I went to Seattle this past weekend to visit my siblings; it was definitely all I expected. We went to Pike Place Market on Saturday — I bought two posters from Golden Collectables. I still haven’t figured ouut how to get them to stay on my walls. I may be the only person that can’t get stuff to stay up; it’s highly infuriating, especially when one of the posters is a black and white screenshot of Johnny Depp in the bath. (I bet you know what’s going over my bed. A-hah.)
However, on Sunday morning as I was walking down the stairs to leave the apartment house and head off to the train station, I tripped. I missed the last step and curled up on the bottom to scream. I’m now on prescription-strength Ibuprofen, 600 mg of it. It may not seem like a lot to some people, but it’s a lot for me. And I’m pretty sure I’m the only person who gets happy on Ibuprofen. The RN that saw me didn’t tell me if it was fractured ofr if it was inflammation, but I’m pretty sure I’m going to go get it X-rayed today so that I can finally know for sure if it’s just a sprain in the area of my tarcels or a fracture.
I missed my classes yesterday because I was in so much pain, my foot combined with cramps. And then I slept on a couch with three other people last night in another dorm (I may note thatit was actually two couches pushed together) and did it in an odd position, so now my shoulders hate me. They hate me vociferously, you might say.
Let me tell you something. If you’re a college student, try to not be a klutz or a sickness magnet. It doesn’t help with the studying/work thing we have going on.
Tags: daily life
I am sitting in the Dorothy Johanssen house (the DoJo, tutoring center, in case you’ve forgotten) awaiting one of my discples. She’s 15 minutes late and I’m wondering if I’ll still get paid for sitting here without any of my books or my computer. (Which was, by the way, a really stupid move, but *I* was going to be late if I didn’t get a move on and I left all my stuff there. I arrived at the stroke of 8 exactly…)
The peppermint tea I’m drinking, however, is very good, and now all I want to do is talk about tea. Tea and coffee are huge things here at Reed. VERY IMPORTANT and whatnot. Barring coffee, these guys take their tea extremely seriously. It’s extremely strange to me; tea was a very minor beverage back home. Puerto Rico is coffee central. Suddenly, I get here, and tea is absolutely everywhere and offered to cure your most major or minor ailment.
“The guy you slept with last night turned out to be gay? Have some of this earl grey tea.”
“You failed your calculus test? Have some of this weird mint tea.”
“Your mom died? Have some green tea.” (Okay, I exaggerate.)
Since I’ve gotten here, I’ve had, besides the peppermint:
1. blackberry black tea (which was ridiculously good; I had a religious experience in the middle of the library with that tea!)
2. vanilla ginger mint tea chai (with soymilk; and it was excellent)
3. English breakfast tea (I only sipped it; it was pretty bloody awful)
4. earl grey (I’ve always had a fascination with this one).
I shall always view tea as the “calming” beverage; something you fill a mug with and curl up somewhere and look quaint. I laugh every time I read “awake” on those tea bags because tea always makes me feel a mix between sleepy and joyful. It might be good to note as well that the cafeteria here doesn’t always take things as seriously as the students; one of my friends from England can’t stand the cafeteria tea and he’s gone and brought his own. He lent me a green tea that’s apparently absolutely awful to him; I’ll have to try it tomorrow and tell him what I think.
In the course of this post, I’ve drunk all of my tea and I have another half-hour of sitting here and waiting. I could just up and leave, but if she does get here, I could still tutor her. There’s an abandoned pad of paper with very pretty molecule designs (uracil? cytosine? what? I’m not a chemist) and a mechanical pencil that looks very pretty. I’m going back to get more tea from the kitchen and try not to think about the vice-presidential debates tomorrow.
Oh, Sarah Palin. You make me laugh. I’ll keep my thoughts on that quiet until this weekend.
Tags: daily life, feelings, lists, observations
Public transport in Puerto Rico: taxis. And a small subway that goes around the capital and not much else; 100 miles away and extremely useless to the other 2.5 million people on the island.
Public transport in Portland: TRIMET, Amtrack, Light Rail, Greyhound… And there’s probably more, but I haven’t bothered looking them up yet. Are all stateside cities like this?
I went on my first bus yesterday with a friend of mine (for those that live in Portland, I took the 75 to 39th and Hawthorne) to go to Red Light Clothing Exchange (also my first visit to that place) and Safeway. It was… extremely odd and very fun. It’s a good thing my friend knew the bus, because if I had to pull the yellow rope thing, we would have missed our stop. And coming back, we pulled it too early and ended up walking half the way back to Reed.
“Real women walk everywhere!”
Or at least, that’s what we told ourselves, especially when we hit the intersection closest to Reed at the same time as the bus we had taken!
I’m anticipating riding the bus everywhere when I have more time, because the people on the bus are great for character sketches. And it’s pretty cheap too. My friend had to explain the concept of zone tickets to me, of course. I kept checking that bit of paper to make sure I hadn’t forgotten what the time was, or that I hadn’t read it wrong.
