PACKING!!!

Well, as I approach my two-year blogoversary here, I must make a bit of a confession: I haven't spent time to think about my two-year blogoversary here. I've been thinking about packing. I leave for school on Wednesday, and most of today has been dedicated to two things: laundry and packing. The latter is a bit easier now that the former is done, but it wasn't very difficult in the first place. Aside from sorting out what yarn and books to take back to school, most of today has been waiting for my laundry to finish in order to fold it and figure out what to take. (to be fair, I haven't done much of that, either. I still need to take down most of the hanging laundry, which still hasn't dried yet.)

To be honest, packing for stuff is not exactly my strong suit - specifically, packing for college. If it's something like a J-term trip, I've got it handled. Even though this is my third year of college, there's always something I feel like I should have taken or some other thing that I should have left. Of course, by the time I actually get the chance to make the dropoff of the unnecessary goods, I've forgotten which ones I actually want to leave at home.

There's always that risk, though. There's a lot of guesswork - for example, there's the eternal question of "how many pens do I really need?" (I must constantly remind myself that the answer is probably "the amount you already have in your pencil case, Wild Card.") Then there's the frustrating moments after I buy a brand-new notebook or bag of menstrual products, only to realize, far too late, that I definitely had plenty of that product with definitely enough material left to last at least half the semester. (Knowing me, though, I can always find a use for notebooks and menstrual products.)

This is also my first year without baggage of a different kind. I returned from summer school and my boyfriend promptly broke up with me. This is my first term in three years - we'd been dating since I was in high school - where I don't have to coordinate my class schedule with his in order to plan Skype sessions with him. I hope I'll be able to effectively use the extra 30 minutes every week that would have been occupied by talking to him. (In retrospect, if we got to the point where we could Skype for barely 30 minutes once a week, then it might have been the loudest signal that the breakup was going to happen.)

In all, though, it's hard in any situation to pack up one's life, even - maybe especially - for college. Since I'm going to school in-state, it's easy to get into a mentality where it's safe and easy to go home and get more stuff or drop off some stuff. After all, it's a three minute walk and a two hour train ride, and there's guaranteed to be clean underpants at the end of it. At the end of the day, you have to make sure that you've packed in your laundry detergent to clean your own underwear.

HICCUPS

Hiccups irritate me. That is all for today.
Well, no, it isn't.  I'm going to DO UPDATES!
Review of Hitchhiker's Guide will be on Wednesday and some other literary thing on Friday, since I'm behind on that. I need to fix that.
The Weird Happening Of The Day: a kid from my high school and a kid from my church now know each other. How? My school is hosting Governor's Latin Academy this year. So lunch was weird today, because three worlds that do not normally interact suddenly were shoved together.
Also, I really need to study right now, so I'm going to go do that.

The End of the Semester

Though finals have yet to begin, I'm doing this post now in order that I might do other topics next week, when I'm brain dead from all the essays and trying to figure out what to say.  This is the post where I tell you THINGS I LEARNED THIS SEMESTER.

ACADEMICS:

1. HISTORY: THE SIXTIES: If you want to stage a protest, the 60s were a good time to do it.
2. GREEK: THE GREEK EPIC: Odysseus was a braggart, and his companions were dumb.  To be fair, though, he didn't tell them anything, so a lot of what they got into was his fault.
3. JOURNALISM: MEDIA AND SOCIETY: Advertising isn't a media, but it damn well knows how to adapt to the new media markets.
4. HONORS: KING ARTHUR IN LITERATURE: The love triangle was a French invention. Also, the characters are more complex than you might think. Also, just read all of it, because it's sometimes worth a laugh.
5. HONORS: MAKING MATH: Non-Euclidian geometry is super confusing.

FRIENDS:

1. Be honest with people.
2. If you like someone, say so.
3. If you don't like someone, say so.
4. Friends sometimes drift apart. This is not always a bad thing.
5. Friends sometimes stick together. This is not always a good thing.
6. Friends get frustrated with people you like. As much as you want to them to see the other side, it doesn't always work.
7. People are sometimes assholes.
8. People are sometimes great.
9. People sometimes need to get over themselves.

On textbooks and time passing

I'm back in my hometown for a week on Jterm break - that little time between Jterm and spring semester when we can regain sanity, overcome jet lag, and drop many hundreds of dollars on spring semester books. (and also have time for the books to ship).  I think the important thing to remember about college textbooks (and also being an English major) is that while you may save a fortune online (almost all my books, with shipping, were less than the used price listed for the campus bookstore), you're still going to be spending a lot of money.  My history class and my literature class, for example: none of the books were over $15 with shipping, but there were 17 books between the two classes. In other words, they're cheap, but they're plentiful. It's an interesting juxtaposition: my science-major friends drop $200 each on a few textbooks, but I pay a little more for the 21 books I have to buy.  Perks of being an English major?

Anyway, to address part two of the title: the passing of time.
As I already stated, I'm back home for a week. I went to my high school's production of Les Miserables (and, I might add, I am extremely jealous that they got to do that production, even if it is the 'school version'), and there were a few things that I noticed.
First was how much some of the people have grown up. The guy who played Javert grew up around the corner from me - I was good friends with his sister when we were kids. He's still short, but now he can sing "Stars" with no strain on his voice and sound absolutely fantastic. All these people that I had no memory of being particularly good singers were suddenly really good (except for Fantine; she's always been fantastic).  Voices have changed, too - when I was in choir with Cosette, she sang alto, but she managed Cosette's ridiculous jumps easily.  Enjolras, unfortunately, has had a little recession in voice quality, but he's still good.
The second thing I noticed was that people have had mixed reactions about my coming back.  I saw this a little in church, too - the reactions were mixed between "OMG YOU'RE BACK YAY!" to "lovely to see you, but aren't you supposed to be in school?" (the last bit of that sentence was only implied, but still). I'm getting to that point in my college career where the freshmen and sophomores are now juniors and seniors; I can address fewer and fewer people by name.  Home is changing, but I am, too.  I can finally drive on my own, which is something I've never actually done before.

