2 Weeks!

I got back to school today from Thanksgiving break. The next two weeks are going to be a bit strenuous. I think it is going to be difficult to be anticipating Christmas break and working on my projects and finals at the same time. I just can't wait to go home for Christmas for a month :) I love my house so much especially at Christmas time! I need to work on getting my family their presents. I got some for my friends last night before I came back. I also got a little pink Christmas tree for my room. It is adorable. Two more weeks until the end of my freshman semester. It seems like time has flown by so fast! I hope college doesn't go that fast in general. I don't think I am ready to be on my own yet.

Black Friday!!!

Yesterday was one of my favorite days of the year. Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving is the biggest shopping day of the year. First at Montgomery Mall or Westfield I was able to get a free watch from New York and Company and a free scarf from the Limited. I love them both. Next we went to Tysons Corner. Despite the economic crisis the mall was as packed or more packed than all the Black Fridays before. All of the stores were offering more promotions than usual to get people out to shop. Stores like American Eagle and Steve Madden offered scratch offs to get a certain percentage off of your entire purchase. My sister got 30% off of her leather boots from Steve Madden. I did pretty good and got most of my clothes for the year. We ate at Red Lobster. I had the salmon, which was pretty good. Then we went to Lakeforrest in Gaithersburg. Lakeforrest has become more and more dilapidated over the years. We got back a little after 10. I didn't get anything for my family or friends so I should probably work on that.

Home for Turkey Day!!!

I got home yesterday for Thanksgiving Break!!! I made it to my house around 3. I just hung out yesterday and then went to the grocery store to get some toiletries for college. Today I got in trouble for sleeping in until 10. Heaven forbid I sleep in late. Then I got ready for Thanksgiving at my grandmothers house. We watched the Macy's Day Parade before we left. Then we made it to my grandmothers by 12 for our Thanksgiving meal. My grandmother is the best cook ever!!! I shared the traditional meal with my mom's side of the family. Then I got to hang out with my little cousins. I think they missed me. One of my cousins, Jason who is five just wanted to sit on my lap the entire day so I let him do that considering he had not seen me in 4 months. We talked until around 4. Then I came home and worked on my family heritage project.

Good Week/ Twilight

This week has been so much fun!!! The snow makes me excited to be home for Thanksgiving and Christmas. Twilight also came out this week! I went and saw it Thursday at midnight. I tried not to have really high expectations because I knew it could never compare to the book...which is amazing!!! Anyway the movie was okay. They stuck to the book but they cut out too much of it. I felt instead of a 2 hour movie it should have been a 3 hour movie. I am assuming they did not have the budget to do so because I think the fan based would have really liked the movie to be longer. I was not really disappointed with the movie. I am just sad because I waited on this movie to come out for a year and now its over. I think most of the time waiting for something is always superior to actually doing or seeing something. Anyway I still liked the movie I might see it again with my family over break because I love book.

Thanksgiving Dinner/Treelighting ceremony

Tonight was a lot of fun! At 6:15 I went with a group of friends to get our pictures taken before the Thanksgiving dinner. I hope it turns out well. Then at 6:30 we went to our reserved table in the event space for Thanksgiving dinner. The food was actually really good. I enjoyed not having to go up and the get the food myself, it was a nice change of pace. Then I went back to my room to layer my clothing for the Treelighting ceremony. I got hot chocolate when we went to the ceremony. I loved how someone decided to bring back the treelighting. I love traditions and so one of the things I really enjoy about Etown are all the holiday traditions we have. I will definitely cherish the Thanksgiving dinner and the ceremony in years to come. I had a blast singing with my friends and just feeling like part of Etown tonight. It really lifted my spirits.

SNOW

Today as I was sitting in the Marketplace eating lunch I heard someone exclaim "It's snowing." I looked out the window and sure enough the first flurries of this fall were coming down. I got pretty excited and I don't even really like snow. In high school I wanted it to snow so I wouldn't have to go to school. I guess we need to get an intense blizzard in order not to go to classes here. Thats kind of a bummer. I called my mom and she said the ground was covered at my house this morning. I thought that was kind of odd considering that I live 2 hours south but whatever, my brother still had to go to school. Snow now just means were getting closer to Christmas!!! I am so excited. Tomorrow I am going to go to the school store to see if I can get any cute Etown items on sale for my family and friends. I bought myself a pair of sweatpants today. I got them for 10 bucks so I was pretty stoked.

Club Volleyball

Today I helped with a club volleyball tryout in order to earn money for our volleyball trip next year. It was actually pretty fun although it made me very nostalgic. Since I was 13 every November I tried out for Tri-State FCA Volleyball. Club volleyball is soooo much fun. Each year you play around 8 tournaments from January to around May. Each year you usually get one or two big trips where you spend the night and play for at least 2 days in a row. So many of my lifes memories are because of club volleyball. Watching try outs just really made me want to start back over at age 13 and be able to do it all again. I am really going to miss it this year. I met so many wonderful people, went so many cool places, and had the some of the best experiences of my life playing. I hate growing up :(

Group Projects

I would just like to write this blog to say how much I do not like group projects. I find them so difficult. I hate trying to balance not stepping on any one's toes and yet making a final product that I think is the best it can be. This is especially difficult when dealing with creative and extensive projects, which is what I am dealing with. I also think as a freshman, it is difficult to be in a group project because they create some tension amongst the members. I don't want tension with anyone else I am trying to make new friends not turn them off. So I am pretty frustrated that I have so many group projects to deal with right now. I would really just enjoy doing them myself. I want it to be the end of the semester so I can be finished with all these stupid group projects.

