Another Week, Another Package

...Except the package had a dozen eggs in it.  And, carefully bubble-wrapped as they were  by my dear and loving parents, only six made it.  It was a bit of a mess.  But worth it, because there were also apples, bread, goats' cheese, a little jar of homemade chocolate sauce, nuts and carrots.  I am a very happy girl today, and not just because of that.

Here we have these things called 1/3 reports.  As in, every one-third of a semester.  The first of these reports is coming out this week, and I can't belive that a sixth of the year has already gone by.  I know approximately how I'm doing - I think I have Bs in chemistry and tech, and my average in maths is hovering in the mid-seventies.  I got back that big English essay, which turned out to be an A of some kind, and so I'm hoping that that will reflect my average in the class.  I feel like my grades are slowly getting better - there were just a couple of rough first tests.  İnşallah.

I also have a double bed now!  In that the bunk beds that I formerly occupied are now side-by-side on the floor.  I'm going to get a big pad to keep the mattresses together, but I slept on it like this last night and it wasn't even much of a problem.  This photo of my room shows you just what a distracted cleaner I am, but there you go.  Now that that big swath of wall under the turkish scarf is free, I'm going to fill it up with some posters - I've got a nice black-and-white world map, and a Banksy print in the mail.




And last night, I dyed my neighbor's hair for him.  Bright red.  He looks absolutely amazing, and it was loads of fun.  Oh, and I've started reading The Kite Runner, which is an abfab book, people (I'm aware that I'm probably the last person on earth to figure that out).  I'd read Khaled Hosseini's second novel, A Thousand Splendid Suns, and enjoyed it immensely, but I think this one is even better.

 

I can't write more because I need to get to the local shop for flour, milk and sugar before dinner, and have a massive amount of studying to do, but wish me luck with those reports.
Hoş çakal!

Illness and a Surprise

Nice to meet you, Tuesday.  Leave me alone.

I've been sick... running a low fever on and off since Sunday night.  There's something going around and hitting a lot of people badly enough to make them miserable but too gently to keep them in bed.  That and the rain are turning the dorms into something of an energy sink.  It's really not nice out, and I am not looking forward to biking tomorrow.  I went walking around campus today after classes, and twenty minutes wiped me, I'm just so tired.  Yesterday evening I slept on one of the lounge sofas for almost an hour.  I actually got myself a blanket - shameless.  I overslept this morning despite that, though it didn't matter because I get up at least two hours before I need to be anywhere.  Hung out in the kitchen, made turkish çay tea, ate the last of the gorgeous (I feel justified in saying this, yes) quiches I made on Sunday and chatted with one of the guys who gets to clean our kitchen instead of the cafeteria's.  A lot of the Beatles and Gilbert and Sullivan on the laptop.  And that extremely tame kick has sort of been today's highlight, so far.  The weekend was quiet but very nice, and I still didn't get all my homework finished.  I did, however, get to watch Casablanca and V for Vendetta.  Both were excellent and the latter was new for me.  Almost the best film I've seen. 

I'm failing maths.  Have I mentioned that before?  I'm one grade-point from being moved down, and I'm not sure if that's a good thing or not.  The teacher for the non-accelerated course is meant to be fantastic, but if I can I want to stay on the faster course.  It's not particularly difficult material - I understand what's taught in class - but the one test we've taken so far was just evil.  I couldn't finish because there was so much of it, and it was horribly difficult, somehow.  I think a lot of people had trouble with it, though, and that's normal.

I'm not sure what to attach to this one in terms of pictures -- I'm sort of writing to put off editing an essay.  I hate what I've got so far, and I've got to fix it when all I really want to do is hide it in some folder and forget about it and never read it again. 

Some books I'd ordered came over the weekend, too.  My list, as soon as I'm done with Emma and Catch 22, goes:
The Restaurant At The End Of The Universe
Thunder From The East: Portrait of a Rising Asia
Three Cups of Tea

I can't wait to get to them.  I'm actually finding a lot more time for reading here than I used to.  I just hang around the lounge and throw myself over furniture and alternate homework, chatting and reading.  I love it and I'm off to do some of it now before structured study.

Okay, actually, I went out in the middle of writing this, and I've got a package!  I haven't excavated in full yet, but the day just got a lot better.  Spelt bread, butter, gouda and manchego cheese, some really delicious apples, dried tomatoes, mushrooms and beef, Nutella, crackers, cocoa powder and a note from my parents.  I am so glad I did not eat dinner.

With that I leave you to toil before the books of wisdom -- feeling just a little bit better.

