|
| Well things here have been going really well for me. Other than the fact that my dorm is in the middle of nowhere I'm happy with everything. I just finished my 3rd day of class and I can tell Chinese and Euro History are going to be the most work. It's good that I'm pretty passionate about both of them though. I really like my politics professor too, he's very interesting and really well versed on a lot of different theories so I'm excited to go back to his class tomorrow. I've been making new friends, mostly girls in my dorm but that's all good. It's easier to find people that way! San and I have been getting along well too. She has a lot of homework, more than I've had so far so it's hard to just hang out but she's a sweet girl and we get breakfast together most days. I just love the freedom I have here. This weekend I really just did whatever the hell I wanted. Friday I went to a capella jam, ice cream/karaoke, then sat outside with some of my friends and started singing and dancing, then went back in the dorm to chill. We actually ended up sitting indian style in a circle listening to David Sedaris audiobooks! They listen to The Smiths, watch Project Runway, and read Sedaris. All of my obscure interests aren't so obscure here. Which is a really nice change. Today I ended up just sitting on a bench near the lake for 2 hours with my friends Stephanie chatting and watching tv on our laptops. The campus is just gorgeous and it kind of makes my annoying walks everywhere better. Saturday I went to Boston and met Terry and Amanda for lunch, a walk in the park, and Starbucks. It was really great to be able to go to a city like that with school and truly do what I wanted. It started raining so I didn't go to the dance in Blanchard and instead played board games and just hung out. Then yesterday a group of us took the bus to Northampton and met up with some Smithies and shopped and got sushi. I bought a Colbert poster to go with my Smiths poster for the dorm! Eating's a big social thing here there have been nights where we sat around the dinner table for at least an hour and a half after we finished. The food isn't too bad and the dining halls are really pretty. They look more like a nice home dining hall then a school cafeteria. So really I'm satisfied with my life right now and am pretty happy with everything! | | |
| I have recently really come to appreciate how wonderful my life has been the past few months. I was lucky enough to graduate high school with great academic standing and be accepted into multiple wonderful colleges but to also be able to attend my first choice. But the icing on the cake has really been this group of friends that have formed... It was just a shame that it was so late in high school that I really opened up and found myself truly happy with my friends. I distanced myself from some people who I once considered good friends and didn't feel bad about it the way I did a few years ago when the schism started. I've always been friends with Pam and Nicole but this year has just been better. I don't know if it was the inclusion of Emily (a friend of mine for years) into my closest circle but things really got so much better. I've got this core group right now of Emily, Zach, Pam, Larson, Foley, and myself that is really fun. Things started to get better when we included Mike Santosa into our regular lives only to lose him soon after that. It's distressing to see Mike and Janet leave so early but now at the prospect of Pam, Foley, and Nicole leaving in the next few days I'm really becoming sad. We can make events out of the dumbest stuff like Frosty runs, chipmunk voices, hammocks, and drive-by HW's. Parties of karaoke/Rock Band, Project Runway, and watching the Olympics. We run the streets late at night like crazy people or throw water balloons at each other in the middle of the road. We dye each others hair and flip each other off on bikes. I'm just so happy with how things are right now. I always talked to Zach in school and I'm glad he started dating Emily, it means that he's really part of our group, and I even know Emily prefers us to Jeff and Amanda now. Larson is another person I'm glad to have on my side now. After the fiasco that was 7th grade and our supposed "romance" I was really embarrassed and frightened off from hanging out with him. I've never thought of him that way so I just distanced myself so I wouldn't be talked about or bugged about it anymore but things have changed and we're at a point in our lives where we can be friends again. I just have so many fond memories of the past few months like Spring Awakening, calling McMullan's phone in a dodgy parking lot late at night, singing in my car, eating Greek, bowling, mini-golfing, and just being idiots horsewhipping all over the city. So many nights end in me contemplating alone in my car about how happy I finally am. Now that it's ending I'm getting really nostalgic but just so thankful that I've finally found my place. I've learned to stop caring and I'm finally finally happy after so many years of being dissatisfied with myself. Tonight after running around various stores and singing in Starbucks and the entire way home about "mega cape" I'm feeling an impending ending. We're going on to bigger and better things (aside from Emily who has a year left) and new people. I'm just grateful that I have my crew to sidewalk chalk left. I know there's nothing more satisfying than joyriding with the windows open, blasting Radiohead, after a wonderful night after dropping off my friends just as I did tonight. I will truly miss it when I go away.
