It's Beginning to Look A Lot Like Christmas--Week 4

Hurray! The wonderful Christmas season is upon us, filled with lots of wonderful Christmas-y things to see and do! We had our first real snowfall on Tuesday morning. This is what it looked like at 7:30 AM and later at 4:30 PM. Not too impressive, but it was still exciting.

Early morning.

Early evening.

As always, my classes are going well but continue to keep me pretty busy. I was pleased that my research for Molecular Genetics is going according to plan and that I was one of the ten students (out of thirteen) who followed the protcol appropriately and got colonies of E. coli on my petri dishes! I am very excited because now I can test to see if I successfully cloned my gene. In Botany, we took our lab quiz on Monday, and I gave my Botany-in-the-News presentation on GM tomatoes. I think it went over pretty well. I was very proud of my poster, and I don't think anyone looked too bored while I was talking. Friday was my midterm in both Physics and Botany. They went a lot better than I was expecting. I can't wait to get them back in class tomorrow to see how I did!

Tuesday was the Circle K Christmas party. We had some pretty good food from Fazoli's. Their breadsticks are to die for! Then, we did our White Elephant gift exchange. Everyone was jealous of the girl who got my gift because I put (unwittingly) Ticonderoga pencils in the gift. I guess those are a pretty hot comodity! (I wouldn't know...I use only mechanical pencils.) I ended up with a pack of mints, which I suppose isn't such a bad thing. One girl got two full bars of Lindt chocolate! I was pretty jealous, but then again, it was only milk chocolate and white chocolate and not dark chocolate, so it was probably just as well that someone else a little less discriminating in her chocolate tastes got it instead of me. We did a mini service project, too, writing letters for soldiers who won't be home for Christmas (especially those who don't get a lot of mail, normally). I felt good giving my encouragement to a brave man or woman who has done so much for my freedom and our country.

Thursday was a pretty exciting day. I had another great day at work. I attending a Vet-Med Mentoring meeting, and I found out that the executive board will be selected based on statements written by the members about what position they would be best for and why. I wrote a statement applying for the position of secretary, and I think that it sounds pretty good. Hopefully the advisor for the group (Dr. Good, my academic advisor) will like my statement and pick me for secretary! I have wanted an executive board position for quite some time now. I thought that Circle K was going to have elections in the fall to fill the last remaining seat on the executive board (service co-chair), but they never did, so I never got my Circle K position. Heather (the president and one of my very good friends at Augustana) says that next year, she will remember to include me on the ballot (I didn't run because I'm not very good at self-promotion and didn't feel right nominating myself). Anyway, I am looking forward to submitting my secretary statement and having it reviewed so that when I come back from Winter Break, I will find out whether I made the executive board or not. Later in the day, Heather, three other girls, and I went to a small warehouse in Rock Island to sort bottles and cans for the Cans for Kids service campaign. The program takes refundable bottles and cans and uses the money to help pay for medical equipment to treat sick kids in the US (at least that's how I understand it). Whatever it's true purpose is, it has something to do with helping kids, which is cool. It was a little bit of a dirty job because some of the bottles and cans still had liquid in them and some of the bags had non-recyclable items in them, but it was still enjoyable once I got the hang of sorting (even though the warehouse wasn't the warmest place on Earth). We talked and listened to the radio, and the time passed pretty quickly. After I got home from volunteering, I finished up studying for my two finals and then watched White Christmas with Devon and Sarah because Devon had never seen it before (well, she had seen part of it before and the whole thing once when she was doing homework, but that doesn't really count). It was a blast. We put up our Christmas lights this week, and Sarah bought a fake Christmas tree from Target, so now our halls are definitely decked out for the holidays. We match everyone else on the street, too! It's a lovely sight to walk back from the library at night when everyone turns on their lights on our street.

Sorry it's sideways...you'll read more about why later...

I thought I was going to go to Kayla's this weekend for our big Lord of the Rings marathon, but we all decided that we had too much homework to do and that it would be better to have the sleepover in the spring when the weather will be better, we can all make it, and we are less busy. It didn't matter too much to me, though, because I found some other great things to occupy my weekend (I hate doing nothing but homework on my two days off from school per week). Friday was a great night. My friends and I went to see Augustana's student version of Last Comic Standing with musician Jason Lavasseur as the emcee and musical performer. Most of the students were pretty funny, especially the eventually winner Alex, a student from none other than Tuscon, Arizona. He made a lot of Arizona jokes, like how the sports teams stink and how he finds the Illinois weather pretty difficult to deal with. Jason Lavasseur was just great. He was so funny, and he has some great music. He even did a few covers ("Wonderwall," "With a Little Help from My Friends," and a sing-along of "Can You Feel the Love Tonight?") and a couple of medleys that made us all laugh. I will definitely go see him again if he comes back to campus next year (which I think he will because I seem to remember hearing his name before, sometime during sophomore year). Anyway, I had a lot of fun, and it was so good to see my friends again.