The Problem of 'Stress Not Quite Covering It'

It's about half past ten at night and we just had a fire drill.  This involved absolutely everyone, all hundred-and-something students and all the res. staff, exiting the dorms through one very narrow door on my wing, right next to my room.  Delightful.  Then we huddled outside in the surprising cold - it rained a lot earlier and civil feet were with civil rain made cold - as the standard roll-call who's-missing oh-damn-we're-locked-out procedure took its course.  A dearth of clothing of the underneath variety rendered yours truly particularly chilly, but I got a kick out of just leaning against the wall and watching all these sheepish boys reenter through the girls' wing afterwards. 

And there aren't enough kicks to go around at the moment.  Stress Week.  Today I had another chemistry test - I got an eighty-something on the last one, which isn't bad for a first exam - and I think i went all right, but I spent all of Monday and esterday working on that and not the maths test or English paper that are both happening/due tomorrow.  So structured study was not fun.  I'd be working on the essay right now if I hadn't just bribed a neighbor with copious quantities of chocolate to proofread it. 

Oh, and someone convinced me to run for student senate.  I got all the nomination signatures I need, and I've decided that my platform will be returning to monarchical rule.  I'd also like to do something about the cafeteria.  It's sometimes all right, and actually can be very nice on weekends, but there's also a lot of really not-nice frozen food, and some simply illogical practices that could be easily remedied... such as the idiotic use of Idaho potatoes.  This is Northern Maine, people, get a grip!  That really frustrates me.  And it seems like the student government here actually gets its shit together and does things, which is cool.

In my attempts at avoiding the cafeteria, I've actually made some rather nice friends.  The kitchen is a good hang-out/faux-study spot, and tonight I made pasta and shared it with a few girls and talked about their boyfriends, etc.  I'm also becoming That Deranged Blonde With The Camera.  There's a guy here with really, really incredible style who wanted to join LookBook, and he needed photos of himself and a friend.  They asked me to take them, and we ended up having a 45-minute shoot in the laundry room, and we were all on top of the driers and I got some abfab and some rather risqué shots.  It's nice to have such a range of models, from study-geeks to such pantherine fashionistas.  I have another shoot planned for Saturday with a very pretty new friend, and I promise I'd be showing you all this if the internet here weren't so funky.  It replaces correctly-spelled profanity with *censored*, and I initially thought that blogger was fucking with my posts and shit, but it's just the goddamn bloody school filters (rebellion-inductive).  I can't seem to upload photos to blogger, either, or use iChat, and my mail programme won't send, though it can receive.  I've got to get to the tech guy and have it all straightened out, but for now you'll have to perch tensely on the edge of your chair and just keep refreshing this page. 

And my lovely next-door friend has just returned with notes on my disaster of a literacy narrative, so I'll sign off now.  Weekends used to be a nuisance, but they're becoming my drug... why is it only Wednesday?  No matter, I'm going to read a bit of Emma before bed tonight.  God, Austen is becoming my second-choice narcotic. 

Rosh Hashanah, happy new year.  The Jewish astronomy teacher is volunteering to take people to the nearest synagogue.  I think I'll go this weekend, just to see how they manage it up here.  

Oh, and the dorm dog got into my room today and ate my dried meat.  I've been leaving the door open because I've lost my key.  Whatever.

If You Are Reading This...

The Future is happening.  Not some stupid sci-fi thing, I'm just scheduling this to post in a few days when I'll be at MSSM without any internet... god.  Yeah.  No.  The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy is the only science fiction I ever actually enjoyed, and I have read a lot of sci-fi.  But, yeah, whatever.  Right now, or last Friday, I was/am waiting for a friend to show up for a last bit of time together.  My suitcase was/is zipped up, making me absurdly proud of my negotiating skills, because that baby was/is bursting.  No heavy dinnerware in it this time.... My new Le Creuset is/was in another bag.  The only things on my bed now were/are my laptop (which I really hope(d) the school people won't/wouldn't go through and do god-knows/knew-what to all my music and documents and photos while they scan(ed) for viruses), camera, and a small backpack full  of helva and turkish coffee.  That's the bag I'm going to keep close at hand for the first few weeks- in case at any point I realize I'm actually checking into some government-prison-spy-highsecurity THING that I don't want to be part of, because really, I put in my time with the US government this summer - for trekking out into the frozenness with.  Good, compact calories, you see.  I must practice making igloos, too. 

So, who knows what will/has take(n) place since now/then.  Maybe I've become a homesick wreck, which I can't/couldn't quite imagine now/5 days ago, as I feel/felt sort of checked out of my family for these (next) two weeks*.  Perhaps everything is/will be great and I will be/am just itching to put these great photos up of all my new friends and be a nerd and talk about my amazing chem class.  Or the .com crash (read: apocalypse), which would render this existential crisis of a post a total waste of my time and confusion.  Let's hope not, retrospectively and otherwise, and I'm going to stop now before this starts making sense.

*The first long weekend isn't until a month into school, but I have a conveniently-scheduled optician's appointment on the weekend of the local fair.