This Crazy Life--Weeks 2 and 3

Hello, everyone! Thank you for being patient, once again. I am a terrible blogger at Augie. My life here is so hectic, it's insane. But I absolutely love it. I wouldn't trade this for anything. I love my roommates. I love my room. I love my classes. I love everything about Augustana (except the dog food smell from the Purina One factory, but that's small potatoes). I will try to give you a succinct summary of all that has happened to me in the past two weeks.

Week 2:
A short week because we had Thanksgiving Break. It was fantastic! I turned 21, which was very exciting. I enjoyed a nice glass of red wine (a vino nobile, I think, from Italy--vintage 2001) with fasu mada for dinner. It was great seeing family members that I hadn't seen for awhile and getting to talk about London. It's strange because all of the students agree that it all kind of seems like a dream now. London has this magic pall about it that I didn't quite realize until I came back. We were all in a sort of trance during those 10 weeks. We all have what we call "London moments" now, and I love catching even small snippets of the British accent or really anything British because it reminds me of London. Anyway, my research class is still going really well. I love working in the lab and feeling like I'm doing "hard science." It gives me great satisfaction. Botany is still entertaining, but I worry about the professor because he likes to quiz us on really obscure things. I guess I will just have to pay extra-good attention to detail for future quizzes and tests. My aerobics class is still fun and challenging. Physics is going pretty well, too. I had my first lab on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. I was a little disoriented because I was basically just ready to go, but my partner is really nice, and we get along well, so it made everything a little better and easier to take. While I was at home, I bought some nice Christmas gifts for my roommates and also assembled a White Elephant gift for the Circle K Christmas party on the 6th (just some magnets, a notepad, and some pencils). I won't tell you what I got for my roommates in case they somehow read this before I give them their gifts. I'd hate to ruin the surprise. During this week, I also finally went back to the Quad City Animal Welfare Center (QCAWC), where I was reunited with my best kitty friend Thomas. He was happy to see me, so it was very rewarding to know that he still loves me. I was so happy to be back and playing with all of the FIV cats again. It's a great way to de-stress after a hard week and also to get some good service hours for Circle K. I think I was still pretty jet-lagged this week, even though I didn't realize it, because everything was a lot harder than it should have been. Don't worry, though, I am feeling much better now and much more in control of my schoolwork and such.

Week 3:
Classes continued much the same as they did last week. One thing that I love about Molecular Genetics is that we get to make our own agarose gels to run our DNA samples on (called "gel electrophoresis"). We basically need to make sure that we are isolating the DNA as we should and that all of our experimental procedures are going as planned. Gel electrophoresis helps us visualize the DNA to see if we got our expected result. An electrical current is sent through this rectangular piece of gel with DNA embedded in it at the top (deposited in little wells or depressions). After about an hour, the DNA migrates through the gel and comes to a stop at a certain point. With special dyes and imaging techniques, we can see the bands made by the DNA and photograph them so that we can analyze them. It's a very rewarding part of lab work because we can see the consequences of our hard work. On Tuesday of Week 3, we had our Circle K meeting at nearby St. Ambrose University. We ate pizza with our fellow St. Ambrose CK-ers. It was very cool because I have never really interacted with students from other colleges in the area before. Wednesday evening was my first Success Networking Team (SNT) meeting for the National Society of Leadership and Success (NSLS). We basically get together and talk about our goals and the specific steps we will take to make progress toward those goals each week. An important part of the process is getting feedback from other students about how best to achieve our goals. I picked a good SNT because I know a lot of the people in the group, which helps me feel more comfortable both sharing my goals and giving advice to other people on their goals. Friday was so fun because my roommates and I made pizza from scratch, dough and everything! It took us SO long (about four hours), but it was so worth it. We made a deep-dish style pizza with the cheese on the bottom and the sauce on top (which I think is a Sicilian way of making pizza), and it was fantastic. Afterward, we watched Elf and The Cutting Edge while cutting out paper snowflakes. Devon is an amazing snowflake maker. She is so artistic. Mine turned out okay, but they were definitely not as nice as Devon's. Another exciting thing about this week was that I finally brought my beloved Fabio to school with me. No, Fabio is not an attractive Italian man, although that would be nice. Fabio is a bamboo plant (more specifically, the Lucky variety) that my grandmother gave me this summer. I left him at home while I was in London and then forgot to bring him back to school with me when I moved in. I remembered to take him back after Thanksgiving, though, so now he is happily installed on my desk. He looks taller already! I was a bit upset with myself this weekend because I didn't realize that the choirs and the bands here were doing Christmas at Augustana already. Christmas at Augustana is a wonderful holiday concert filled with all the old favorites (mostly the religious ones, but those are the best, anyway). Some of the songs even have a singalong portion so the audience can participate. By the time I realized that it was going on, it was too late; my weekend had already been planned out, and I really didn't feel like spending $10 on a ticket. It's no matter, though. This Thursday is Lessons and Carols in Ascension Chapel, which has a few Christmas hymns and the singing of "Silent Night" by candlelight. I think the Thursday of Week 5 is the lovely Christmas Convocation, a lighthearted midday gathering of students, staff, and faculty for some cute Christmas songs (more singalongs!) and performances by the Hand Bell Choir and other student musicians. And let's not forget the Christmas buffet Augustana rolls out in the College Center! Yes, Christmas is probably my favorite time of year at Augustana. I especially love all of the Christmas trees and decorations around campus and in the TLAs. We just put up our Christmas lights in our little front porch. Now we look festive!

