first week of classes

Revolution, enlightenment, and enslavement
POSITIVE: I'll be learning about a time period that we really skimmed over in middle and high school. We're reading Paradise Lost. The professor seems really nice.
NEGATIVE: The English department know-it-all/kiss-ass is in the class too.

comparative literature
POSITIVE: We're reading lit that ISN'T transatlantic. One of our books is actually a graphic novel.
NEGATIVE: I know absolutely no one in the class.

modernism

POSITIVE:The professor is pretty funny.
NEGATIVE: She's kind of long-winded.

English syntax
POSITIVE: Compared to my other classes, the workload is pretty light. What I'm learning can easily be applied to my professional future. The professor is cool.
NEGATIVE:So far none. Woot!

Shakespeare
POSITVE: I've already read two of the plays we're covering, and we get to choose which play we want to read for our big semester-long project.
NEGATIVE: The professor is a little intense. I like that she's enthusiastic about the subject, because I think that will make the class a lot more interesting, but it makes me think she'll grade super harshly since she's kind of obsessed. The semester-long project is pretty daunting as well.

sleep deprived

I have not been sleeping well since I moved back to Winona. I'm not sure why. Maybe it's because I'm still adjusting to the new digs. Maybe I'm still a little paranoid that some blood-sucking flying rat is going to make its way into my room again. I don't know. But last night I planned on at least trying to get a full night's sleep so I'd be awake and alert for the freshman orientation panel I'm helping out with today. Unfortunately, that's not how things worked out.

My room mate and five of her obnoxious friends burst into our apartment at 2 AM. I tried my best to tune them out but it was impossible. They didn't bother keeping their voices down either because my room mate "had no idea if I was there." When am I NOT home at 2 AM on a Wednesday? I mean, there have been exceptions, but for the most part I am home and asleep (or at least, tossing and turning fitfully in my bed) by then. Finally, one of her especially intoxicated friends came into my room to see if I was sleeping. When she saw that I wasn't, she kept bugging me to come out to the living room to chill with them. These are some of the last people I'd want to hang out with, but I figured I wasn't sleeping anyway, so I shuffled out in my moose (or as the especially drunk friend kept yelling "CariBOU!!!!!!") pajamas and bedhead and joined them.

It was a HUGE headache sitting out there listening to them. At least in my room I was able to put a pillow over my head to block out my head (or smother myself). The group was comprised of the kind of guy who gives frat boys a bad name, two loud, melodramatic girls arguing about some lesbian love triangle, and a girl who kept trying to make herself sound cool and kept repeating that she'd been arrested four times and going on about how much she loved jail. One guy was actually okay, because he was somewhat sober and was planning on doing an internship in Sevilla, so we had a decent amount to talk about that DIDN'T revolve around Greek life or trivial college not-quite-relationships.

I finally ended up falling asleep at five and waking up at eight thirty when my alarm went off. I hit the snooze button until about ten, got dressed, grabbed my stuff, and made my way over to campus. Now I'm sitting in the Smaug, enjoying a muffin and iced mocha, trying to wake up before I have to deal with sixty rowdy freshman for three hours. Hopefully once classes start these impromptu parties won't be as frequent, but I'm not holding my breath.

BAT ATTACK: part dos

The next day a maintenance guy from my housing office came out to see if the bat was still there and find where it got in. He said the bat was most likely gone, because it would still be flying around if it was still in the apartment. He found a gap in the wall of the furnace room that leads to the chimney and we figured that was how it got in. He sealed it up, said he'd come back the next day to put a rubber stopper on the bottom of the furnace room door just to be safe, and left. I thought that was the end of it. Silly me.

I heard flapping around around two the next morning. I reluctantly turned on my light, not wanting to see what I knew would be there. Sure enough, the nasty thing was hanging on the wall next to my door. Actually, he was hanging on a block of wood on the wall by my door. The wood was there when I moved in, and I assumed it was covering a hole, but apparently it didn't cover all of it. I tried to scare the bat out of my room with a broom and he squeezed into a gap above the block of wood. I hit the block of wood, trying to scare it out so I could get it out the front door but it wouldn't fly out.

