Well, it's still below freezing here in Pittsburgh, but it's not below zero at least. Not too much exciting going on. I'm mostly busy with school. I went to a gallery crawl downtown with Chris, Becky and Cristian, and we met up with Tommy and his roommate and and another of their friends this past Friday night. We went to a bunch of art galleries and had a lot of fun.

Trivial Pursuit/Movie Night at Tommy's

out after the gallery crawl

It currently feels like -9 degrees here in Pittsburgh...

Well, I've survived my first two weeks of classes. I've decided not to do EMT clinicals. It was just going to be way too much with everything else. Classes are pretty interesting. I had my first consulting class last night and our clients gave brief presentations about their organizations and what they need. I'm in a group of 6 and we're going to be working with the Sexual Assault Response Team of Allegheny County on board development and leadership issues. That should be pretty interesting, although like a 2nd part time job. I think it will be a really good experience.

I have still managed to find some time for fun.

Oh, just realized I never posted about New Years. One of my neighbors...actually, a friend of theirs, but he's always around...owns a recording studio downtown, so we hung out there for a bit, had some sandwiches, had a nerf gun war, then went outside to watch the fireworks. We then came back to our house where Sarah was having a party. It was quite fun.

Sarah & I

Nerf Gun War

We had a game night the other night to play the new game mom got me for Christmas, Partini.

Cristian Brian, Me, & Sarah

Anyways, back to more recently...one of my other neighbors needed a date for some dinner last weekend. He's a musician and accompanies Alcoa's choral group and they had their annual dinner at Le Mont, which is this really nice restaurant up on Mount Washington with a fantastic view of the city (except it was foggy Sat night). The food was excellent, and it was a lot of fun.

Brian & I at Le Mont

Then Wednesday night, my friend Tommy took me out to dinner at Dave & Busters. We had a lot of fun playing games and stuff.

Tommy & I playing skee ball

so much for an easy semester...

i'm already overwhelmed! if i pretty much disappear for the next 4 months, this is why. Here's a brief summary of my classes.

EMT training: 6 hours of class a week; 3 hours of lab; i'm also looking into EMT clinicals...if i ever hear back from the secretary...which would involve 36 hours in an emergency room and 36 hours on an ambulance. I will get certified as an EMT at the end of the semester.

Global Information Systems (GIS): looks like a really interesting course. however, incredibly time consuming. 1 assignment could take 15-20 hours and we have one due every week.

Consulting for Non-profits: haven't had this yet b/c the prof (also my boss) had back surgery the week before Christmas and is still recovering. We're starting next Thursday. We're dividing the class into 3 groups and doing consulting work for 3 non-profits in the area. I'm hopefully going to be working with the Sexual Assault Response Team on board development and other governance/management issues. This also involves hours of outside work, visiting the organization, meetings, research, etc.

Micropolitics: NGOs, Development, and Civil Society: looks ok. i have a paper due a week from Monday already. not too excited about this course, but it's required and it's the first time it's been offered. hopefully it won't be too bad. other people seem excited about it.

Case Studies in Responses to Emergency Situations/NGO Responses to Humanitarian Disasters (there are multiple titles for this course): half semester course which thankfully was switched to the first half of the semester so that'll be out of the way by the end of February. Seems like it's going to be a very interesting course. The last 2 classes are a role play of applying what we've learned to what's going on in Darfur, so that should be kinda fun.

So yeah, my plan for an easy semester so I had time for job hunting seems to have turned into an 80hr/week semester somehow and I still need to fit in the job hunting. I'll figure it out though. Always do =)

Hope everyone's doing well. I'll talk to you all in May...haha. Oh yeah...I'm also going to train for a half marathon somewhere in there with Sarah. The Pittsburgh Marathon is May 3, and they have a half marathon option that we're going to do. Yay for running 13+ miles.