't Know Why I Love You but I Do." *insert typical Princess face* . . . no comment necessary . . .

   

my kitchen

One of my favorite things about my apartment thus far is being able to shop for and eat my own food instead of being limited to a cafeteria. As far as cafeterias go, Mercyhurst's is actually rather nice. There is a pretty good assortment of food and always a few relatively healthy options, but lunches were the worst for me last year. The whole wheat bread in our cafeteria still had a lot of junk in it and the lunch meat was full of preservatives and there weren't many other lunch options besides tuna and chicken salad that were 50% mayonnaise, pizza, and soup (which was sometimes tolerable and sometimes not). I ended up eating a lot of peanut butter and honey sandwiches last year. 

This year I'm still eating dinner in my cafeteria, but I'm buying my own breakfast and lunch food. Today I'm actually eating peanut butter and honey again, but this time it is100% Whole Wheat Honey Apple Oat bread with minimal preservatives and sweetened with honey instead of sugar, all-natural peanut butter, honey, carrots, and sugar snap peas (because they're delicious and fresh) and a glass of water :)

Also, it's really nice to walk into the kitchen and eat food instead of putting on shoes, a coat, a scarf and gloves (depending upon the time of year, of course) and walking across campus to get food. 

Kathryn is here : ) :) :)

I stayed in my apartment by myself on Sunday night and Monday night. 

 Yesterday, Kathryn arrived :)

Our room is very, very purple :) More pictures to come soon . . .

picture of the day

Last year my aunt asked for more pictures of college so I started texting her a 'picture of the day' each day (e.g. rain falling on my rain boots, the sunset, my dinner plate). She usually texted me a picture from her day as well. She said that she loved getting snapshots of my daily life and I loved keeping up with what was going on in her life. However, during this summer, almost every conversation I had at some point turned to the fact that keeping in touch with friends and family from home was really hard and rarely happened last year. It was incredibly encouraging to know that so many people still wanted to be involved in/updated about my life and I desperately wanted to stay in better contact with them. Maintaining more consistent contact with dear friends and family from home became one of my resolutions for this fall. One of the ways that I would like to keep this resolution is to move my 'picture of the day' to my blog. I'm not a photographer so the pictures will not necessarily be particularly artistic, but that's not their purpose. Their purpose is to give a little glimpses of my college life. For a while these pictures will mostly be pictures of my apartment because I adore my apartment and decorating it :)

Decoration Project #1

I saw on Pinterest* a piece of burlap in a picture frame to be used a write-on, wipe-off board. I immediately wanted to make one for my dorm room.

*I wonder how many recent blog posts on the web start this way :P

I went to several consignment shops and finally found a vintage frame (with flowers) in a good size for $7. I managed to get all of the large staples out of the frame with my awesome purple pliers (my dad got me a purple tool kit last year as a going-away-to-college gift) and without any mishaps or injuries. However, no one would believe I actually completed a project on my own if I didn't have an injury to prove it so, of course when I stood the frame up, the glass fell out and scraped my arm.

 

I decided to frame a pink floral fabric instead of burlap because in my mind fabric equals floral :) Several little tubes of super glue later, the picture was removed, the fabric was framed and brown paper was glued to the back of the frame.

The finished project now resides on my desk. (Nails aren't allowed in college apartment walls.) 

Consignment shopping, crafting, and vintage floral definitely beats cheesy white write-on, wipe-off board and wasn't any more expensive :)