So far so good on the University front.

When I’m in Church everyone week to week asks me how I’m doing in school. Week to week the message doesn’t change much unless I take a hard test or I have a fun project that I spent a whole night trying to procrastinate to finish.

Recently I’ve been busy with planning events for Inter-greek council and when I wasn’t doing that I was at work or in class. I really have no social life outside of talking to Craig on the internet and I’m trying to establish a better relationship to the people who attend my church who are around my age group.

I’ve been taking a lot of tests in the past few weeks and I just happened to get the scores back to all of my tests this past week:

>In Christian Ethics I got a pretty decent score of a B+ on an essay and a short answer true of false test. So far Christian Ethics has been my favorite class because it challenges me to deeper thinking and it is a subject that I do not mind talking about because I have knowledge in the religious aspects because I am a Christian myself and I have grown up in a Christian family so I’ve been in a Christian environment my whole life. It’s great how I survived the first part of the class without a Ethics book by Frankena just because I found the book online. I only declared myself a Christian though when I began to understand what the messages meant and wanted to learn more and follow the teaching of the religion. So far in the class we have been learning about Ethics and what it means and what some different values and beliefs are that people follow. We have now started working on the Christian aspects and it’s really interesting to hear and meet people who have grown up in similar environments and who are at different levels of their faith than myself. It’s interesting to meet people who have never had any religious experiences because they seem to be an empty cup that isn’t filled in my eye. I want them to know the joy and the peace that comes in Christianity but I don’t want to be one of those people who is constantly shoveling religion down their throats when they are taking a religion class because I think that I am right and that my way is “the only way”. I’m hoping that the class keeps improving and going the way I want it to, it’s great on discussions and debates.

>In my Intercultural Communication 2nd class in which I have no book I didn’t do the best on the first test. This is partly because I’d been talking to Craig the night before the test and because i’d slept in and missed the first fifteen minutes of test taking time. At the end of the test after I’d tryed to buzz through the multiple chioce questions with help from my study guide I was only able to complete 3 out of the 5 available essay questions because I ran out of time and the teacher would not give me anymore for coming in late. Both questions were worth seven points each so that was fourteen points off my total score off of home plate.

>Scuba Diving was an interesting situation. I have Scuba right after I have Orchestra on Wednesday nights. The classes actually overlap by fifteen minutes. So every Scuba Diving class I would come fifteen minutes late and miss fifteen minutes of the information being taught. When it came to diving, that was no problem because it took a long time to suit up and get ready to dive and I’d get there with just enough time to do that if I dressed quickly. On one of the days that I’d come in late we’d recieved our official scuba diving books. My instructor didn’t remember to hand me a book when I got there so when it came time for us to turn in our assignments I was wondering why I had nothing in which to get my assignments from. I ended up begging a flaky girl in my class Anna Y. to use her book but she acted like a bitch and wouldn’t let me barrow it. I was really sick that week so I wasn’t in the mood to fight Anna about it either. I went to the Hamline book store and bought a fifty one dollar book that wasn’t the right kind of water safety book anyway. The teacher had been handing the water safety books out himself because Hamline’s bookstore had refused to buy the book and supply them in the first place. The water safety book I’d gotten I wasn’t able to return because I’d taken the book out of it’s clear plastic wrapping. It was just my luck that the night that I’d arranged to finally get a book from the instructor had been the night of the final Scuba diving TEST. I had to complete the test after not having ever had a book to study off of as I watched my book sit on the instructors front desk. Crazy as it may sound I had been a really good listener and note taker in the class and I passed the Scuba test with only 12 out of 60 questions wrong. I even got a few freebies when i could use my notes to prove that they questions were wrong that were being asked on the test. So that class was a relief and now I have some quizzes to do with my new book.

>Hamline Orchestra has been fun as usual, Yali You loves my orchestra class because we are the best orchestra she’s had in her whole entire career at Hamline. Rumor is that a couple of semesters ago she’d had to cancel orchestra completely because of it’s being SO BAD. Yali has given us really hard music to work on this semester…Beethoven, Mozart, Bartok, and A lot more. We had 3 weeks(that is 6 practices) to master a fifteen minute orchestral song…it was crazy…BUT A BLAST! I really like orchestra and I hope I don’t miss this final concert like I did last semester.

