Tradition

As I started blogging on a Monday I thought it would be good closure to end on one as well.  I think it’s really neat all the traditions around christmas our school has.  Though a lot of them remind me of the ones that happen at home and it makes me sad that I’m missing them all!  For instance at Christmas in Christ Chapel the Gustavus Choir sang “Go Tell it on the Mountain”.  The Cherub choir back home (kids between the ages of 6 to 9) sing this same song every year at the Ryssby services.  Ryssby is the little church that the first Swedish settlers in the area built and the congregation grew into the church we have today.  So every year near christmas we have candlelight services in there not only for the atmosphere, but because there is no electricity and only a potbelly stove in the middle that provides the heat. (Burning at the beginning and freezing by the end) Anyway, though the G-choir’s gospel remdition sounds nothing like the little kids, everytime I heard it made me flash back to those Ryssby services that I missed this last weekend.  I guess it’s good I have something to make up for missing the other, but still… I’m glad I still get to have christmas at home!  I hope everyone has a wonderful break with all their fun traditions! I for one cannot wait to make lefse!

 

Wanted

A lost keyring with a generous amount of keys in all shapes and sizes.  It has three keychains, one from New York, Japan, and Paris. (All friends gifts of the cool places they went, unfortunately not where I’ve actually been.)

Discovered missing this morning.  Last remembered seen in my hands…I think…maybe.  Room has been torn apart.

If found please return to Pittman 121.  I want to be able to get home!

 

Pros and cons

My parents are coming out!  It’s the first time I’ve seen them since move-in day, so I’m really excited that I can actually show them around since I actually know where things are now!  They’re picking up my sister from school in the cities so she’s coming down too!  They decided this weekend so they could watch me dance in the choreographer’s gallery.  I’m glad they’ll get to see me dance, but at the same time it’s going to eat up a lot of the time that I could have spent with them!  Especially since now we have to do a special video run on saturday from 11-1. Prime lunch out time! Ulgh, oh well.  I’m still very excited to see them and everyone should go to the choreographer’s gallery; there are some awesome dances!

 

Close Encounters

As today was another lovely day, I decided to study outside for a little bit.  I was eating an apple and looking across the hilly landscape, I found that a ground squirrel wasn’t more than a foot away from me and was just staring at me.  It was really cute.  It kept coming up to me little by little and if I shifted it would frantically retreat.  Well, I finished my apple and put the core beside me so I’d have two hands to study with and I could throw it away when I went in.  Once the core was on the ground, the little critter made a final daring attempt toward me, swiped the apple core, and carried it back to it’s hole.  I felt kind of guilty because there’s the whole you should never feed the wildlife thing, but it stole it from me!  The apple was gone in a jiffy too! So I figured it went to a better place than the landfill, it was actually eaten and enjoyed.  I enjoyed myself too, it was a cute ground squirrel!

 

Fall

It’s days like this last monday (when I was supposed to blog, whoops!) that remind me why I love fall!  It was so beautiful outside.  It wasn’t too cold, the sun was shining, and the wind was really blowing.  So as I was walking to the caf the leaves were blowing all around me and my hair was blowing, which takes a lot since my hair is pretty heavy, and if felt just like I was Pocahontas!  All I needed was a Disney soundtrack.  It still amazes me how the accurate the weather report is here.  Back home they predict 7 inches of snow and the sun will shine all day when here if they say there’s a chance of rain, it rains.  Tuesday I was skeptical, it had a forty percent chance of rain.  The morning was mild with the sun shining, but low and behold, by the afternoon indeed it rained!  I’d better stop writing, I’m going on about the weather again. But friday it’s supposed to be 60s!

 

First weekend away

Initially, I thought I was going to have to stay here for fall break, but then my sister came up with the fabulous idea that I should come up and visit her.  She made a birthday/Christmas gift out of it and treated me to a weekend in the cities.  Besides the city driving, and getting stuck in stop and go traffic for a half hour, it was wonderful!  One of the highlights was going to the sculpture garden where we took over 100 pictures.  The one with the reflective glass was so cool! I stood on one side and my sister took a picture with her reflection on the other and she looked like a ghost!  Needless to say it was greatly amusing.  It felt great to finally be away from campus and I was so happy to see my sister again!  Overall, a great weekend.

 

My First Fake Fire

Ah, how thrilling to hear the fire sirens going off outside your room and to taste the evening air as the entire dorm files out of the building.  It’s true I had been warned this would happen numerous times throughout the year, yet I had still held onto the hope that our group would be just a little bit smarter.  No such luck, some guys were cooking pheasant in the oven.  Pheasant, more interesting than pizza, but still… Luckily I wasn’t doing anything drastic at the time so I could be pulled away, but one girl in our hall had just turned on the water to the shower when it went off!  As I missed the fire drill earlier in the year, I can now say that I do officially know fire procedure.  Here’s to hoping we won’t have any more of these in winter!

 

Roommates Reunited

After a full week and two days, my roommate has finally come back!  You may be thinking why this is such a big deal: well, I never expected that my roommate and I would be apart considering I’m from Colorado, she’s from Alaska, and neither of us would be spending a lot of weekends back home.  Of course she found the one way to leave me.  She got sick.  Don’t get overexcited, it wasn’t H1N1.  In fact, the doctors never figured out exactly what it was, but she kept spiking a fever and then it would go away for a while.  When it hit 103 she went to the hospital where she stayed for five days and then had to go with her relatives to Iowa to recuperate the rest of the way.  They thought she could get more rest there than a college dorm room… It was especially odd not having a roommate because the week before she went to the hospital she was sick and stayed back from all her classes.  So I went from seeing her all the time to not seeing her at all!  But now she has returned and all is well once again with our room.

 

Nobel

I must say, I’ve really been enjoying the Nobel Conference.  It’s wonderful how many people make the trip out here for it.  Yesterday, when I was waiting to get in, I met an old man decked out in Gustie gear who asked me all sorts of questions about being a student here and then told me that he had graduated from here in 1943!  It’s also entertaining seeing the middle school and high school kids navigating through the caf.  I really enjoyed the third speaker, Dr. Sedlak.  He had a lot of personality!  The speach brought sewage to a whole new light.  As he said, “Recycling sewage is attractive”.  The romans even named a goddess after their sewage ditch, because it so wonderful to watch their problems just float away.  I never knew there was so much water purification before they sent waste water back into the rivers, though I suppose I’d never really thought about it before at all.  I definately agree that if we’ve done all this purification to it already we should reuse it.  His new research using wetlands and photosynthesis to purify water also looked very interesting, for it would be the best solution since it’s good for the environment and takes much less energy than the newater that uses UV rays.  Overall, I’m learning tons and I hope all these new innovative ideas will spread so that we can have a more sustainable lifestyle.

 

A bit breezy, non?

I must say, the past few days the wind has been pretty incredible!  It’s so powerful!  Yesterday, I was getting my friend from across the hall for the rootbeer float party in Pittman, and I heard howling through the cracks of my door.  I decided to investigate.  As I turned the key and started to open the door I could feel the pressure of the wind.  Clearly, my roommate had left the windows open.  When I got in the room, three picture frames toppled over, my empty waterbottle flew across the room, and my closet door blew wide open!  Needless to say the windows are now shut.