Food and leaves and things

You all are going to start to think I’m just copying and pasting, but the weather this weekend was once again grey and windy. And it thunderstormed last night! This has been the wettest fall since I’ve come to Macalester by far—it’s been a bit ridiculous. Kind of lovely, sometimes, but other days I just long for sunshine and blue sky.

(So this was definitely true when I wrote it, but obviously I’m posting this late. As it turned out, Sunday was gorgeous and blue and basically the platonic fall day, so you’re getting some pretty autumn pictures spaced out through here to liven up the text.)

The week before last was pretty unfortunate, mostly because I had four writing assignments due in two days (ouch) and therefore didn’t get enough sleep for many nights in a row. And I had started out the week at Cahoots (as you know),

 

(observe the rose lemonade and mushroom-and-ham quiche)

getting lots of work done and being really proud of myself for being very ahead with my homework, but somehow it didn’t carry over into the rest of the week.

Anyway, I kept telling myself that, as a reward for making it successfully through the week, I would get to watch My Neighbor Totoro on Friday (an animated film by Hayao Miyazaki). Which I then did, late in the evening on Friday as the rain poured down last outside my window.  It is the most charming movie: so sweet, so carefully constructed, so beautifully animated. One of my new favorites, which is saying something.

Watching it at night, under my covers with a thunderstorm outside made me feel very nostalgic and a little homesick, but it was absolutely worth it.

And then, on Saturady, Charmaine and Nico (her boyfriend who was visiting from out of town) and I went out for a dim sum brunch!! You probably all know that dim sum is one of my FAVORITE MEALS EVER, so I was very excited. But I was also a little wary—my previous Midwestern Chinese food experiences have been distinctly disappointing (to say the least), so Charmaine and I were worried that even a well-reviewed restaurant (as this one was) would end up being good by Minnesota standards, not real standards. Luckily, we were entirely wrong!! It was very delicious, and we even were able to obtain two of my favorite things: rice noodles and custard buns. Mmmmm…. Poor Nico was a little overwhelmed, as it was his first dim sum experience (which is TRAGIC), but I think he had fun anyway.

I spent the rest of the day talking to the parents on Skype and going to Whole Foods, where I obtained many a delicious treat food from my birthday money from Aunt Meg. I had a glorious dinner (plus a bunch of other awesome dinners).

 

(You may have noticed that my food treats involve cheese and FRUIT. Oh god, real fruit. I miss it so much.) 

(I couldn't resist a raspberry glamor shot. Just look at them!)

And then, in the evening, Mac was hosting a pajama party/ice cream sundae bar/movie night. Naturally, Charmaine and I decided that attendance was necessary and brought along with us Hannah, Nico, and Katrina (who wimped out and wore jeans. LAME.). The movie was Despicable Me 2, which was fun, but not brilliant. There were definitely some things I (as a societally hyper-aware liberal arts student) had problems with, but that didn’t really detract from the fun of going to see it with a big group. Plus, Mac audiences are always way more fun to attend movies with than any other—they’re so responsive and excited! I also think it says something good about my college that the attendance and applause for Despicable Me 2 was far greater than that for Man of Steel. GO MAC!

(Speaking of Mac being awesome….we recently  were ranked on a list of colleges with the smartest students, and we came in 18^th! I know these lists are always a bit fictions (especially given how different they seem to be), but I’m still proud of us. Here’s the link, if anyone’s curious:

http://venturebeat.com/2012/11/01/smartest-colleges-in-america/)

On Sunday, the St. Paul Marathon [of Evil] was occurring, as it does every year. Each year, my window has been closer and closer to Summit Ave. (where it occurs), so I notice it more and more. The problem is that all of these very nice people go stand along the street and cheer along everyone who passes. It’s some sort of friendly, schadenfreude-istic, communal experience, which is all very well and good UNTIL SOMEONE DECIDES THAT RINGING A COWBELL AT SEVEN ON A SUNDAY MORNING NEXT TO A COLLEGE CAMPUS IS AN OKAY THING TO DO.

