Well, it's only been an obnoxiously long time since I posted anything here. I'm sorry about that; I had probably 3/4 of a post ready, but by now, it's full of random stories that happened weeks ago, so it's a little out of date. Let me see if I can sum it up in one sentence:
It snowed a little bit after I procrastinated on an essay, and then I got a purple plaid cape(/poncho, I guess) when my grandparents came for Family Weekend, which was really fun, and then I played with clay, drew a comic of myself procrastinating on my essay, got an umbrella in the mail, and started learning to sing a song in Japanese.
Yeah, that was basically it. Just... not nearly that concise.
But now, we'll pick up with this weekend. On Saturday, I went to a performance of the local symphony as an assignment for Music 101 (pretty awesome assignment, huh?). The theater in this town is actually surprisingly pretty, considering the population and isolation. Small, but pretty. And the symphony was good, too. They had a guest soloist, a 15-year-old viola prodigy girl who's apparently toured abroad and earned a lot of respect for her playing. My friend from my class and I both thought she had a few iffy moments in the piece she played with the symphony (not that either of us is particularly knowledgeable about viola playing), but she came back afterwards and played a solo that she composed herself, and I thought it was really good. Overall, a fun evening.
Then the next morning, I got up early and headed north for a few hours on a trip with the Japanese Club to a Japanese Garden a little ways outside of Chicago. It's apparently one of the best Japanese Gardens in the US, and it was definitely super beautiful (I took almost 400 pictures while we were there). First, we got to watch a reenactment of a traditional Japanese Tea Ceremony, which was cool, and then we ate a disappointingly-non-Japanese (and pricey) brunch at the garden's restaurant. However, we did get delicious Jasmine tea, and I got one of my friends to do me a favor and take this picture for me:
This is me drinking tea in a Japanese garden while wearing a plaid cape. OMGDUDELIFEISWIN. Behold your new Queen's Chair...
But no, seriously, it was a super fun trip. Here are a few of the pictures I took, so you can see how pretty it was:
Gorgeous, huh? We've been having really nice weather these past few days, which made it even better. And I can't tell you how happy I was to get off this campus and out of this town for a little while. Even if it meant driving past three hours of corn to get there (I guess we drove through some towns at the end, but really, I mean it...). Plus, three of my friends went, too, so we got to spend a day hanging out and enjoying the stunning scenery at the garden. A day well spent, in my opinion!
But now it's back to normal life for the week. I have my second FP essay due Friday (way to ruin the week, there), and either this week or next week (hopefully this week) I pre-register for Winter classes. Problem is, I have no idea what I'm going to take. I had a schedule sort of in mind, but then I realized that the three classes were all basically at the same time. What?! I think I can make two of the work, in theory, but I don't know what I'll take for my third class. Please, please, advisor, don't tell me to fill that slot with my math requirement class. I'm still hoping that if I ignore it for long enough, it'll go away.
The only other interesting thing I can think of to talk about is ladybugs. I'd always kind of liked ladybugs; at the very least, they seemed like about the least bothersome of all bugs back home. But over here, they've gone through some freaky population explosion over the past week or so, and then another huge burst in the past day. These things are everywhere. Swarms of them. Inside, outside, ladybugs. For some reason, I had it in my head that they were a Spring sort of bug, not an Autumn bug, but I'm telling you, the cold weather hit, and they started springing up from the ground like the armies of the undead. Is that normal around here? Because it's weirding me out just a little bit.
That was an unusually short update, but I can't think of anything else to say right now. Aside from my exciting weekend and the insect infestation, things are pretty much just plodding along here. I'll try and stay on the lookout for other exciting things so I can keep you better updated. Until next time!
