1 month to go...

Things have been pretty crazy lately. I have a ton of school work to do. Taking 5 classes may not have been the greatest idea ever.
Friday, Chris, Jess, and I went to an Obama rally. That was pretty awesome. We went to get tickets Wednesday and they ran out within half an hour, so we got on the waiting list and got tickets. Friday morning we got there 3 hours early and there was already a really long line, but we ended up getting really good seats, about 8 rows back from the stage.





Saturday was GSPIA Gala, our semi-formal. I haven't uploaded pictures from that yet though.

I'm still waiting to here back about several internships. I've been accepted at the Africa Faith & Justice Network (www.afjn.org) to do research. I'm looking into housing options in DC. It's crazy expensive there!

Anyways, if you don't here much from me it's because I have an insane amount of work to do.
Hope everyone's doing well!

Etown & DC

Well, something worth writing about finally happened.
Saturday I stopped by Etown to see Amanda, Sara, Courtney, and Jills. That was so good seeing them! (I'll put up a picture when I upload them)
Then Sunday I headed off to DC for the Northern Uganda Lobby Days symposium. (http://www.ugandalobbyday.com/) I went to the last one about a year and a half ago. It was another really good experience. I stayed with my friend Val from Etown. It was really good catching up with her =)
I'm now really interested in either starting my own organization or partnering with another organization to integrate art and music into educational programs in post-conflict areas where a lot of children were involved in the conflict as therapy. It's going to take a lot of work, so we'll see what happens. I'm really excited because it will bring together my enjoyment of art and music with my psychology degree and my current studies in international development. (check out War Dance, it was nominated for an Oscar for best documentary, and Voices of Uganda, which should be out towards the end of the year/beginning of next)
I also have a job interview tomorrow for doing transcription work at the place I applied to a month or 2 ago. Wish me luck!

Doggy!

Sarah got a dog. His name is Sydney. He's an Australian cattle dog, between 1 and 2.
Isn't he adorable...

Happy New Year

Wow, I haven't updated this since Thanksgiving. Oops. Sorry.
The semester ended well. Nothing too exciting since we were all hard at work on final papers/projects and studying. I did well on all my end of semester things to wind up with a GPA of 3.75 for the semester, which I'm pretty happy about.
Christmas break was nice. I went home for about a week and a half. Nothing overly exciting.
This semester is going to be pretty crazy. I've decided to minor in Environmental Sustainability...for everyone who's really confused as to what I'm studying, which I think is all of you, my degree is a Masters of International Development; I'm majoring in Non-governmental Organizations and Civil Society, and minoring in Environmental Sustainability. What exactly that means, I have no idea, but it sounds good.
Here's my schedule for the semester:
Mon: 3-7:30 work
Tues: 9-12 Management of Non-Profit Organizations
3-7:30 work
Wed: 9-12 Environmental Economics & Management
3-6 Regional Seminar on African Development
6-9 Policy Analysis
Thurs: 11:30-3:30 work
6-9 Macroeconomics

I'm thinking about looking for some volunteer stuff to do on Fridays and Intervarsity has a grad group that meets Fridays at 6 that I may check out. Soccer starts soon. I think we're doing a recreational league this semester instead of the competitive league, since we did pretty badly. That will be Tuesday nights around 9.
Hopefully, things won't be too overwhelming, and I have a lot of free time at work to get things done.
I hope everyone is doing well!

Joe, Albert, and other randomness from the last month...

I don't really remember what order everything occurred in, but here's what's been going on.
I got the rest of my midterms back, and did very well on all of them. An A- and the rest As.
Work is the same as usual.
A couple weeks ago, we went out to Ligonier, which is beautiful in the fall. A friend's great aunt lives out there in this big gorgeous house from about 1900, on a farm in the mountains kind of. It was a very nice relaxing day. We went hiking, tried to fly a kite, there was a tree swing, and had some fresh picked apples. yum. Afterwards we stopped at some crazy bar in town that someone had told us about. Some really old guy named Joe owns it, and he used to go on all these safaris. There were I think 4 rooms of animals he had collected and stuffed from just about every continent...an elephant, giraffe, lion, crocodile, polar bear, kangaroo, and tons of other creatures, some that I've never heard of. It was pretty wild.
This past weekend was a lot of fun. Friday, I went downtown for light-up night, which is Pittsburgh's holiday season. It was really nice. There was live music, and Santa, and fireworks. Macy's does a holiday window display, so we also saw that unveiled. It was really pretty...scenes from Cinderella. Then my friend had game night, so we played board games all night.
Last weekend, Amanda and Courtney came to visit. That was so wonderful =) We went to the Greek store to get motion, and I showed them campus, and we went out both nights. It was such a great weekend =)
Yesterday, we had a Thanksgiving potluck dinner at our house. That was really nice, and the food was delicious. We had a 22lb. turkey, and there's very little left. (His name was Albert). Sandra video taped me preparing it, so if I can figure out how to put that on here sometime, I will. haha.