Anyway, after a few hours of near-incessant cowbell-ringing and cheering, I decided that prolonged exposure would, in fact, drive me entirely insane and escaped off to Cahoots (again) to work. I came back to campus many hours later in time to head off for a dinner at Pad Thai with my Feminist Visual Culture class. I was anticipating that it would be long, silent, and painfully awkward (as these things sometimes are), and was very much dreading it. But it was wonderful! Everyone was so excited and engaged, the food was awesome (and I got to take home some leftovers for dinner a few days later),

(yay satay! plus other goodies from Whole Foods.)

and Joanna told us a bunch of fascinating stories from her life. She’s had such a rich and varied existence, so she has some pretty incredible narratives to share. I ended up staying with a few other students and Joanna much later than everyone else.

All of this added up to a much better beginning for the week, which luckily translated into a much better week.

(it's like a rainbow!!)

I started it out on Monday by discovering these balloons all over campus, because apparently I missed out on the memo that Mac students are having a competition to out-do each other in ADORABILITY.

(you may not be able to see, but inside the balloon is a folded piece of paper with an affirmation on it. naturally.)

Then, after class, I spent some time hanging out with Sorcha after class, chatting about nothing of importance (although I did learn that she is, in fact, a weather god. Who knew??) before I met Charmaine for dinner at Grand Central (a newish café near Mac). We had crepes—we split two, one four cheese and one arugula and mushroom—and then raspberry-jam-topped flourless chocolate cake. SO DELICIOUS. I would have a picture for you (the cake was very lovely), but my phone has decided it no longer wishes to hold a battery charge more than about six hours, so it had already died by dinnertime. 

Afterwards, Charmaine returned with me to study in my room (she’s an honorary roommate, so she spends a lot of time with us). Hannah and Katrina and Charmaine and I sat around talking doing homework for a while. Eventually, Hannah went to bed, and then when it got pretty late, Charmaine gave up on homework in order to draw adorable pictures for a letter to Nico. Katrina decided to be part-cat and distract me by leaning on my book, so I threatened to read Saussure aloud at her. Unfortunately, this was not a deterrent, since she’s a linguistics major. So then we had bedtime story hour, in which I read linguistic theory while Katrina curled up under a blanket and Charmaine colored. College, man. It’s weird. Everybody is simultaneously seven and twenty-eight. Plus a bunch of other in-between ages. No where else can you switch between five-year-old petulance, thirteen-year-old-boy humor, and middle-aged existential crisis-ing within the space of about half an hour.

On Tuesday and Thursday, we had a guest lecturer for YA Creative Writing (Megan had other commitments—again, last minute teaching appointment), which I was honestly a little disappointed about. Usually, that’s exciting—not only do you get a new perspective, but you don’t have to do any work (shhh…slacking off is a necessary part of the college experience). But I love my YA class, and I always feel really energized when I leave it, something I’d assumed I’d miss with a guest lecturer. BUT OUR GUEST LECTURERS WERE AMAZING!!

Tuesday was a YA and picture book author from the Twin Cities who explained her whole experience of being an author, from beginning (coming up with an idea, developing that idea) to publication. She showed us her contract and first editorial letter, talked to us at length about her experience in the publishing world, and was generally incredibly encouraging. She made it all seem much less terrifying than I expected, although she also talked about how long everything takes in the publishing world. She also has—AND THIS IS THE BEST PART—a free picture book writer’s salon the first Wednesday of every month. !!!! I most definitely know what I’m doing on November sixth…

Thursday was a YA and children’s editor at a smallish Twin Cities imprint. He talked to us about his expectations as an editor, what the publishing process is for him, and more generally about being a part of the publishing world. His talk was a little more geared for people interested in becoming an editor, but it was still very interesting and still kind of encouraging. I’d kind of assumed that it’d be easier to submit work to large publishing companies because they’d have enough other revenue to publish little works. But I think that idea was wrong—it seems like the little publishing houses are both more invested in the works they produce and more likely to read what’s submitted to them. That seems obvious in retrospect, but somehow I’d never thought of it like that.