Now the fun ends; I have two midterms this week. And for those of you who want to know about romance, just wait a little longer. I’m sure there’ll be an update on that soon.
(Also, pardon my vague disjointed schedule. I’ve been getting sick extremely easily, and I’m still trying to figure out a study schedule.)
Tags: daily life, Portland
The glimmer and glamor of college is slowly fading, mostly because Economics and Calculus are breaking my brain. My brain is at that point where it’s begging for a break, especially since I have two tests in these subjects, one right after the other practically. The problem sets due tomorrow is still unfinished and mostly written in what looks like Chinese. On that note, I will probably live in the library today, after waking up rather late (9:30 am) and managing to stay distracted in Commons until 12:45. Not so brilliant of me.
With that, I will also mention that there’s always something to do here to procrastinate with. Always. If not a party or a movie night at one of the language houses, then the pool hall. Which I finally went to. And won my first game of Cutthroat by not doing anything and playing really badly. It was incredible, lots of fun, and I hope to go again. It is highly likely that I will get my ass soundly trounced.
Tags: daily life, feelings, observations
(Happy birthday, Ananya!)
I’m surprised at how much time I spend at a dorm that is not mine. This can’t be normal, but I have officially received the ’squatter’ nickname and, apparently, I’m an adopted dormie of the Fantasy dorm house. According to them, anyway; Chittick movie night still came first (and no, it was not just because there were chips and salsa. How dare you insinuate that?).
I’ve had a really fun time, but I doubt tomorrow is going to be as epic as today was. It was the birthday of a girl at the dorm — and I just remembered that I didn’t get to have a piece of chocolate-peppermint cake — and there was sword-boffing (which I didn’t participate in, even though a cute guy tried to persuade me to and *failed*) and very awesome conversations. I have a Calculus quiz that I am definitely not ready for and I’m wondering why I’m not freaking out. I will actually manage to finish the homework for tomorrow though, which surprises me. I only have one problem left, and I might just have to bribe someone tomorrow to help me solve it during Humanities lecture (come on. What normal freshman wants to know about the aesthetics of urn burial anyway?).
I blame my disdain and scorn in this post sheerly on sleep deprivation.
Quotes Out of Context that will make you happy:
1. “Oh, that was so much better than fellatio ever could be.” (said by a girl.)
2. “Physics. Warm girl hugging you. Let’s weigh the choices for a moment here…”
3. “You have to wait until the sex act is imminent.”
4. “The Bouncy Bridge Sex Theory.”
5. “What’s worse than finding a worm in your apple?”
“Finding half a –”
“THE HOLOCAUST.”
6. “What do you call a black guy who flies a plane?”
“…”
“A PILOT, YOU RACIST.”
7. “You just exorcised a pair of glittery gold boyshorts that were on a dude’s genitals for an entire night with holy water that you sanctified yourself. All of it in badly-pronounced Latin.” A pause. “So *this* is why I come to Reed.”
Tags: daily life, observations
Writing this essay has been the most painful thing I’ve ever done. I’m supposed to write 5 pages on why the Iliad ends with the burial of Hektor by Saturday. Five brilliant pages dripping in awesome. Hah! Fun stuff. This essay does not want to be written. I have about four paragraphs in single spaced, which is probably a page and a half double, approximately; but I need at least 1200 words to make this good. And that? Annoys me.
NaNoWriMo is good for pounding out words, but if you really don’t know what to write about, you can’t just make it up. It could really turn out to be the most horrible essay ever written in the history of college essays. In fact, the probabilities of that are ridiculously high. Another horrible thing for writing essays is sitting in a common room (that is not your own) with people watching Metalocalypse (I am not big on it, but when you have people singing incredibly intense heavy metal, it gets kind of distracting). However, the fact that I have by this sentence managed to get slightly more than halfway through my personal end goal (1200 words) is incredibly wonderful. I should be fully proofread and edited by the end of Thursday.
We’ll see how that goes…
Tags: daily life, humanities 110
(On a brief note that has nothing to do with today’s post, my blog insists on changing to the next date at 8 PM. It is very weird and quite infuriating. If I write a blog post at 11:59 PM, I expect to be recognized for it!)
Everyone has days like this. (I assume.) Everyone has that one day where absolutely everything manages to go wrong: you wake up late, you don’t eat breakfast because you’ll be late to lecture, you completely fail your Calculus homework, you don’t understand that class in the first place, you hurt your ankle, you discover that a painting you’ve been working on for a year has been thrown out… (yeah…)
But I’m not here to whine about that. I already had my mental and physical breakdown. I already moped all over the common room. I already received hugs from one of the only other two Puerto Ricans on campus and it reminded me of home so fiercely that I just wanted to be there. And then my brain kicked in at last.