Pictures:
At Pamela's for breakfast before heading out to the country


At the top of the hill (we're wearing orange so we don't get mistaken for deer)


Jamey trying to fly a kite


Swinging


Sandra & Joe's elephant


Courtney, Amanda, & I (& some random guy)


Courtney & I


Amanda & I


The morning after


I haven't uploaded turkey dinner pics yet, but they're coming

Look at these photographs...

Quick overview of the past couple weeks:
A friend of ours' family friend organizes a Walk for Racial Harmony every year in Pittsburgh. This year it was at the zoo. Sandra, Julia, Jacky, Clayton, and I participated in that on the 13th. It was a lot of fun. We got to see a polar bear play fight.
Work is good. I sell slushies and sodas and candy bars at the snack bar in the new rec center in the student union, but I'm pretty much getting paid to do homework b/c it's not very busy. Best of all, I work the Wednesday shift during Artful Wednesdays (they bring in local performers), so I also get paid to be entertained.
I had midterms last week and this week. I did really well on my economics midterm, and haven't gotten anything else back yet, but I think I did ok.
Last weekend, I went home for Robin's wedding. It was so nice!

Ok, here are the pictures:
a bunch of the girls I'm friends with


at the zoo


hi-fiving the polar bear statue


Robin's Wedding









My kitty (aka the stray kitten that comes to see me when she wants a hug that I've semi-adopted)

no title

I got a job working at the new rec room in the student center in the snack bar or something. It opens next week. Sandra's working there too.

In other news, my roommates and I went to Phipps last week to see the Chihuly exhibit, which was quite awesome. Pictures are here

I think that was the highlight of last week. This coming weekend, a couple of us may go camping. I really want to do some hiking. Also white water rafting, but that will have to wait until summer as temperatures are supposed to drop quite a bit after tomorrow.

While we're young and beautiful

Classes are still good and interesting (except for stats, but that's to be expected). Honestly, even stats isn't too bad. The prof is really good.
I didn't get the research position, so I'm looking for something else. I'm going to check out some daycares around here.
I'm now on a soccer team, which makes me very happy. =) GSPIA (graduate school of public & international affairs) has an intramural team that plays Sunday nights. It's an indoor turf field, which is pretty cool. Sandra is playing too.
I'm considering joining Mediators Without Borders which is an international conflict resolution organization.
We had a big birthday party here last weekend for all our friends who have September birthdays. There were probably 30+ people here. It was a lot of fun. We grilled out, and of course had lots of dancing =)
There were salsa lessons Wednesday nights during September that I went to after class. That was a lot of fun. There was a petition going around this past week to continue the classes since it was the last one, so we'll see how that turns out.
For the most part, I'm pretty busy with school work. I have an insane amount of reading and studying to do, but so far it's going well =)

Job Interview

I have an interview on Tuesday for a research specialist position at the University's Department of Health and Community Systems.

Here's the job description:
Research Specialist: Collaborate with the Principal Investigator (PI) in the research responsibilities of this foundation funded project. Will coordinate and perform subject recruitment, screening and enrollment at data collection site. Will lead efforts to prepare the procedural manuals and Institutional Review Board materials. Will assume primary responsibility for data collection, data entry and data management. Will participate in preparing annual and final reports to the funding agency.