Scheduling

Last night, my roommate informed me mid sentence that one of my classes, American Lit was closed. She then found out one of her classes was closed. Two of my good friends had two of their classes closed. This sent us all into a tizzy into trying to decide how we were going to fix our schedules. I eventually decided to take Sex and Gender in Society just for kicks. I want to wait to get into Short Story, American Lit and Geosystems so I had nothing else to take. I thought scheduling was going to be fun and easy here but I was wrong. The entire process has just been one big stress factor in my life. Not knowing what to major in is inconvenient and time consuming, the grade report makes no sense, having certain classes offered in the fall or spring, having to have junior status to get into a class,and having to wait until the second to last day to register are only some of the annoying factors of scheduling. I just hope I can graduate Etown having been able to take all the courses I wanted to, with major I am interested in and with 2 minors.

Free Time

Now that volleyball is over I have so much free time! It is amazing how much time a sport consumes at E-town. I don't really know if it is a good thing or a bad thing to have all this extra time. During volleyball the amount of free time I had made it seem urgent that I do my work during that time. Now it seems like I have all the time in the world to do my work. (This really isn't the case though.) It also means that I have to be motivated enough to go work out at the gym everyday. That is going to be quite difficult especially with it being so cold outside. I hate walking in the nasty, windy cold. Hopefully, I will be able to work out a schedule in which I get my work done, go to the gym and then have a little extra free time for myself. I have A LOT of projects I could be doing. I also could be in a lot better shape. I guess we will see how it pans out.

Christmas is coming :)

Christmas is coming! The Christmas trees are starting to go up everywhere in stores and in the school! I am pretty excited. I have already started writing my Christmas list. I don't really want or need anything that badly this year. I have to figure out what I am going to get my family and friends. I think it will be more difficult this year because I won't be at home to get stuff for them. I also don't really have access to a mall without pestering someone to take me. I don't like asking for favors so that might be difficult. I love Christmas music and movies. I have certain songs I have to hear on the radio each year. Including I want a hippopotamus for Christmas, and the original last Christmas. My family also has certain movies we have to watch each year before Christmas comes. My absolute favorite is How the Grinch Stole Christmas with Jim Carey. I love that movie and I can quote the entire thing. Well I am going to continue working on my Christmas list.

:)

So this week has been pretty exciting. The volleyball team won our semi final match for the conference on Wednesday night against Widener. It was a pretty intense game. I also hosted an overnight for a recruit named Jessica. She was really cool and I hope she winds up here next year. It wasn't all that exciting while she was here except the game. We went to the Jays nest and got food than later around 10. She had to wake up for classes this morning so I had to get up early too :( bummer. Tonight I went and saw Urinetown with my roommate Cristina it was really good. I haven't seen a play in a long time. The last one I saw was Beauty and The Beast at my mom's old high school. Tomorrow I have a big business test so I should focus on studying that rather than blogging.

Obama Wins

I am not very big on politics; however, I think I should touch on this historical event tonight. I think it is extremely significant that an African American has won the presidential candidacy. I am truly glad that our nation which was once so racist has taken the huge step forward in this election by electing a African American president. My sixth grade history teacher told me to remember what I was wearing, and what I was doing when significant events occur so I can tell my children in the future. I had him the year of September 11th and I remember that I was wearing a neon green pair of shorts and a limited too t-shirt and I was walking out of language arts. So tonight I was cramming for my Microeconomics final wearing blue sweatpants and a volleyball t-shirt when an African American won the presidential election. As I am sitting listening to Obamas speech on the TV I know things are going to change in the future and for that I am thankful.

projects

I would just like to write this blog about my frustrations of having tons of projects due at the end of the semester. In each class I have at least one major project accounts for a large percentage of my grade. I understand this is college and the workload is going to be strenuous; however, I would rather have homework every night. I also am not a fan of basing large percentages of a persons grade on a couple of assignments. Currently I have an A in business but if I do poorly on my final exam and business plan project I could almost fail the class. Honestly, does that seem fair to anyone? For people who are good test takers or simply have a rough day this is bad news. I think I am going to have a really rough time trying to do all these projects at once. I just can't wait until Christmas and all this work is behind me.

Halloween Weekend!

Halloween Weekend was so much fun! The volleyball team had a tournament. Unfortunately, we lost all four but I got to play. My mom also came to see me play which was really nice. On Friday night the team watched Hocus Pocus. I haven't seen that movie in forever so that was fun. Saturday I got to go to Hershey Park in the Dark with Kristen and Huntley. I finally got to ride Storm Runner, normally its broken down. I also got a funnel cake which I paid five dollars for and it was terrible. Then I came back and got dressed in my zebra costume. :) I hung out with some friends and then we all went to the dance, which was definitely better than the last one I went to. Today I got to sleep in and it was awesome. I got my extra hour from daylight savings time. Then I worked on my research paper. In the afternoon, I went to see Pineapple Express with my friend Tiffany. It was pretty funny I didn't expect it to be the type of movie it was though. All in all it was a really fun weekend.