 (there's just so much COLOR!)

I also had a guest lecturer on Wednesday night, this one for Texts and Power. It was with a documentary filmmaker—Sam Green, director of Weather Underground and some other less well-known films—and I rather assumed I wouldn’t be that interested (this is beginning to be a theme of the last two weeks—Lily assumes everything is dull and boring and is proven otherwise. At least it’s not the opposite?), but it was a very engaging talk. It didn’t convince me to become a filmmaker, but I came to really respect Sam Green for his earnest love of the medium and the intentionality of his work.

I spent the rest of Wednesday night talking to Clara (because I am a terrible procrastinator and Clara is awesome), drawing a (ridiculous) postcard for Anna (while I talked!! So it wasn’t even procrastinating at all!!),

and staying up painfully late to finish my paper for Postcolonial Theory. I’m pretty proud of how it turned out, although I haven’t gotten a grade back. We shall see!

Friday, Charmaine came to hang out again in the evening and we studied for a while. Eventually, we realized that neither of us had eaten dinner, so we set off to Shish for gyros wraps and a GIANT SLICE OF bailey’s chocolate cake. Observe that there is, by volume, more frosting than cake. Then be impressed.

(That pale tan stuff isn't a different kind of cake. It's just frosting. Inches and inches of delicious frosting.)

Saturday was more of the same,

(Charmaine likes to wear my scarf as a hat.)

although Katrina and I also made Charmaine and Hannah (and eventually, Erin) watch the first episode of Firefly with us, as part of our continuing campaign to make everyone love the things we love (along those lines, I have successfully introduced Katrina to the Welcome to Night Vale fandom. MWAHAHA!).

Sunday was also uneventful, although (as you can probably tell), I went on a picture-taking expedition. It was also Family Fest this weekend, which is basically school-sponsored homesickness for those of us whose families don’t love us enough to visit. Or who have work or whatever. Same thing.  

 

And now it is Monday morning, and I am posting this rather later than I was supposed to. Apologies, all! Although, since it’s late, you all are now lucky enough to get yet another weather update: if Friday was rainy, and Sunday was the quintessential fall day (as I mentioned at the beginning), today is apparently the first day of winter. Brrrr!

Love you all!

(Fairfax and I are doing a happy dance (from a card I sent to Clara))

P.S. So…no one can (mostly) be mean to me about my exclamation point sprinkler this time, but they might be able to say something about the number of parenthetical clauses in these four pages…

Also caps-lock, but that’s pretty normal for me.

Rainy days in cozy cafes

Today is another rainy, grey Saturday, the kind made for sitting in cozy coffee shops listening to melancholy acoustic music and working on homework (or blogs) while a friend (in this case, Keo) sits across from you doing her own work (reading a biology textbook). The coffee shop we’re in is a new find for me—it’s called Cahoots and is decorated in all warm colors—the walls are red, the tables orange, and the window sills are a sunshiney yellow. I’m not sure how I’d feel about it on a hot day, but today it just feels warm and welcoming, like wrapping yourself in a Persian carpet.

[Note: I'm sorry this is being posted so late--I finished it much earlier in the day, but then I lingered at the cafe until quite late, working on reading for class and eating sweet corn and salmon chowder with the darkening blue of the sky highlighted against the rich red of the cafe walls.

It was pretty lovely, even if my book did almost make me start crying in public...]

After reading my blog last week, Grandma asked if I was feeling a little down—she said the tone of it was more subdued than it has been previously. I have been feeling kind of sad since I’ve gotten back—somehow this year I’m feeling kind of detached and a little lost. I can’t quite pinpoint why—I’ve had some lovely times with friends, two care packages and a card in the last two weeks, and Macalester continues to be green and lovely—but I feel completely unmotivated and rather melancholy.  Today’s weather rather aptly fits my mood as of late, actually.