Wish me luck!

traveling dreams forming in time

Well, I survived 2 weeks in Pittsburgh. I guess that's a good sign =P
I found a 3rd roommate. Her name is Sandra. She's from Zimbabwe, and she's a grad student at Pitt, in my program. She's really sweet. The house is still in progress, but it's getting there. The upstairs is mostly done and clean. I think we're going to pain the bedrooms at least though. Cleaning the downstairs is the project for the weekend b/c we're having a labor day fiesta here. The basement is starting to look much better. It was filled with stuff left by the people that lived here 2 tenants ago. We threw that all away this week. Now we need to vacuum out all the cobwebs and other creepy crawlies and grossness, and I think with a fresh coat of paint, it'll look pretty decent. I really will get some pictures soon.
This week was my first week of classes. So far, they are all pretty interesting. The professors all seem very nice, though tough. They're interesting and explain things well. There was some scheduling confusion. Apparently my section of statistics was closed, but I never got the email, so I missed that class. Fortunately, I know someone in the class I should have gone to, and was able to copy the notes, and I've had enough stats in the past that I didn't miss anything I didn't already know or needed to review.
I'm also thinking about getting my certification in African studies. The university offers certifications in different area studies, and they just added Africa. I was leaning towards Latin America for a while, b/c I love the culture, but there are going to be a lot more job opportunities working in/with Africa because the focus in the development world is shifting away from Latin America. It would be cool if I could do both. The biggest concern with that is language requirements. I have to have 4 semesters of a language, and French is better for Africa, although I am trying (maybe a little too ambitiously) to become fluent in both. A friend of mine from Venezuela is giving me Spanish lessons, so maybe I can just take a language proficiency test if I get good enough. We'll see.
For fun, I've found the salsa dancing contingent in our program. A group of us have been going out about once a week. My roommates all love to dance, so we're going to turn our dining room into a dance studio. We decided that none of us will ever eat together, so there is no need for a kitchen table. Once we have a couch, we can just eat there and use a coffee table. The entire house has pretty nice wood floors - perfect for dancing =)

MOTION

so i was taking a stroll through my very Jewish neighborhood yesterday when I stumbled upon a little Greek store. I went in to look for cheese pies and lo and behold, I saw Motion! This amazing fruit juice, also known as "the elixer of life" to my other Greek roomies and I, is the best juice I have ever had in my life (it's apple, peach, orange, grape, pineapple, grapefruit, kiwi, passion fruit, and mango juice). Until yesterday, I had not seen it anywhere in any other country. I went in, bought some, and told the lady she just made Pittsburgh a better place for me. Unfortunately, she was not the Greek woman, and told me to come in another time to meet the owner. Also, they only had juice box sizes, granted a grown-up size juice box and not a kiddie size, but hey, I'll take what I can get. I'll have a little chat with the owner sometime to see if it's possible to get regular size cartons. Anyways, if you ever come visit me, I will take you to get some of the most wonderful juice on earth.

Pictures

Here are some ridiculously out of order pictures from the past several months.
I think they're of:
Michelle's graduation
Jaime's party at Whiskey Tango
camping at Rickett's Glen for my birthday
offroading
picnics
party boat in Philly
80s party
Longwood Gardens
etc.

it's been a while...

Quick recap of the past 2 months:
*I actually ended up enjoying my new job. I met a lot of really great people, most of them around my age. They were a lot of fun to work with. I also have pretty much gotten over my fear of talking to random people on the phone, although I still hate answering machines. I can probably order myself a pizza now though =P
*Fun...had lots. Highlights were probably going to the Family Values Tour (my boss is also part owner of a clothing company that does a lot of music festivals and stuff for bands and he had free tickets). The other highlight was that this past weekend I finally got to the beach. My old friend Melissa and her bf and some of their friends had a place for the week so Liz and I went for the weekend. It was the perfect weather for the beach =) Other than that, just been going out locally with people a lot.

In other news, Michelle and I head off to Pittsburgh on Friday. Here's a really rough floor plan of my place:

I have one roommate right now, named Sarah. She's an ER nurse at the children's hospital. She likes to go salsa dancing, so that should be fun. We've been talking to a couple people, so should have a 3rd person soon.
I'll take some pictures of the place after we move in and get them up here.

Orientation is next week and then classes start soon after that.
I'll send my new address out in an email or email me to get it. As always, presents are more than welcome...especially IKEA gift cards =P haha

life is a highway

I've been pretty horrible at updating lately. Sorry. Here is my life for the past couple months in a nutshell, then slightly expanded:
I work and am out with my friends whenever I'm not working.