I guess the lesson is that time goes on, tuition gets paid, lessons are learned, and people grow and change.  Home changes, people change, and all that sort of thing.  In time, I guess, I'll get to the point where all my high school friends are going to graduate and leave, and hopefully I'll be emotionally prepared for it.

Return for second Jterm

Well, I'm back at school now, if only for a week. We're here for the SIT DOWN AND LEARN STUFF time right now, but on Saturday we will be heading out to fly overseas. I'm really excited for that. Mostly because I get to go see Turkey again. Turkey's one of my favorite places ever. Aside from Peru.

The reading for the class is really quite interesting.  It's helpful to bring context to how Christianity has appeared in its early history. For example, there are a lot of philosophies that have some parallels within Christianity, and things like that. Also, the religious environment in those times was actually kind of interesting to read about it. Cults, for example, were not what we think of today. Back in the day, they were almost the exact opposite - you could follow any combination of those that help you with your own faith. This helped promote the polytheism. It's interesting to think that Christianity and Judaism were the outliers in this time. Also it's just kind it is interesting to think that yes, Christianity is growing around the time that the book is talking about, but it's not it's the dominant religion just yet.  It's not even the dominant style of worship.

The trip is finally coming together, or so it feels.  I'm really excited.  Most of class time today was going over what to pack and things like that.  Our religious studies professor (henceforth referred to as Dr. B) was very thorough, but our choir professor (henceforth referred to as Dr. R) pointed out in choir today that half his reason for this was that Dr. B used to head the Office of International Education - so he's seen all the lousyness that people can get into over things that they have forgotten and things like that.

Right, well, Dr. B has assigned homework, which I need to get to. Farewell!

Day 12: stress?

Current Page: 67
Target Page: beyond that
Written today: nothing
What's going on: a lot of things.

Right now, the internet on my computer is being really dumb - for some reason, it won't connect to the server, so I can only access a few academic sites as well as Facebook and Twitter and, occasionally, the NaNoWriMo site.  (This is the reason that I haven't posted for the last two days.  My apologies for that.)
Unfortunately, I haven't been able to write too much over the last few days. I've been involved in a lot of things with my fraternity, and I have an essay due tonight at midnight (I'm mostly done with it, which is nice).  Additionally, homework is starting to get to me, because all my professors have realized that there are about three weeks before finals (if you count the rest of this week and the two days before Thanksgiving as one whole week), and so they've all decided that now is the time to give out ALL OF THE ASSIGNMENTS.  So I had an econ test yesterday, an honors essay tonight, a Greek test on Friday (as well as a bunch of translations), and a bunch of math quizzes before finals begin.  Needless to say, there's been a lot going on.
Hopefully I'll find the time to write today and tomorrow and catch up - I'm now running behind, even on NaNo terms, so that needs to get fixed.

Finals.  Gah.
Grades.  Gah.

Returned and anniversary!

Well, I'm home, if only for two nights.  Today has been mostly dedicated to unpacking and repacking and trying to figure out what I do and don't need to bring to school.  (For some reason, this information can easily slip out of one's head in a year's time).
You know what's NOT something that easily slips out of one's head?  ANNIVERSARIES!   Yes, this blog has officially, as of today, been around for a year.  It's interesting to look back and forward - to what has come along, what hasn't, and to what prospects I have for the future - and to see all the differences.  This summer was definitely different from last year - if only because I didn't really have a job this summer.  Yes, I wrote a lot and knitted a lot and reopened my Etsy page and all those things, but I didn't have a technical "job."  That being said, I was able to travel farther and wider than I was able to last year, which is really nice.  The time in the middle - yes, school - taught me a lot about a lot of different academic topics, how to sprint through an essay and still pass it, and how to deal with people as an introvert (pro tip: STUDYING ON YOUR OWN HELPS YOUR GRADES AND YOUR INTROVERSION).

In business news, the coolness of Turkey is mind-blowing, and everyone is extremely nice.  We learned a ton about history, religion, and culture, and I learned a bit about the issues that sparked the Taksim protests.  (in its simplest form, it involves people getting fed up with government favoritism and then people getting mad at the police violently ambushing protesters in their sleep).  Anyway, as what happened in Peru, I kept a journal; I will be typing those up, as I did for Peru.  The difference is that this time you will be getting occasional BONUS ENTRIES!!  Since Byzantium was founded in 667 BC, and therefore the city (or the concept of it, at least; there have been several citywide fires) has been around for 2500 years, there is a LOT of history - and a lot more recorded history than the Inka had, since the Inka didn't have a writing system and Istanbul/ Constantinople/ Byzantium was under the influence of Greeks and the Romans before the Ottomans.
In short, there's a lot more recorded history - a lot of which I didn't get to in the journal.  Since I'm moving back into school early (aka tomorrow), I will have almost a week in which I can do absolutely nothing except type and research old mosques to every extent I feel like.

With that, I must return to packing.