First Day

It's 4:43 am, the first day of classes. My first class (programming) doesn't start for another 3 hours and 47 minutes. I hope it's just excitement that got me up so early. All of us on the floor are excited about classes today, except for our RA. She is older and wiser than us, I suppose.

Either after today or at the end of the week I'll write a blog about what I think about my classes. In the meantime, I think I might go out and run (aha, aha...) so I'm not the cause of my roommate's waking.

House Wars

Orientation week at CMU is almost over. It's been a fun week, despite what some people say about college orientations. I've gone to about as many information sessions as I could (the schedule this week has been flexible, and there was only one "required" session). Although they were sometimes boring, as people say, I learned something new at every session, and often many new somethings at that!

My hall is awesome. We've gone out to various places on our own several times already, from going out to eat to hanging out at Kraus Campo. My roommate is awesome. We're very different, but we've been getting along well. One of the best parts is that she can sleep through anything, so I can sit here and type a blog at one in the morning while she falls instantly asleep. My suitemates are awesome, especially since I'm usually the only person who ever wants to take night showers. Life is awesome in general at the moment.

Hopefully this awesome life doesn't end on Monday when I take my first class at 8:30 in the morning (programming). Engineering students, even freshmen, at CMU are notorious for having the most work on campus. Classes plus studying plus extracurriculars plus house activities will mean little time for sleep and just hanging out. Until then I'll enjoy this, though.

Tonight (last night, rather) was House Wars, which is a competitive tournament between the five housing areas to see who wins the House Cup for the year. My area, called "The Hill," defended our trophy and won it for the second year in a row. It was exhilarating. So much so, I think I'm might be losing my voice from all the cheering that we do.

Chloe painted most of our faces in our team colors: red and black.My roommate and I in our cardboard and ducttape helmets.
One of the upper floor RAs being painted by a McGill RA. The RAs were the ones who went all-out for the event.
Sara (my roommate) and Zahra (my suitemate) did Eric's makeup. Very intimidating.

I didn't bring my camera to the actual House Wars event, nor to most of the events that took place this week, including the cruise on Thursday night on the three rivers (starting to regret that). These will have to do for now. I've asked some people if I can put pictures they have taken on my blog, and with their consent I will later post those, once they become available.

Have a great week!

CMU

I am now at Carnegie Mellon about to partake of my first night's rest. Orientation so far has been great, albeit a little wet. The last few hours have been spent going over the "serious" information with the Resident Assistants and Orientation Counselors. Then we played Twister.

Now is time to sleep.

So it goes

Tomorrow Rachael goes to Pittsburgh never to return from the depths of the belly of that ruthless monster, college. Countless sacrifices have been made to reach this point. Many of life's precious moments have been devoted to this goal. Sweat has made it possible for her to stand here today and look the monster in the eye.

But here is where the road ends. The crystal ball is dark. What goal does one work toward? For what does one sweat?

New Look!

Blogger has been adding a number of features recently, but I have been ignoring them until now. My blog is now equipped with a new title, banner, a more manageable archive, a photo of the week and a poll. The photo of the week I hope to update once a week, probably on Sundays, with artistic photos that I may or may not have posted in my blog in months previous. New polls may or may not come up every week (I'm starting college next week, so I can't pledge myself too early). Please vote. It takes two seconds, and you can vote more than once if you like!

Wheaton vs. Chicago

Jenn and I have been in Wheaton for about a week now. She's been keeping very busy working as a TA for a chamber music camp. We went to Chicago yesterday for one of the camp's two concerts. I was not there for the children's concert; No, I have definitely sat through enough of those as a kid to last until I have my own. The primary reason for tagging along was to go to Chicago.

Like every city, Chicago has its own feel and culture. I admire its architecture and the way that the "Loop," or the train system that loops around the downtown area, fits into the plan of the city. Our group, Jenn, May (Jenn's soon-to-be-roommate, who also works at the music camp), J.D. (another worker) and I, actually came into the city by car instead of by train. Our first stop was Chicago's China Town for lunch. We ate at the type of restaurant in which carts of food are rolled by the tables and you pay by the plate. It was delicious.

China Town

The concert took a good three hours or so altogether. I got a lot of reading done (currently finishing People Before Profit: The New Globalization in an Age of Terror, Big Money, and Economic Crisis by Charles Derber; It's quite an excellent book which I highly reccommend if you are interested at all in the topic of globalization; I find Derber's solutions much more ideal than Thomas Friedman's).The concert hall.

Afterwards Jenn, May and I walked around Chicago. We started at Grant Park and worked our way up the Magnificent Mile. There is a long stretch of stores there, and not a single McDonalds as far up as we went; I was impressed.

May, Jenn and Buckingham Fountain in Grant Park.

Chicago Skyline

Apparently this is a great place fore concerts and naps

THE BEAN

Where's Waldo?

The Kinda Creepy Faces Fountains

...that spit...

I love Reeses! (actually, I didn't mean to take this picture.)

Jenn and I in the Hershey's store in the Magnificent Mile

At 10 o'clock we started towards the Neo-Futurist Theater to watch an hour-long production by the troupe Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind. It was a series of 30 humorous, philosophical, random and/or tragic skits that is performed in the exact time frame of one hour. They apparently rewrite a number of their skits every week, so you can never see it enough times. In front of the stage was a clothesline with each of the skit numbers on it, and the audience gets to call out which one they want next. We got through all but number 28 before the hour was up.The Stage at TMLMTBGB

The Stats

This one Saturday was much more exciting than my whole week put together. The only picture-worthy moment was the first time that I have ever gotten stuck behind a train while driving:

Final Schedule (before school starts, at least)

My schedule on ScheduleMan.org

It's finished! No more waitlist, no more worries.

Road Trip Part III

Here we are in Wheaton after the final leg of our journey! It's nice to know that it's over, because both Jenn and I were getting tired towards the end. At the same time it's somewhat sad, especially since I have over two weeks in Wheaton without much to do (except blog!).

Here are some pictures of our trip. There aren't many because we just drove most of the time. There's only so many pictures of the great midwestern clouds you can take (though we did take a lot of those!).The beautiful clouds.
You know you're in Texas when...Bushland is actually an exit you can take.
Road kill.
Jenn was goofing off with the camera.
Relaxing...a bit (I believe I told Jenn to put the camera away at this point.
We ran into a couple good storms. Look at those clouds!
The arch at St. Louis, the 2-D version.


The view through the arch.

Scheduled

Rachael is registered for classes! Actually, I'm waitlisted for two of them, but I'm first and second on the list, so I hope that will be okay. I hardly ever got my first choice class, but my schedule will definitely be manageable. Maybe if I had gotten up at 4 instead of 4:45 I would have received better options.