*Grad school: I'm heading off to Pittsburgh in the fall with Michelle. I'm getting my masters in International Development and am specializing in Non-Profit Organizations and Civil Societies.

*Graduation: Graduation was good. It was nice to have the family together and see everyone. I also had a lot of fun with all my old Etown friends.
Pictures are HERE

*Work: I'm getting laid off for the summer b/c not enough kids stay during the summer for them to keep a full staff. I have a couple of job options. A friend of mine owns an advertising company that does publications for a variety of medical professionals, so I'm going to go in for a day and see what I think. I could also go work for my neighbor again. I'm leaning towards the advertising company b/c I think they have more of a need for me and it would be something new for me to learn about.

*Life: I fractured my finger about a month ago, slipping and falling on a wet floor. It's annoying and it hurts and makes latin dancing difficult. Other than that, nothing exciting is going on in my life...and that wasn't even exciting.

EPA Conference & JR/SR

This past weekend was pretty busy. The EPA conference went really well. There was a lot of interest in my research, which was cool.
Here I am with Tara, my professor who worked with me on it.



And here is a link to the photo album with pictures from the Jr/Sr...also a lot of fun =)
Jr/Sr Pics

Pittsburgh

I just got my acceptance letter =)
Now to wait for financial aid information.

I'm glad to be here...on this heavenly day

I guess the most exciting news for those of you reading this is that I got into the University of Denver's Graduate School of International Studies.
I should hear from Pittsburgh in the next 2 weeks, and I just completed the FAFSA this week, so hopefully I'll be hearing about financial aid fairly soon.
I'm leaning more towards Denver at this point. I emailed Bridgeway, the home for pregnant teens where I was a housemom 3 years ago, and they may be in need of a housemom, so I potentially have free housing.


Well, that's my big update of the week. I'll update again when I hear back from Pittsburgh.

Life as a college grad

lots of little updates i guess.
*i got my diploma. i have officially graduated cum laude from elizabethtown college, in the elizabethtown honors program, and honors in the psychology department with a final gpa of 3.65.

*i'm halfway through my second week of work at a child's place. i love it. i coteach a class of 5 12-24 month olds. they're all adorable. we're getting a new baby sometime in february who is turning one.

*my grad school applications are all done and submitted to the university of denver and the university of pittsburg.

*my conference presentation is at the sheraton in philadelphia march 24 from 11:30-12:50. nothing formal. it should be a good time. i'm probably going straight to etown as soon as i'm done b/c that's the date of the jr/sr forma,l and i'm going with amanda and sara.

*graduation date: May 19 at either 10am or 11am.

that's about it for my life these days. i work, go to the gym, and spend time with friends. it's exciting.

life after college

I spent my 1st 2 weeks hanging out with friends and having fun, and 1 job interview at a daycare in Devon to be a toddler teacher. They told me to come back after New Years and help out in a classroom for a while to see if I liked it. New Year's day, my neighbor called asking if I needed work, and said I could work in the office til I got another job. So I've been doing that all week. I went in to the daycare Wednesday and loved it. They offered me the job today. They don't have an official start date yet, but will let me know on Tuesday when I go in to fill out paperwork. They pay really well compared to other daycares and pay for a good portion of health insurance. I'm really happy about it =)
I also got an email today that my proposal was accepted for the Eastern Psychological Conference, which is going to be in Philly in March. I'm not sure the exact date I'm presenting yet though. That should be fun. I just hope I'm not presenting Saturday afternoon b/c that's Etown's Jr/Sr formal dinner/dance, and I'm going with my roommates.
Well, that's all the big news for me right now.

Final post as a college student

so it's been a while. let's see...
here's the fun stuff, with pictures.
the honor's banquet was at the end of novemeber. that was a lot of fun. a bunch of girls from my leadership class, and i all sat together. we won the deal or no deal game and got a really cute mug full of hot beverage stuff and a candy cane. we were all super excited. here's us with our professor and our winnings.

last weekend was senior night at some bar in mount joy (the next town over from etown). they got a school bus and bused people there and back. the bar was really small and ran out of glasses, but it was nice just to see everyone. here's amanda, courtney, ahmed, and i (we all went to greece together) before we left.

