15 December 2011

Testing 1, 2, 3,

A song that's been on my mind recently...Also, this is actually a test because I changed my url (so if you had it bookmarked, it won't work. This is the right one!)

Testing 123 by the Barenaked Ladies


Thanks!

Time to get back into blogging...

Hey everyone...

I have been not writing recently.

That's a lie. I have been writing. I recently wrote 16 pages for my English final. Which made me remember how much I love blogging, especially in relation to writing silly scholarly essays in MLA format (I actually have a rant about MLA format, but I'll leave it to later because I want this to be an upbeat post).

I have not, however, been blog writing. And I really like to. A lot has been going on. I write things in my head a lot, think about how that blog post would look, all formatted on the computer screen. But college is one of those places that there's always something going on, and I haven't really sat down for some good, down-to-earth writing. So now, with finals next week and everyone holed up studying, I can finally write about what's been going on.

So: the basics. I am about to finish my first semester of college at University of Alaska Fairbanks. I'm studying foreign languages and started learning Russian this year, which is cool! I really enjoy the cold weather and windlessness of Fairbanks.

I am surprised at how much I like Fairbanks. I really love college here. I have so many wonderful, amazing friends, and its so easy to become involved with something exciting or random or meaningful or silly.

I like my classes too! I keep having confirmations that studying foreign languages is the right way to go. Some are little, like getting good grades on my Russian final (yay!) or realizing that the reason I like the Disney movie Atlantis so much is that the main character is a linguist who speaks a bajillion languages and then discovers a whole other civilization!! Not that I think this is plausible, but...I would like to be that guy. Some confirmations are bigger. I really, really like Russian. And I really, really like Spanish. I thought my approach to Russian would be "Oh, hey, Russian is one of those languages that is really good to know because a huge percentage of people speak Russian, and since there's a lot of Russian influence in Alaska, UAF has an awesome program." But as it turnes out, I love saying Russian words, and listening to people speak Russian, and writing in Cyrillic (after an initial WHY CURSIVE moment), and...I really like that its so different from Spanish. I'm just very excited about Russian. ето отлично!

Don't worry, everybody, I still love Spanish. This semester I was in a 300 level conversational Spanish class. It was awesome to finally learn some words I had been searching and searching for last year, (like cheesy!) and I feel like I'm actually advancing a lot more than I thought I would in terms of speaking. I'm sure that I still hago muchos errores, but I feel like my level of speaking has gone up. So that's happening...

I was also in a pretty exciting English class (and all three of my languages were on the same day! whoo!) that focused on Detective Fiction! So I got to read lots of Sherlock Holmes stories, and lots of less-famous detective stories. Probably the best required reading I ever had for a class.

Because classes do not make up the majority of my school experience (I show up to class and do my homework and pay attention and even get good grades and all, but still) Here are some other things I do on a regular basis:

1. Volunteer at a soup kitchen on Sunday Mornings with the Bahai club. This is really amazing and I really love to do it. I usually cut potatoes and onions (I am becoming a super fast chopper with amazing knife skills!) and then make about 300 sandwiches to be used throughout the week. Its one of those good-feeling experiences, but its also a fun thing to do in itself. I am learning/solidifying some things about me, and one of them is that I like working in big kitchens.

2. Sleeping in. 9:45 was my earliest class this semester. I kind of love it. Because you get enough sleep on the average night! And sometimes, on days like today, I decide to wake up early, and then you can get SO MUCH DONE in the morning! Also, early morning is the best time to do laundry because of the lack of other people doing their laundry.

3. Crazy things. Not like Animal House crazy. Just stuff like wearing a banana suit to hockey games, playing capture the flag in the snow at 2 am, being a lumberjack at the lumberjack show, etc.

4. Broomball, because it deserves its own number. Its a pretty awesome sport, because if you're not very good (like me) you can still have an amazing time sliding around on ice and "accidentally" sliding into your opponent. And even though I'm still not very skilled, I've definitely gotten a lot better than when I played my first game. Also, I have the element of surprise on my side because I just slide around like a ditz sometimes, and then I decide to start playing so they don't expect me to be able to run or steal the broomball from them!

5. Acting like a cat. This is self explanatory. Everybody wants to be a cat.

Anyways. One of the things that is absent from that list is taking pictures. I recently realized, when looking for a photo to add to this post to make it look less scholarly, that I have no good pictures of myself since this summer. SO, my mission is to take photos that are less "hey look at this weird face I can make" and more of "this is what my face actually looks like" in the next few weeks. I'm also going to try to blog more, because I'll be going to TURKEY AND ISRAEL AND I AM SO SO SO EXCITED! So, expect more photos in the next couple of weeks. In the meantime, since you probably forgot what my face looks like:



And, because jumping photos are AWESOME:


Photo by Karl Schleich

So, thanks for reading! Sorry about the length of this post. And the narcissistic nature. I can talk about other things then myself next time.

Love to everyone who has stayed up with my blog! Or even if you never read it and just accidentally clicked on the link. Or even if you are just randomly google searching and landed on this blog. Because everyone deserves a little love!