Part of it, I think, is that I’m not really enjoying my classes. Part might be that my friends are mostly living off-campus and are therefor a little harder to connect with (and it’s definitely an adjustment no longer sharing a room with one of my best friends). Maybe I’m just having my senior slump a little early. Whatever it is has not been particularly helped by the cold I’ve had for the last two weeks (when will it ever leave??).

It seems to be fading a bit (the melancholy, not the cold…although that, too) as time passes, so maybe by the time I write next I’ll be back to my old absurdly-bubbly writing self.

Anyway, on to actual news!

First, pictures of my room!! I finally just took them on a nice day and then haven’t’ really had time to post them until now. But here they are!

 The common room! The door on the left is Katrina and Hannah's door, the sideways-y-middle one is our coat closet/pantry/miscellaneous cupboard and the main one is the door out into the rest of the hallway. If you look very carefully at the right of the picture, you may be able to see the doorway into our bathroom.

 This is the other side of the room. The desk here is the same as the desk in the other picture, to give you some sense of the space. You may be able to tell, from the laptop and familiar blanket and pillow on the couch, that I spend a lot of my time stretched out on the little couch, tea cup on the windowsill beside me.

My door's decorations, and some of our room decorations. Hannah wanted to group our photographs around a thematic word, so she picked some words and then we sorted the photos we'd printed by category.

  

The back of my door (from inside my room) with the edge of my poetry wall, my insane whiteboard of reminders, and my ever-growing and beloved scarf collection.

 My bed,decorations, poetry wall, and window.

 My desk.

The last little bit of my room. You can see the edge of my door (now open) on the left side, and behind the door is another door--the door to my closet.

 

(found on the door into my dorm building--I especially appreciate that someone was detail-oriented and sassy enough to not only give our magnetic mascot a protest sign, but to title his books "Global Citizenship" and "Hegemony")

Secondly, as I said, classes have not been as awesome as I could have hoped. Postcolonial Theory is getting better—I’m starting to figure out how to engage with the texts in the ways the professor expects, and we’re reading fascinating works. Our first paper is coming up and—because I am clearly a freak—I’m excited for that. 

 (A picture taken from the building I have my postcolonial theory class in--we have it on the fourth floor, and walking up all those stairs is always more exhausting than it should be. But the view is nice!)

The feminist visual culture class with Joanna is still driving me a little crazy, but we’re starting to look at works I haven’t seen before, which makes for a major difference.  Joanna still seems to expect very specific answers to all her discussion questions, which I find a bit stifling.

Texts and Power has changed from more than just a little too easy to INCREDIBLY DULL. The works we’ve been reading have been very engaging—excerpts from Marx, Hegel, and Althusser—but the class itself? UGH. He wants us to just parrot back to him whatever the author has said, without really engaging the work beyond some sort of baseline understanding. I absolutely hate being asked to just repeat what we’ve read (it makes me feel exceedingly uninteresting and unintelligent), so I’ve been far too quiet in the class compared to my usual standards of participation.

On Thursday, the class got into this very excited conversation about the ramifications of Althusser’s theories on ideal societies—including those suggested by writers like Marx—and everyone was engaged to an unprecedented extent (except for the kid asleep in the corner, but who cares about him) and we were coming to some great conclusions when the professor CUT US OFF. !!! He told us we’d gotten too off-topic (because we were discussing the text in a slightly wider context than the actual words on the page??) and made us do this silly exercise involving the front page of the NYT. Within minutes, the classroom atmosphere had descended to its usual stupor. It was so tragic. Not only was this frustrating for me as a member of the class, but it also seems to me like pretty bad teaching. If you have a class that you specifically define as ‘discussion-based’, shouldn’t you let a discussion happen, as long as it even tangentially relates to the topic?? I mean, if we’d been heatedly discussing cows, or the deforestation of Brazil, okay, but WE WERE DISUCSSING ALTHUSSER!!