this past thursday night, we had our traditional percussion section dinner. (we started this tradition last year) i made ceasar salad, spaghettic, meatballs, and garlic bread for 10 people (including my roommates) it was a lot of fun.
here is our percussion section (at least the ones that came to dinner)

today was our day of christmasnass...my invented holiday. i made pancakes & cinnamon rolls for breakfast, then we watched a muppet christmas carol and opened presents. courtney found some market in lancaster and found greek food, so she brought us a cheesepie and baklava and olives (i just had some cheesepie...sooo good!) for dinner we went out to houlihans. they even gave us our own private dining room for some reason..haha...we were being goofy, so that was probably good. here's us at dinner:

other than all that, i've been pretty much writing papers, working, and having concerts, percussion ensemble and band. they both went fairly well. there were about 2 weeks after thanksgiving where i didn't get much sleep, but i got a chance to take a break at the end of the week this past week.
all i have left are finals and my senior thesis presentation.
my senior this presentation is wednesday at 3:30 if anyone's interested (please don't be b/c it'll probably be pretty boring and you'll just make me more nervous!)
wednesday evening, the psych professors are taking the 4 psych majors who are graduating this semester out to dinner so that should be nice.
none of us (my roomies and i) have finals friday, but we decided to stay til friday, and they want to have a graduation party for my thursday night, so that should be a lot of fun. then friday i come home for good =( i'm going to miss everyone here!

I'm still alive

Things here are going well, although quite hectic.
Let's see...last weekend, I went to see Michelle's marching band championships in Hershey. That was nice. Sunday was my percussion ensemble concert, which went well. Then, mom and dad and I went out for a nice dinner.
This week has been the Human Rights Film Festival my International Social Development class has been running. Tonight is the last night. So far we've averages about 45 people a night and have sold almost 40 tshirts (which I designed!) to raise money for Human Rights Watch. About $2.50 from each shirt purchase goes to HRW.
I've spent probably a good 15+ hours since Monday putting together a proposal for the Eastern Psychological Association Conference (and no, this didn't happen b/c I procrastinated.) Tara (my research advisor) told me last week I should submit, and I didn't finish collecting data until Friday, and started data analysis Monday. The upside of doing the proposal is a lot of work that I would've had to do for my thesis is done. The conference is in March at the Sheraton in Philadelphia just in case anyone's interested.
I still have a ton of work to do in the next couple weeks, so I'll continue to be busy. But of course, there are some fun things to look forward. There's an Honor's Holiday Banquet the week after Thanksgiving. Also, 4 of us in the psych department are graduating this December, so our profs want to take us all out to dinner finals week. That should be really nice.

Catering Pictures

These are from that Grease thing I did back in September

Part of our catering family (The one in the Pink Ladies jacket is Kathy, and next to her is Dave, my bosses)


Bethany and I made about a million of these little car tray things for them to put food in


Bhavin & Suren with Marilyn


One of the tables


Bartending the soda bar: cherry, vanilla, or chocolate coke anyone?

Halloween Weekend

Friday, I ended up working about 13 1/2 hours...didn't get home til almost 2am. That was a really long exhausting day. Alicia (one of our roommates from Greece who lives in Kansas) got here so her and Amanda went to Rockwells.
Saturday, we took her to Chocolate World in Hershey...always a great choice for out of towner entertainment...fun, free, and free chocolate! Can't go wrong with that. We then went to the Etown vs. Messiah soccer game (the biggest game of the year) at Messiah and ran into a few more people who went to Greece with us. It was a good game, but unfortunately, we lost. (It's ok, we beat them last night in the semifinals.) Then we went to some Halloween parties. Sunday, we just relaxed and did nothing until we took Alicia back to the airport, which was nice.
Here's some pics from Sat night: (Amanda was the devil with the blue dress on, Alicia was a "successful woman in the eyes of a man", Sara was a secretary, Jills was a mermaid, I was Marilyn Monroe, Courtney was from the 70s, and I have no idea what Joe was, but he was wearing sweatpants, and he never does that)

Amanda, Alicia, and I

My roommates and I

Joe and I

Greek Reunion! (everyone who lived in my apartment in Greece)

pictures from this semester

I love my roommate!The Best Roommates Ever

Homecoming PartyLobbying CongressEtown goes to DC: At the Washington MonumentSara & I destressing with a good old bow & arrow fightSome of the girls from my freshman seminar