I refused to sleep in the house with a bat for another night, so I called my roommate and filled her in. Her friend had two couches for us to crash on, which was great. Unfortunately, they wanted to hang out at the TKE frat house for a while before we went to her friend's apartment. They ended up staying until about 6 AM. I got fed up with their pointless ramblings about Greek life around four and went back to my roommate's car to sleep in the back seat. We eventually made it back to her friend's apartment and got a few more hours of sleep, then called the housing office again. They sent the same guy over and he managed to scare the bat out for good. He sealed up the hole in the wall so now there is no way that creepy little flying rat is getting back in here.

I used to love bats. I thought they were so cute. They were my favorite part of the nocturnal exhibit at the zoo. My sister and I even used to pretend we were bats when we were little and used our bunk bed as a bat cave (yeah, I was a weird kid). That image has been shattered. They are not nearly as adorable when they are dive bombing your head in a tiny apartment with low ceilings.

Want to know something cool? The word for bat in Spanish is "murcielago." It has each vowel. It might be my favorite Spanish word, even if it's not my favorite animal anymore.

BAT ATTACK

Around 2 AM this morning I heard a scratching noise. At first, I didn't think anything of it. I figured my fan was blowing one of my posters against the wall or something. When it didn't stop, my imagination kicked in, and thanks to the horror movie I watched earlier in the evening, I wildly thought that someone was outside my window, trying to break in. I turned on the light next to my bed and looked around my room. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. Nothing was moving, I didn't see any suspicious shadows outside of my window. I was just starting to think that I had overreacted when a small, furry, gray-brown head poked out from the heating vent on my ceiling.

Naturally, I was shocked. It looked like a mouse until it unfolded its wings, squeezed out, and started flapping around my room. That's when I started screaming. I can't believe my roommate didn't hear me. If anyone DOES ever break into my room I'm going to have a serious problem, because apparently I'm incommunicado from my corner of the apartment. When she didn't come to my rescue, I called my parents. I felt bad, because it was so early in the morning and they live two hours away so they couldn't do anything, but I had no idea who else to call.

While they tried to calm me down and offer suggestions I wrapped myself in my comforter for protection and ran out of the room. The bat had gotten out as well and was fluttering around the kitchen and living room. We have two front doors; there's the one that leads outside, a little entrance area, and another door. I propped open the second one with a folded-up card table, but I couldn't find anything to prop open the second one while I tried to chase out the bat. I ended up running into my roommate's room and waking her up. Turns out she's no help because she's terrified of bats, so she called one of her frat boy friends.

He came over and THINKS he saw something fly past him when he opened the front door,and after a pretty thorough search of the apartment and couldn't find the bat. He left, and my roommate went with him, but of course I can't sleep. I never saw the bat leave and he only thinks he saw something fly out. I keep hearing random clicking and scratching noises that I'm not sure are just normal house noises or if it means the bat is still in here. I closed my bedroom door after they left-I'm in the living room and I was just too creeped out to leave all the doors open and leave myself open to attacks-so for all I know he's flying around in there again but I'm too scared to check, so right now I'm curled up on the futon watching Three's Company and trying to work up the guts to double check my room. I don't know what I'll do if it IS still in there, since I'm completely alone now and have no one around to help me.

This sucks. My landlord is going to get a VERY unpleasant phone call in a few hours.

I AM BACK IN WINONA! HOORAY! Except not really...I mean, I am happy to be back. I love Eagan, but I needed a change of scenery. However, I've only been here for four days and I'm already bored out of my mind. I'm also broke, so I really have nothing to do besides job hunt, which I've mainly been doing online because it's so damn hot out. I'll start tutoring once school starts, but that's a month away. I can't go without a paycheck for that long. I'm hoping that if I do find a job soon they'd be okay with me drastically cutting my hours back once school starts, because two jobs, two clubs, and five classes might drive me insane otherwise.