“I’m here to make a difference in my life. I’m here to learn something new and to accept a challenge.” While the challenge may not have included feeling like my heart had just been ripped out of my chest and a year of my life had been stolen away, it’s still part of it. It’s part of not being derailed.
This is likely the corniest post I have ever written or will ever write, so I might as well enjoy it.
College students everywhere, listen up! If you’re in college just to party and hang out, then what the fuck are you doing with your life? You can do that without paying for tuition or textbooks and it’d be a hell of a lot cheaper. It’s not like I’m telling you to lock yourself in your room and study all day and then just go to classes. For one thing, you need to eat. For another, it’s absolutely horrible for your skin. (And I think we can all agree that I definitely haven’t been doing that.)
Make something of your life. If you’re in college, at least grab whatever knowledge you can from it, whether it be from books, from professors, or from experiences. That’s what college is there for. Use your time and your money wisely.
Tags: daily life, feelings, observations
So much for “No Boys” this semester. That plan has been abandoned and destroyed, and then reconstructed. Because apparently all of my boys are gay. I think perhaps the really sad part is that alcohol was not involved; just a lot of endorphins and really bad judgement. Hopefully, the awkwardness on his part won’t last, because I’m going to simply chalk it up to experience (what sort of experience is entirely inappropriate for general consumption, ha ha ha.)
However, I beg to note a few things I’ve managed to learn.
1. Periods are lifesavers. I’m not talking about grammatical periods. I’m talking about those times of the month that make many boys cringe in horror. While neither of us wanted to “reach the finish line”, as I could call it, it gave a legitimate excuse to not do so.
2. Boys are jerks. Just naturally. Young, teenage boys don’t pay attention to what they’re saying and dig a hole deep under their feet and never let go of the shovel. This doesn’t just apply to my recent experience, by the way. It’s just a way of life, I suppose.
3. Girls are crazy. I may be a feminist, but I recognize our faults. Boys very rarely understand us, if at all. I think the moon plays with our minds, I swear. But anyway, we’re insane and we tend to make not-so-rational decisions. A lot.
4. Learning is fun. Don’t twitch your eyes at me; you know I’m not talking about academics.
Tags: daily life, feelings, lists, observations, relationships, romance
I am a master at procrastination. So much that it scares me sometimes. I seriously need to start managing my time better, and get cracking at the books. Not only that, but get back into the mindset for Calculus, the absolute worst class in the world. I was trying to solve some simple things today, like the tangent line problem using secant lines, and I completely blanked. I’m thinking I may have to start going to the Math Lab.
However, there’s another reason for better time management. I am almost two-thirds of the way to an awesome job. I’ve been approved and oriented for tutoring at the DoJo (Dorothy Johansen House, also known as the tutoring center) and now all I have to do is fill out a W2 form tomorrow and hope that IRIS stops having a bitch fit over a freshman being a Spanish tutor on the Reed student payroll. (IRIS is the web center for all things Reed. I forget what it stands for.)
I’m off to read some Economics and plan to get up extremely early to read some more Iliad. I’m experiencing my first Humanities conference tomorrow, so we’ll see how that goes.
Tags: daily life, feelings, schedule
Of all the luck! I just have to be the person who gets infected by my HA’s sodding cold. I mean, yesterday was more or less bearable as I sneezed my way through the most boring Calculus class ever, but now I’m up at 4 in the morning, aching everywhere and feeling slightly guilty about waking up my roommate with my moans. My trash can is a living mass of biohazard. My pillow must be wet from when my nose ran when I was asleep. And my eyes burn as I stare at the screen because I just finished crying an awful lot.
This is not quite the way I envisioned my first Humanities lecture, or my first Economic Analysis class, or my first Jazz class. But there is no way in nine hells I’m moving a muscle in PE today and I think I might just skip Calculus in favor of a blasted nap, if I can sleep. And I’m forgetting my Humanities conference at 2:10 pm. Won’t that be fun? So if I shut up and just listen, am I taking away from everyone else’s learning experience or am I not allowed to conserve what little voice I have left and save my throat from splintering into a million pieces?
I think the angst might be getting a bit too thick here. But honestly, I called my mother and sobbed into the phone and wished so very fervently I was back home where Mom could take care of me. Because I feel like shit and this is not precisely how I should be spending my first week of classes. I even left the dorm building in desperation and started the medium length trek to the Health and Counseling Center. I was halfway across the bridge when I stopped for quite a bit because my brain was screaming: “This is a REALLY STUPID idea!”
I turned around and went back to wallow in my misery again.
On the up side, because I have to find one or otherwise I’ll sink into a crying fit again, I think I may have actually found a job. The chair of the Spanish department, Professor Alonso, seemed interested in me and directed me to the lady that runs the Dorothy Johanssen House (the tutoring center).
I’m going back to rapidly plowing my way through my only box of Kleenex.
Tags: daily life, feelings