Being crazy with the roommates

Out at the bar

Change of Plans

I visited UPitt about a week and a half ago with my former roommate, Liz. I really liked it. The professors I met were incredibly nice and caring and seemed really great. Pittsburgh is also not very 'big city' ish, which I love. There are all these residential neighborhood like areas around it that are nice to live in and fairly inexpensive.
That being said, I've decided not to go to grad school in January. I've felt so overwhelmed by the whole idea and yesterday and today were the worst. UPitt starts Jan 3, so I would have about 2 weeks transition time. I would also have to take out a whole lot of loans. I looked at job openings on the chester county intermediate unit site and on monster.com and found a school called the malvern school. (www.malvernschool.com) I'm going to apply for a teaching assistant position working with infants or preschoolers. As of right now, I'm planning on going to grad school in the fall, but we'll see what happens. The Malvern School offers tuition reimbursement and professional development, so if I really love it, I might go for early education certification, and put off grad school for a few more years.
So that's the major stuff that's been going on with me, other than an insane amount of work.
Don't worry, I still have time for a little fun. Lisa and Nate came up Saturday to visit, which was really nice. Wednesday night Liz and I are going to meet at a coffeehouse and do work together just b/c we haven't seen each other in forever. Then this weekend, Alicia, my roommate in Greece from Kansas, is flying out to see us. That will be really nice. Friday I'm working a huge fancy schmancy Board of Trustees dinner in Lancaster all day, which will be fun even though it's work.

Northern Uganda Lobby Day & conference

The Northern Uganda Lobby Day & conference was amazing. I learned SO much. Monday was panels and discussions about what's currently going on in Northern Uganda, then Tuesday we went and lobbied senators and represenatives for the US to actively support peace talks in Juba and to dedicate much more humanitarian aid. It was definately a great learning experience. I actually talked to aides of our representatives! and I am so uncomfortable doing things like that. I was really proud of myself. I think the 2 biggest things I got out of this experience are 1: the people organizing the event and a lot of the grassroots humanitarian organizations are like 25. These people are just a few years older than I am and doing so much. It was really inspiring. The other thing was that even actresses are terrified of public speaking. One of the people lobbying for PA was Melissa Fitzgerald, from the West Wing. She is such a nice person and has done a lot of advocacy for Uganda, but she said she is terrified of public speaking. Made me feel so much better. lol.
I think our funny story from the trip was we went to speak with Michelle Hart's aid and asked him what her position was on what's going on in Northern Uganda and how she feels about the issue. He told us he was not at liberty to disclose that information. We were like that's funny. She's a publicly elected official, that should be public knowledge.
Another really awesome part of the trip was hearing Betty Bigombe speak. She's been the primary person leading peace negotiations for almost 20 years, so that was really awesome.

I can't believe it's the end of September already

This is our lovely little kitchen

This is our living room/eating area. We have a futon, loveseat, 2 chairs, and a table with 4 chairs.

This is my half of the room. The artwork/decorations for anyone interested, from left to right: tapestry/scarf from H&M, b&w 8x10s of Marilyn Monroe, Audrey Hepburn, and Rhett & Scarlett from Gone with the Wind with hanging votives in between. Then above my desk at the top is an assortment of artwork from Greece and Italy. On the bottom is some quotes, prints i like, and project lists of things to get done.

Amanda & my room from the door.

In other news, the GREs went pretty well. I should get my official scores within the next week and a half or so. They give you part of your score when you finish, and I was quite happy with that. Grad school applications are due October 15 (Denver University) and November 15 (University of Pittsburgh) so I won't know where I'm going for quite a while.

This past weekend was a lot of fun. Sara and I relaxed at her house Friday night and watched V for Vendetta, which was a great movie. Saturday, her parents took us to see Godspell at a playhouse near them. That was very enjoyable. Then we hung out with one of her friends from home. Sunday was the big party for her great uncle's 80th birthday party, so I got to meet the rest of her big crazy family. It was a lot of fun. I'm glad I went with her. It was nice to get away from school and work for a weekend. She might have some pictures, but I haven't seen them yet, so they may or may not be forthcoming.

