Well, it’s been quite a long time since I last posted. The months have really flown by. Winter break was awesome since I got to hang out with my family and my hometown friends. I was going to post about all the magical things that happened like seeing Young Frankenstein the Musical at the Kennedy center with my family…and Cody, or doing Secret Santa with my HB friends and ruining the secret part because I lost my person’s list and had to ask her for it again, or eating at a Thai Temple with a DJ booth/religious altar etc etc etc. But all those wonderful memories are not quite so fresh in my mind because—well—it’s March.
And so now I’ve been in school for six weeks. I don’t think I’ve hit the same academic peak I reached last semester. I would blame Perri and all the time I spend with her, but it’s really my fault. For I cannot help but introduce addictive television shows to Perri, but hey! She had to see Dexter. My classes are going well though. Animal Behavior is interesting and last Friday I did a self designed experiment with Stickleback Fish where I basically spent the whole time terrorizing fish. Fun! Human Sexuality in the US covers a wide range of topics and now we are focusing on our nation’s wonderful, highly ineffectual, sex-ed programs. Theory is like a little built in heart attack, just because the teacher is sometimes really intense, but I think I’m learning a lot. I’m also continuing my voice lessons and community chorus. Finally, every week I’ve been attending my favorite activity: Baking Tuesday! Sarah bakes, and then we all eat and pretend to do homework.
Now that I’ve explained the basics, I’ll get into the last two weeks. The highlight of last week was driving to Des Moines with Perri and her friend Laura. And by Des Moines I mean a mall in Des Moines. Anywhere that isn’t Grinnell! What did we do at the mall?: ate and read. For an appetizer we went to the sinfully deadly Cold Stone while we waited for a table at the even more sinful and deadly and “oh God I can’t believe I ate there”…Cheesecake Factory. I’m sure any of you reading right now knows of the horrible gluttonous C.F. serving sizes, but for example the three of us shared an appetizer that the menu said was for two. It consisted of about five servings of chips and a large soup bowl of cheese and Spinach dip. For the rest of the day I read graphic novels at Barnes & Noble (“Heaven, I’m in heaven!”)
This week, however, was the really fun and eventful one. It started on Friday. After an afternoon of scaring fish I rode to Marshalltown with Jessica, Leah, Hannah and Elyse, to go see “She’s Out of My League”. Now I wouldn’t call it high-quality cinema, but I quite enjoyed the movie and it made me laugh. It was crude, but sweet and the characters were all likable. I ended the night with anime club, in which we are watching what has been described as the Japan warring states period on drugs.
Saturday was nothing less than awesome (you can tell how much I enjoyed myself this weekend from my upbeat vocabulary!) In the afternoon, I went to an orchestra concert with Jessica and Elyse because Sarah was playing violin. In the middle of the concert I saw the woman sitting in front of us take a picture of Sarah. Elyse and I shared a concerned look because Sarah had said no one she knew was coming to the concert. Later, Elyse, Jessica and I watched as the woman took another picture of Sarah. We were a little weirded out. During intermission we lured Sarah out and asked her if she had any stalkers she knew of. It turned out to be a woman Sarah works with, but what are the chances we would sit behind the one other person who was there to see Sarah.
At night, nine of my closest friends and I went to the wonderful town of Newton. We started the night with dinner at Panda Garden, a heavenly Chinese buffet restaurant. Sarah could tell I was really excited to go to Panda Garden because I apparently darted out of the car as soon as we arrived. The food was just as fatty and delicious as I remembered. The best fortune cookie of the night was: “Make things as simple as possible…but not simpler” Sure, that makes sense. Also, Sarah taught me what the Chinese word for bus actually translates to: made for the public, car machine.
After dinner we moved to a bowling alley/karaoke bar. All I will say about my bowling performance is that I got a strike…the rest is not important. After a game of bowling and digesting my food baby, we moved on to the karaoke bar section. It was surprisingly lively, mostly because of a large group of very drunk people celebrating a very classy woman’s birthday. The party group sang a lot of slow country music, which I might not have minded too much…if all the songs didn’t sound exactly the same! Our group decided to add some much needed musical diversity. Sarah started out singing Lucky in the style of Brittney Spears (in the words of the karaoke machine). I sang a wonderful rendition of Play that Funky Music White boy. Hannah and Stephanie did a truly terrible performance of TATU’s All The Things She Said. It wasn’t all their fault, the machine didn’t know how the words matched with the music of the song. My favorite song experience of the night, however, was singing What Would You Do? with Ben. I don’t think the rest of the bar had heard much r&b/rap music before because they went wild with dance and semi-mockery. Apparently, the karaoke machine hadn’t heard much rap either because it left out large chunks of the song. Thank God Ben and I knew all the words, or else it would have been really embarassing!
On Sunday, it was absolutely gorgeous outside! I drove Steph and Perri to the barn and sat in the sun and blustery warmish breeze while I read my Animal Behavior textbook. It was perfect, and the most academically productive I had been all weekend. Hey, no one can do it all.
Finally, today was another gorgeous day, so I accompanied Perri on a walk to pick up her car, which was recently repaired, except not really. Although the car had turned on many times for the mechanics, the moment Perri tried to drive it away it stopped working again. So, we had a nice walk back to campus too. Also, recently people have been coming up to me and complimenting me on my last sequence comic. It makes me quite happy; being appreciated just feels good…much like this weekend did.
The next two weeks will consist of my spring break, Manchester and London! Expect blogging…
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