>Crossing Borders I is orientation for study abroad. I signed up for the class because it sounded fun and I wanted to learn about other cultures I had no clue that that was why. So I signed up for study abroad for this summer but I have a fear that I will have trouble paying to go. I haven’t dropped the class and the things I am learning about traveling have helped me in intercultural communications.

>Schools and Societies was my first class in my Hamline undergraduate education courses. Recently I got an A- on an exam we were given on the first few chapters of the book we were supposed to buy for the class. I hadn’t had the money to buy that book either so I found myself copying the chapters on the copy machine from classmates…page by page. I was sick when I took the exam and I was coughing so bad and had such a fever that my Professor had to give me cough drops to suck on and I took an extra hour to take the test because I was so dilierious. For the class I have been placed in Seward Montessori 1st-5th grade school to complete 30 hours of class student volunteer work. It’s been fun so far but I’ve found that it’s hard to catch the three buses it takes to get to Seward early Wednesday and Friday mornings.

So, that’s an update on my current school status at Hamline…I’m thinking of finally declaring a Major and Minors :

Maybe Global Studies and Music Double major with a double minor in religion and education.

If you see me running everywhere have no fear and stop by and say hi…I need the encouragement outside of work and classes and DT…I’ll talk about work and DT later.

Whoever reads this…stranger or friend feel free to call me and we’ll chat:

651-523-4076.

Till later all.

When I was in Scotland as I walked with Craig at night, holding his hand and listening to my iPod with one ear and Craig talking with the other, I used to find ways to make long walks shorter.

 Sometimes I would talk to Craig and we’d play like kids creating worlds and different scenerios of what the future might be like. We’d never meantion my return to the reality which is Minnesota in the United States.

 One thing I remember doing that I noticed about the Edinburgh and Dundee culture that was different from the American culture was noticing the amount of physical contact people made with each other.

In some countries men hold hands and a kiss in a greeting is custom and regular, in other countries like America a formal greeting involves the shaking of a hand or sometimes a hug.

 In normal transitions People on U.S American streets and in its high school hallways try to avoid contact with each other as much as possible. This element of lack of contact tranlates itself into romantic U.S. American relationships as well.

 It was normal in Scotland to see couples regardless to their age holding hands as they walked down the sidewalk (or pavement as Craig calls it).

I never had anyone to hold my hand in the States before I left and I’d never before been in a relationship where I’d find myself holding the hand of my partner at the time. The relationships I’d been in hadn’t been serious enough that I’d even see myself growing old with the person, or imagine myself  having their children.

When I would head out with Craig in Scotland it became almost natural for me to revert to the childish instinct of feeling ussafe when not holding Craig’s hand.

I was elated to see that I was not alone in the act and I joined many others.

 I often found myself counting the couples(and people who looked to be related or in a relationship) holding hands walking past as we walked. I know it really bugged Craig because I would announce my count and talk about the culture differences and the finds as if I was “tallying love” in the cities we were in. Trying to show how Minnesota was different and how our being together after being in and coming from such different cultures was a miracle and total fate.
With my being back in Minnesota where holding hands is not a way of life, I feel that I long for it more when I see the brave souls who dare to actually show their public displays of affection by showing others that they are not afraid of the germs that may be inherent on their partners skin.

I hope that when I see Craig again I will be able to greet him in a Non appropriate U.S. American way and I hope that when we walk and talk together again we can hold hands.

recently I have lacked the motivation to get out and start blogging again. I have come to the conclusion that the problem has a direct correlation to Craig’s Blogging habits. I find that before, whenever Craig blogged I too was motivated into deeper thinking. I think I’ll start blogging again on my own because Craig hasn’t done so in awhile. My Life is really interesting and entertaining and I find blogging theraputic. So I’m thinking that I’m going to blog about my progress in all my classes so far this year, and about my Greek life and relationship status after that.

So I’d like to purpose a toast to my return to the blogging world.

You would fall for the sensitive guy.

You’ll find your future man wherever turtlenecks are sold. He will have depth, introspection, and a disturbing knowledge of musical theater. And he may be a little weird. But hey, while your girlfriends cry over broken hearts, you’ll be having Shakespeare read to you every night.

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What kind of Mean Girl are you?

no, your not