For anyone wondering, I am not dancing this semester. I'm a little upset about that, but it's beyond my control and is probably better anyways since I have so much work and projects to get done. The club got a new advisor this year who apparently decided to cut the show in half. Last year, there were 30+ numbers in the show. Yeah, that makes for a long show, but there are 300+ members in the club. So pretty much what that means is that the dances this semester are intermediate to advanced numbers with tryouts b/c there are 50+ people signed up for most of them and they only take from about 10-20 people. I auditioned for a few, but obviously have no real dance experience and didn't make it.
BUT I decided to try out photography club this semester instead, which I think will also be a great experience. Tonight I'm getting dark room trained. We also have use of cameras, chemicals, developing paper, photo quality color printers, photo programs, etc. It should be a lot of fun. I'm excited!

Hope everyone is doing well!

My Upcoming Tour of Major Central Eastern Cities of the US

Hey everyone, how's it going?
School's going quite well. I'm having a wonderful (albeit very hectic) final semester here in good old Etown.
Classes are interesting (except for History & Systems of Modern Psychology, which is required).
I should be starting research for my senior thesis sometime in the beginning of October, pending approval. My other major project is an advocacy project to raise awareness and/or support for a major social issue. I'm thinking about a benefit concert if I can get started on that soon. (still trying to decide if it will be too much to handle). My Leadership course also has to design and implement a service learning project for freshmen honors students. Thankfully, that one is a larger group effort.
We did a high ropes course for my Leadership course this past Saturday, which was a lot of fun and a great work out. I couldn't lift my arms above my chest Sunday.

Big scary news: Friday at 12 I take the GREs. Wish me luck! (a way to instantly remember high school math would be fantastic also...but don't worry, I have been studying a lot)

Now on to what you've all been waiting for: Mary's current travel plans for the semester.
*Next weekend, I'm going home with one of my roommates, Sara. Her family is having a big picnic/party thing and told her she could bring a friend...me! Anyways, she lives outside NYC so we're going to take the bus in for a day.
*Oct. 8-10, I'm going to a conference in Washington DC. There are a bunch of panels on peacebuilding and crisis in Uganda, as well as sessions on doing advocacy and lobbying. It costs $5 for students to register, some meals are included, and my friend Nate goes to UMD and is close to a metro station to get into the city. He's going to go with me and said I can crash on a couch at his place so I don't have to get a hotel room. Cheap is definately good =)
Check it out here: Northern Uganda Lobby Day
*Over fall break, my former roommate Liz and I are going to take a road trip out to the University of Pittsburgh. We are both interested in attending grad school there and would like to check it out. I'm glad I discovered she is looking there too because I didn't want to go by myself. She also knows someone out there who's place we could potentially stay at.

Well, I think that's the major news in my life right now. Hope everyone is doing well!

important dates as of right now

Percussion Ensemble Concert: Nov 12 @3:00 (?)
Band Concert: Dec 3 @ 3:00
Emotion Dance Show: Dec 8 & 9 @ 7:30

i survived my 1st week

i guess it's been a pretty busy week.
all my classes but one are pretty good. history and systems of psych is going to be awful, but i'm looking forward to everything else. (although the reading for my leadership course is pretty bad, but the class should be good). i think my international social development class is going to be really good. i feel kind of dumb though b/c i'm really new to the whole field and don't know too much yet, but that's what i'm in school for, so i just need to stay focused and stay positive.

i haven't really done anything with my research which i wanted to start within the next week or so. my advisor wants me to do a lot more research, but i did a lot over the summer and just want to get started on the actual research. so we'll see what happens with that.

i started grad school applications and sending out requests for letters of recommendation. i got a letter the other day from the school letting me know all my requirements will be fulfilled by the end of the semester so i can indeed graduate in january. right now i'm applying to the university of pittsburgh and the university of denver. i'm debating applying to columbia and my prof just recommended george washington today, but they're both pretty expensive and application fees are ridiculous, and the cost of living is really expensive, and i don't know if i'd like living in a really big city like new york or dc. i'll probably just stick with pitt and denver.

friday night, mom, dad, and michelle stopped by on their way home from taking mike to penn state so they could see the apartment, and took me and 2 of my roomies to olive garden. that was a lot of fun, and of course, delicious.
i love having an apartment, being able to cook, having a living room to hang out in, etc. it's so nice. maybe i'll post pics one of these days.

here's my one of my roomies...jills and i about to go to the bar for her 21st birthday














and here are my other 2 roomies, sara & amanda