Because of my lack of employment, I've just been stuck at my new apartment. I still have mixed feelings on this place. It's definitely an improvement on dorm life. I don't have to share a bathroom with thirty other girls. I have free laundry and a washing machine. My bedroom is pretty big. On the other hand, it's not air conditioned so the air is really humid and musty and gross. It's a basement level apartment so I've encountered more spiders than I wanted to. I waged war on my room with a can of raid, but I don't know how long that will hold them off. My roommate and I get along well enough, but she is obsessed with frat boys so that's basically all she talks about. I'm hoping the place will be more comfortable and less gross-smelling and all the bugs and spiders will die and leave me alone once summer is over.

Aaaand...that's about it for now.

la la la long post

My sister found an old CD case of mine. In the very back of it was a recording of the 2006 Dakota Valley Choral Festival, this big district high school choir concert I was in my senior year. I'm listening to it right now and it is making me miss choir SO much. I'm sitting here, mouthing along to the words that I still remember after four years, choking up a bit. I LOVED choir. I loved singing. It was such a big part of my life all through high school. It helped me become more confident, or at least, it taught me how to pretend that I was confident. It taught me that I was allowed to be loud and proud.

I remember the first day of choir, singing this song with a simple melody in a round, and being amazed that I could be a part of something so beautiful. I remember the first time I auditioned for Encore, my high school's musical variety show, my voice shaky and breathy and nearly inaudible and my face pink and hot and tense. I remember the last year I auditioned for Encore, grinning from ear to ear and revelling in the gorgeous (I know that sounds a little conceited, sorry) sound coming out of my mouth. I remember, while practicing for my last voice recital, my voice teacher tearfully commenting on how far I'd come from being the girl terrified of her own voice. I remember thinking that the feeling I got every time I sang was the closest I'd ever get to flying. Each song was like two or three minutes of invincibility.

I was in choir my first year of college, too. I even made it into concert choir, which really didn't mean too much. There are only two choirs at WSU: concert choir and women's chorus. If you're a girl who sings a little above average or a boy who can't sing at all you can make it into concert choir. I was happy that music was still a part of my life, but it was so intimidating singing with all the music majors, people who planned on making a career out of singing. I suck at sight reading music (the director even told me so after my audition, although he phrased it a little more politely), so that combined with my insecurity about singing with real musicians made it feel like I had reverted back to the nervous fourteen-year-old who was too scared to let anyone around her hear her. The director was no help at all. He singled me out more than once for screwing up. He even accused me of not practicing enough, which really pissed me off. I was practicing three times a week, which was a decent amount for a one credit class that had nothing to do with my major. Hell, most of the music majors don't even practice that much. At the end of the year, I was so frustrated and embarrassed that I decided not to continue choir. Even if I had wanted to, I didn't have room for it in my schedule.

Ever since I stopped singing, I've felt like a chunk of my life is gone. I know I'm being dramatic, but really, there is nothing like belting out a song at the top of your lungs if you're stressed. Choir and voice lessons were like therapy. Yes, they both had their frustrating points, and I was often pushed far out of my comfort zone, but they helped shape me into who I am right now. I'm not an incredibly outgoing person, but I know I've come out of my shell, and I know singing was responsible for that. I can sing in the car and the shower all I want, but it's not the same as doing it in front of an audience. I was hardly a diva, but it was a good feeling, showing someone that deep down I am capable of producing something loud and clear and lovely. I loved surprising them.

I could write a hundred more pages about how much I love and miss singing, but all the words in all the languages in the world aren't enough to describe the feeling it gave me, and the feeling its absence gives me now, so I'll just leave it at this one quote by Victor Hugo that sums it up:

"Music expresses that which cannot be put into words and cannot remain silent."