Anyway, that class is by far my least favorite. The other problem with it is that the professor has mentioned multiple times that he doesn’t want us bringing in knowledge of cultural or critical theory that we haven’t yet covered in the class. For me, this is like trying to turn off a massive piece of my brain, since not only did I take a heavily cultural-studies-based class last semester (British Youth Subcultures), but I’m taking two other critical theory classes this semester. The ideas of postcolonial theory and feminist theory that I learn there don’t just disappear when I walk into Texts and Power, and I don’t know how not to think about our concepts using those frameworks. I obviously need to go talk to the professor in office hours, but I haven’t gotten around to it yet.

 (random picture to break up the monotony and lighten the mood--a 'found' poster I found all over campus this week...)

YA creative writing continues to be a constant joy. The work for it is challenging and extremely fun, Megan is wonderful and warm, and the classroom community is shaping into a lovely group of friends. Thursday before last, Megan had another commitment (she has a few throughout the semester, since she was called to teach this class very last minute), so she sent us on a field trip to the only YA bookstore in the Twin Cities—an adorably tiny place called Addendum Books. It’s owned by a pair of friends, one of whom is not only a Mac alum, but also apparently the daughter of Professor Warde (?!?). She was there to talk to our class—and to offer us a 20% discount on any books we bought. Which seems like a nice thing to do, but is basically akin to the role of the snake in the Garden of Eden. HOW COULD WE RESIST?? Most of us came home with at least a book or two (myself included).

This last Thursday, she decided that we all needed a little bit of a break—we’ve been reading extremely dark books for class, everyone is tired, and there’s this dumb cold gong around—so she had us play a writing game. We all wrote a story for about thirty seconds and then folded over the paper and passed it on. Each time we got a new piece of paper, we had to continue our story at the place we’d left off on the last piece of paper. Then she read a couple of them to us and saved the rest for when we need pick-me-ups during the rest of the semester. Then we went to the children’s section of the Mac library, where we were instructed to choose two picture books and write detailed plot summaries for a YA version of the plot. Not only was this very fun, but it was actually a really good writing exercise as well. It made us really think about the differences between plots for children and young adults (something I’m very interested) and the ways those plots can be aged for a new audience.

So…classes. Not my favorite semester, as of yet, but still exciting in its own ways. In personal life things, I’m still doing well. I have meals with friends pretty frequently and Charmaine and I have managed to spend lots of time together.  The movie I mentioned heading off to last time was Man of Steel (the new Superman remake), which was hilarious and bad and therefore kind of great. By the end of it, Charmaine and I were extremely giddy, which is probably why we found the concept of a superman seahorse so hilarious (there were actual reasons based in the movie, I swear, but I doubt they’d be funny when explained). Anyway, the next day I made her a drawing that I’m pretty proud of:

This weekend we went to see Iron Man 3, which was bad in a not-funny way. There were definitely good parts, but for some reason the writers also made the choice to give the main character what was clearly un-diagnosed PTSD and then NOT TAKE IT SERIOUSLY. I’m not even joking—every time he had a panic attack, it was framed as comic, and the one time he had a nightmare in which he accidentally scared his girlfriend (WHILE UNCONSCIOUS) (without hurting her!!), her only reaction was anger at him. Anyway, it was a pretty annoying experience, but I also got to hang out with Charmaine and eat free brownies and popcorn, so that was a plus (and they had berries as garnish, so I stole two raspberries and a blackberry. fruit-related highlight of my week.).

I also got to hang out with her lots last weekend. Friday we talked and had tea and played Bananagrams

 (I swear we were having more fun than it looks like...)

and then on Saturday she studied in my room, we went to her house (the Chinese house) to cook a lovely (if eclectic) dinner,

(from top to bottom: lightly fried shrimp with lime, avocado and tomato salad with lemon juice and olive oil, and a fried egg)

and then went back to my room to watch Megamind with Katrina and swoon over the adorability of one of the main characters:

(The internet thinks he looks like John Green. The internet is not wrong.)

It was very lovely. We also went and got cheese shop sandwiches for dinner one evening—one was prosciutto and fig-black-tea jam with ricotta and the other had some mystery cheese with spring in the name that was very lovely and ginger-pear preserves and arugula. We shared them, so I got half of each. Mmmm…

I think that’s all that’s going on in my life at this point—it hasn’t been a very eventful year so far.