Fabio! The camera loves you!

Fresh pizza toppings, cut by yours truly and Sarah (whose last name is Mattimiro--to kill with a look, a made-up but totally kick-butt surname, in my opinion).

 Today (Saturday the 3rd) was a very exciting day in its own right. I spent a good chunk of the morning and early afternoon at Petsmart helping out with Santa Claws. People bring their pets to the store to have their pictures taken with Santa, who is just a volunteer. The other volunteers do things like canvasing the store for potential customers, positioning the pets on Santa's lap, squeaking toys at the pets so that they look at the camera, taking the picture, printing the picture, and placing it into the frame for the owners to take home. It was quite fun because the dogs were all very friendly and adorable. I also loved just hanging out with the other students while we were waiting between customers. Probably my favorite part of the day was having a couple bring their pet pig Faith (a Micro pig) to have her picture taken with Santa. She was so precious and cute. I loved her little wet nose, which twitched in a very cute manner when she was smelling my hand and letting me pet her. She let out little grunts of contentment when she got to sit on Santa's lap (which was warm and soft) and protested adamantly when she was taken off said lap. Later, I went to see the free on-campus movie of the week with my friend Haley. The movie this week was Fright Night (the new one with Colin Ferrell and David Tennant). It was an okay movie. The DVD kind of freaked out on us about 10 minutes before the end because it was too scratched up, so I never found out how the story finished. All the same, it was nice to see Haley. That reminds me of Thursday afternoon, when I saw my friends Lauren and Elizabeth in Brew by the Slough (AKA Java, the on-campus cafe). Lauren gave me a big hug. It was so nice to see them and chat with them. They both seem to be doing well. I can't wait until next weekend, when we will all see each other again at Kayla's house for our big Lord of the Rings sleepover! The only one of my friends that I haven't seen yet is Amanda, which is too bad because she and I get along really well (I obviously get along well with all of my friends, but there are some that I just click with better than others, and Amanda is one of those friends). I'm not sure why, that's just how we are. But I will see her soon!

As far as tomorrow goes, I will be finishing up some homework items (studying for my Botany lab quiz, putting the final touches on my Botany lab presentation on GM tomatoes, reading my Physics textbook, and working on the bioinformatics portion of my research class) and hopefully meeting Lauren and Elizabeth in Java for some coffee and a chat. I will also hopefully go for a run in Pepsico. I totally should have gone today, but I really needed to work on homework because volunteering took up most of my morning.

A Micro pig (Faith was a little more mature-looking than this pig...I think this one is more of a baby). Photo courtesy of archive.blisstree.com.

This week is looking pretty exciting. The Circle K Christmas party is on Tuesday. I have another SNT meeting on Wednesday. My first payday is on Friday, as are my first two lecture exams (one for Botany and the other for Physics). I think that sleepover will be just the thing I need to relax and unwind after this week. No other news on housing for next year yet. We are still deciding what to do. I hope we can get this taken care of soon so that we can all have peace of mind in that area. Thanks for reading this long (and long-overdue) post. Have a great rest of the weekend, and you'll be hearing from me again in about a week!

"The purity of a person's heart can be quickly measured by how they regard animals." ~ Anonymous (just some food for thought...)