I volunteered more on Saturday, ringing those iconic Salvation Army bells outside the Jewel-Osco in Moline with Heather. We had a great time. She left me alone for a few minutes while she went to drop off the two girls who were ringing bells before us. In the meantime, I greeted people who walked past me and said, "Have a good afternoon" to people who were walking out the doors. I got two donations while Heather was gone! We did even better as a team, though. We laughed and talked and when we got really bored and cold, we started singing Christmas songs. I'm sure it didn't sound that great, but we were having fun. One guy even came up to us and said he liked our singing. He put $1 in the bucket and told us that he had been looking for a place to cash his check all afternoon and that Jewel was the only place that would do it for him. By the time our two-hour shift was over (we went from 4-6 PM on a pretty chilly evening), we were half-frozen and couldn't feel our extremities. We hurried inside with the bucket and then did some grocery shopping because, well, wouldn't you? I mean, we were right there. However, I will not be shopping at Jewel again because their fresh produce looks disgusting and is way too overpriced for how it looks. Also, half gallons of milk are $.3.09 (they are a mere $2.39 at Hy-Vee, even for my favorite milk, Swiss Valley), while full gallons are only 30 cents more. Furthermore, they didn't have any yogurt pretzels! If you didn't know, I absolutely love yogurt pretzels. They are such a delicious snack. Hy-Vee sells a pretty sizable bag of them for about $2.99. Well, Jewel only has chocolate pretzels (not as good, surprisingly), white chocolate pretzels (close but still not delicious yogurt pretzels), and the weird-sounding strawberry pretzels. I was a little disappointed, but I only have five days until I am home again, so I will be able to pick some up from Cub or some other nearby grocery store before I head back to school at the beginning of January. Oh, man. I love Winter Break. I get three full weeks off from school, and I get to spend it all at home with my siblings and parents! In addition, all of my friends are home, too, which is rare given our extremely different school schedules (trimesters are so weird...). I will also get to work this Winter Break, which is great because I have basically no money. I'm looking forward to celebrating Christmas at home once again. I get pretty into the Christmas spirit here at school because of all the amazing events, but I really get excited once I go home because I actually have time to listen to Christmas music, watch Christmas movies with my family, and help Mom bake Christmas cookies. Hers are the best in the world! (Along with everything else she makes, of course.) My heart was warmed on Friday by a lovely card from Grandma and Grandpa Hart. It is now installed on my wall so I can look at it everyday and look forward to being home again.

I suppose I should take this opportunity to make a little confession: I am writing this blog from one of the computers in the library. I would rather not be here on a Sunday afternoon, but I have no choice. My poor computer caught a virus, and now it doesn't work...I tried to fix it myself, but I am not enough of a computer whiz for this one. Luckily, I only have one more school week before I can take it home to be fixed. I have already lasted about six days without it, so I think I can do five more. I just need to do a little more planning and spend a little more time in the library. Mom works with a couple of guys who are good with this sort of thing, so hopefully it can be fixed pretty rapidly so I can start using it again to do homework and such.

But, enough about all that depressing stuff. This last week before break is going to be great! Tuesday is a traditional Swedish meal in the College Center called a Julsmorgabord (it costs to get in, but it will be delicious) and right after is a free Christmas celebration called Sankta Lucia. Sarah is minoring in Swedish, so she will be a part of the celebration, singing part of a song in Swedish. I think she wants me and Devon to be there to support her, as she seems a little nervous about having to sing into a microphone. Most of the other attendees will be older people, so I think she might feel better if a couple of her peers (and peers she knows and trusts) come to see her. Wednesday is a suturing seminar sponsored by BBB and the Vet-Med Mentoring group. Two doctors are coming to campus to give a lecture about suture techniques and then will allow each participant to try his or her hand at it using his or her own set of materials. I've learned a little bit about suturing from Dr. J (the small animal vet that I shadow) and from the vets at the Leatherdale Equine Center at the University of Minnesota, but this will be my first real hands-on experience. Thursday is also going to be great. It's finally time for the Christmas Convocation, where I will hear Christmas music performed by a few student music groups and get to sing along with other attendees on a couple of tunes. Later in the day I am going to yoga because everyone in the Aerobic Dance class must attend at least one outside activity and write a short report on the experience. In the evening, I will go to Ascension Chapel for the Lessons and Carols I was telling you about last week. It should make for a wonderful last day before I leave Friday. Well, now you are all caught up on my life at Augustana. I hope you all have a fabulous week, and you'll probably hear from me next time when I am at home in good ol' Minneapolis, Minnesota.

My new door dec, which features one of my favorite foods in the whole wide world. :D