I love you all, and I’ll be back in two weeks! <3      

 

(I stole some roses from the many rose bushes we have on campus and put them in a tea cup on my windowsill.)

Guess who's back?

HELLO ALL!

So, it’s been forever since I’ve written, mostly because it was finals week and then it was immediately after finals week and I was all burnt out and then it was summer and I didn’t really feel like I had much that was interesting to say. But I’m back at school now and I’ll try to get back to my old schedule of every other week.

First, to set the scene: I’m in my room, with the window open and a cup of tea on the sill and the rain falling lightly into the evening outside, hanging out with Charmaine and Katrina (one of my roommates) and a friend of hers, most of us having been here all day.  In a few hours, we’re going to go watch Man Of Steel (new Superman adaptation) in the Campus Center.

It’s been a lovely, lazy sort of Saturday—a perfect kind of day to recharge. Tomorrow will be lots of work, but it’s definitely worth it.

So, onwards to my life so far as a junior (I’M HALFWAY DONE WITH COLLEGE WHEN ON EARTH DID THAT HAPPEN??):

1. Room

I’m living in yet another building this year, on the second floor (I’ve been moving down a floor each year—does this mean I have to live on the first floor next year?). I’m in a suite, so there’s a common room with a bathroom, then two bedrooms off of that, a double and a single. I’m in the single and Hannah and Katrina are in the double. We’ve finally gotten everything decorated to our satisfaction, so it’s starting to look very lived-in and homey. I meant to take pictures, but I kept waiting for the light to be good today and it never got un-cloudy (and now it’s nighttime), so I’ll have to post them another day.

We’ve had some problems getting used to living with people we aren’t best friends with—Katrina has spent a lot of her time elsewhere on campus and Hannah and I have been a bit lonely, now that we’re not living with our people.  But we talked it out a bit and planned ways to make it better. We watched The Princess Bride last night in a giant, sprawling group with vast quantities of popcorn and had an absolutely lovely time. We’re going to try to do things like that—game nights, movie nights, teas—at least once a week so that we all feel more connected.

2. Classes

Okay, so new classes!! Always equally exciting and insane.

My first class is Postcolonial Theory (MWF 1:10-2:10). I love my professor, he’s very absurd and adorkable and charming. It turns out this class is cross-listed with International Studies, so I was concerned it wouldn’t really feel Englishy, but we’ve been studying the prose of what we’ve read in a very literary way, so that’s fantastic. And we only have one reading a week (usually a book, but still), so we really get to focus on that one thing. Also! He has us do a presentation on an additional book of our choosing, so I found a book about postcolonial art and art history in India that looks absolutely fascinating. I’m excited to read it!

Second is Gender, Sexualities, and Feminist Visual Culture (MW 2:20-3:50), which is with Joanna (who taught Art of the West II last semester and who is one of my advisors). I’ve really liked the readings so far, but I haven’t been as thrilled in-class. I feel like Joanna kind of has an agenda with this class, so she doesn’t really want us to interpret articles differently than she has (and I think sometimes she’s wrong in her interpretation!). When she isn’t talking feminist theory, she’s trying to give an overview of feminist art in history, which ends up being pretty repetitive for me. And, worst of all, she’s decided that I’m a student she can call on when no one has their hand up, but who she’ll ignore when lots of people have something to say. Which makes sense from a pedagogical perspective, but sucks as a student.

Third is Texts and Power (TR 1:20-2:50), which is fine. I think it’s going to be too easy for me, but that’s not terrible. Our professor clearly expects us to have no grounding in theoretical thought at all—and for us all to be freshman. But still, even if all I get out of this class is a space in which I am expected to read all these foundational texts in the field, that’s still pretty valuable.