SPIDER?

My cat has been chasing what I can only assume is a massive spider (I'm too creeped out to check for myself) back and forth across the shelf in my room for the past hour and a half. My arachnophobia combined with the sounds of my dumb cat slipping off surfaces and running into walls is keeping me awake, which means all of you lovely readers get to deal with my rambling! HOORAY!

I am listening to a bunch of Disney songs on youtube and feeling nostalgic. The villains always have the best songs, especially Frollo's "Hellfire" in The Hunchback of Notre Dame and Scar's "Be Prepared" in The Lion King (Jeremy Irons might not be a fantastic singer, but that part of the movie scared the six-year-old pants off me). The princess songs are pretty and all, and are really fun to sing at the top of my lungs if I'm alone in my car, but the villains' songs are just EPIC. Hellfire is DEFINITELY the best though. What other Disney song has religious hypocrisy and sexual frustration? And Tony Jay's voice...you could eat it with a spoon. I feel creepy saying that about an obscenely old (and dead) man, but it's true. The man had some serious pipes that he showed off in that song.

Okay, now my cat is looking around my room like something is flying, so maybe it's not a spider. Or maybe it is, and it's swinging around on its web. Fuck. I am NOT going to get any sleep tonight.

I'm leaving Saturday for my family's annual vacation up to northern Minnesota. I'm pretty psyched. Change of scenery, quality time with my sister and cousins, spending all day on the lake...it'll be great. We've been going there since we were babies-I'm pretty sure my mom went with her side of the family before she even met my dad- and I can't imagine spending 4th of July week anywhere else.

My cat has been staring at the same spot on the shelf for about five minutes. I think he's trying to kill the spider with his mind. Clearly, there is some Jedi shit going down in my room...or he just got lazy and is hoping the damn thing dies on its own.

Speaking of cats, I house sat for my aunts last week and they have the weirdest cat EVER. He makes sounds like a pigeon, gallops around the house like a pony, and knows how to play fetch.

I'm going to attempt to get some sleep. I really don't have anything interesting to write about (as I'm sure you've gathered by now) but maybe being away for a week will inspire me to write something decent.

Buenas noches!

I honestly have no clue what I'm going to write about here. With my Spain blog it was easy, but something tells me my life isn't quite as exciting now as it was five months ago. I've gone from immersing myself in Spanish culture and jetting around Europe (okay...three countries probably doesn't qualify as "jetting around Europe")to being a total couch potato, watching America's Next Top Model marathons on Oxygen between doing a few household chores (although now I really want to turn ANTM into a drinking game: take a shot every time Tyra talks about herself. You'd be wasted by the time the opening credits were over). Some of you may remember that I was employed at the beginning of the summer, but after two weeks of work I was laid off. There's not nearly enough work for as many employees as Mackin Publishing has, so they let go of the last batch of people they hired. I'm trying to find work back in Winona, and there's this online editing job that's looking promising, so if I'm lucky I'll get that and will be able to move back to Winona before August. Until then, I really won't have much to write about. Besides my family's annual vacation to Park Rapids, there's not much going on this summer. Chances are I'll just use this to ramble about completely pointless things so I can waste my time on something other than watching horrible TV shows and browsing facebook.

I honestly have no clue who will want to read this. I might just send this to my friends who I don't get to see that often so they know what's new with me and to my friends who, for some reason, enjoy reading what I write. I thought about sending it to my family members too, because a lot of them really enjoyed the Spain blog, but I have a feeling that some of my college escapades aren't elderly aunt and uncle appropriate. Actually...that's not really true. I'm not a particularly wild girl, and I never do anything remotely scandalous (okay, almost never), but I still felt like I had to censor myself quite a bit when I was writing the Spain blog because I knew that my family would be reading it. I'll probably be a bit more open here.

Sooooo...that's it. Hopefully my life gets a little more interesting in the next few weeks.