P.S. Radiohead concert on Saturday was mind blowing and life affirming. Greatest live music experience I've ever had and the most talented musicians in the world. I just can't get it out of my head. | | |
| Well I'm preparing to head off to college at the end of next month. For about a week before my housing information was due to come out I was basically going insane. I couldn't wait to see where I'd be living and who I'd room with. Finally the day arrived, I had to work that morning but I got up early in order to check my school email account. And lo and behold there was my housing assignment. I eagerly scanned the email to see I would be living in 1837 Hall room 408 with a girl named San Theingi. Well the name was different but Mount Holyoke is a diverse school. I kept reading only to find out that she currently lives in Yangon (formerly Rangoon) capital city of Myanmar (Burma). I couldn't believe it, the part of me that is an international relations major who loves meeting people from aroud the world was insanely excited. Yet I realized I don't know much at all about Myanmar, I'd say I knew more than the average American 18 year old but not a ton. I sent her a quick email but suddenly began to doubt a lot. I don't know if she actually uses her school email account because with the time difference she would have been able to get at her housing information before me if she knew it was coming. Part of me really began to worry because I have to move in with this girl for a year soon and I know nothing about her except for where she lives, her school email, and her name. I was wondering if I could relate to this girl who seems to live such a foreign and strange life in a country controlled by an authoritarian militaristic government. With all that's happened recently in Myanmar I really began to wonder a lot about her life and how she would be. I searched her on facebook and obviously nothing but more troublesome was the fact that she wasn't on a website MHC created specifically for incoming firsties to chat. I realized I have no idea what kind of internet access she has. I worry because she will be at school several days before me and I was hoping that we would be able to coordinate things like tv, microwave, refrigerator, sheets, rug, curtains, etc. or look at the target website. I then did some research on the internet in Myanmar. I knew that the government had blocked it after the monks protested but not much else. I assumed that since she lived in the capital that she would be more likely to be able to use it. I found out that she really would only have access to dial up and that the government blocks a lot, I would assume facebook would be blocked since sites like gmail are. I learned that the government asks owners of internet cafes to keep records of customers and the web habits. But I also learned that many young people are learning how to get beyond the government web blocks. But more troublesome is that the government reads email and can often cause delays for days in the delivery of email. So quite honestly I know having a Burmese roomie will be an experience but I have lots of misgivings about my current situation. Really I don't think I will calm down until I receive some sort of concrete evidence that she knows that we will be rooming together. | | |
| Well I've had my last day of class, I still have to take one final but it's not like passing or failing would change my ability to graduate. It's a bittersweet ending I'd say. While I am happy that I'm going away in the fall to a school that was my top choice and that will really do volumes to help me I still can't help but miss some of the people that I will be leaving behind. Luckily I don't have to say goodbye to Johnson yet because of BASO. He wrote a really heartfelt mini novel in my yearbook so I quite frankly would have been really upset if I had to end it now. I wasn't sad to leave Zafonte. Really I made it through the day very well until english. Recently I have come to realize what Mr. McMullan has done for me this year and I quite honestly owe him so much. Not only did he help me polish the essay that got me into college and improve my writing more than any teacher has ever done before but through his class I've learned a lot about myself and how I present myself to the world. He's crazy, I mean at times completely insane yet he's everyone's favorite teacher. He taught me that you really can be yourself, even if you are strange, and still be liked and respected. Many people noted in my yearbook that the past few weeks I really just let loose. After years putting out and image that was more socially acceptable I'm finally comfortable enough to be myself and not care what other people think. I never would have screamed HORSEWHIPPING on stage had I not experienced McMullan's class. I know that he realizes that I've let go lately too because when he was making a short speech about me he said that I was "a student who puts herself out there like no one else." I'll see him again at senior breakfast but after that I know that things will never be the same. It's the awkward visit a few months later and once or twice afterwards but then that's it. It makes me sad to know that really things are over and I don't know how to cope with the loss of the teacher who really changed my life. I mean I cried as I left the room and I know that I'm not over it now. He personally picked out books for four of us and I know that the other three have started reading them. I can't do so, I promised that after I finished Caucasia (my common read for Mount Holyoke) I'd start his book. Well I finished it in calculus on Friday and I took out his book read a few pages and then couldn't read anymore after that. I then drove out to Runaway to buy When You Are Engulfed in Flames to avoid McMullan's book. And like all Sedaris books I raced through it; I mean I enjoyed the book but I knew in the back of my head that it was simply a ploy to avoid saying goodbye. | | |
| I signed up for my classes today and I'm really excited that I got into all of my first choices! As of now my fall schedule is... Math and Music (Freshman seminar): Monday/Wednesday (8:35 A.M. - 9:50 A.M.)/Friday (9:00 A.M. - 9:50 A.M.) Mandarin Chinese: Everyday (10:00 A.M. - 10:50 A.M.) Comparitive Politics: Tuesday/Thursday (11:00 A.M. - 12:15 P.M.) 20th Century European History: Monday/Wednesday (2:40 P.M. - 3:55 P.M.) Beginning Cricket: Tuesday/Thursday (2:15 P.M. - 3:05 P.M.) | | |
|