And last, but ABSOLUTELY not least, is YA Creative Writing (TR 3:00-4:30). As I think most of you know, I was really skeptical going into this class, not least because of a last-minute professor change. I had signed up to take the class with a former Mac history professor turned published YA author, but she bowed out at the last minute and the professor was replaced. I was concerned that the person they’d picked was only an author, which I didn’t think would make her a very good teacher. Plus, I find creative classes far more intimidating than academic ones—not only does criticism of creative work hit closer to home, but doing well always feels like a more precarious concept.

ANYWAY. I was so skeptical for this class, but I LOVE IT. My professor—Megan—is not only completely warm and approachable and lovely, but she’s also done just about everything. She’s been a publisher, agent, editor, author, and now teaches regularly at Hamline (another school nearby), so she definitely knows what she’s doing. And the idea of a professor who’s like a friend doesn’t actually sound good necessarily, but she’s like that in the best possible way. I love her class so much, and always leave it feeling re-charged and happy. She has us turn in a short craft-analysis paper each week on the YA book we’ve read and then five pages of creative writing (a story, part of a story, writing exercises, whatever). Both have been challenging and exciting in equal measure. Anywho, this class is fantastic (even if next week’s book is so far VERY STRANGE).

3, Life in General

It’s weird and good to be back, and more exhausting than I’d expected. Somehow this semester, I’m more overwhelmed by all the people—being surrounded by people who you sort of know is more exhausting than being around strangers, and meeting/trying to remember the names of more than 100 people in a week is completely draining. But I’ve also made sure to have one-on-one dinners/teas/lunches with all of my friends, breakfast with Charmaine pretty often (we used to go to breakfast with each other at least four or five times a week), and we had a big Doty 4 reunion tea last weekend that was absolutely lovely.  So it’s been good, but I’ve also just had some trouble re-adjusting. And not just socially, but academically—I feel like my brain has stagnated, and I have to get it up and running again.

Anyway, I’ll try to write more in two weeks—I’m off to a movie!

Love you all!

(We took a picture of the tea reunion to send to one of the other Doty 4 girls, who's currently doing a study abroad program in Denmark.)

P.S. I just learned that defenestrate means 'throw out the window,' which I'm thrilled about for a wide variety of reasons. 1: There's a word that means 'throw out the window.' FANTASTIC! 2. Fenêtre. OH MY GOODNESS!

PROPOSAL SUBMITTED!!

So I submitted my IDIM proposal yesterday afternoon (after angsting for most of Monday about whether or not I would actually get my third letter in time...)! Now I wait to find out if they'll approve it. Apparently the committee meets every Thursday, but no one knows (or at least no one will tell me) how long they take to decide. But fingers crossed!!

Also, campus is a winter wonderland--gorgeous, but weird.

 (Also I saw an actual cardinal. Like in real life. !!!)

SPRING BREAK PHOTO MONTAGE OF AWESOME

Or, Yet Another Moment Wherein Lily Fails to Live Up To Media-Induced Expectations Of the Average College Experience and Does Not See a Single Frat Boy, Beer Can, or Pool Over the Entire Week of Spring Break, Though She Does In Fact Go On a Road Trip

We decided to stop at the Hoover Dam Bridge "on the way" to the Canyon.

ON THE BRIGHT ANGEL TRAIL!

 Indian Gardens

 Plateau Point!!

 (the Colorado River!!!)

On the way back up...

 (It's a long haul.)

The next day, hiking Tanner Trail:

(an ingeniously constructed trail, but much less hiker-friendly than the Bright Angel)

Fossilized bird footprints!

 The incredible variety of the rocks where we stopped to turn around:

 (Pretty rocks...)

(...and bark...)

 (Hello there, old friend Kaibab.)

 At Yavapai Point, for some Rim Trail walking.

The Bright Angel looks even more intimidating from above...

 Last morning at the Canyon--Rim Trail explorations.

P.S. Before you ask, YES this is a tiny amount of the pictures I took. I really did try to limit myself! This set is only 4.34% of the pictures I have from this trip (I just calculated it out of curiosity). So, really, you should just be grateful that I have at least some restraint.