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

Florida

Florida was wonderful. I had a great time, got to get to know my grandmom's new husband Jim better, and got to relax. Perfect vacation.
Got up bright and early Saturday morning...4:30am...to go on a hot airballoon ride. That was so nice. It was very peaceful, and not at all scary. I greatly enjoyed it and highly recommend one if you ever get the opportuniy. Sunday morning I lazed around the pool while Grammie and Jim golfed. Gotta love old folks communities...there's a girl walking around the pool getting you drinks. What a life. So I swam about one lap b/c i was feeling lazy and partially to cool off, then laid on the deck and read for about 2 hours, then Grammie and I did some shopping in the afternoon.
Monday morning we went to the largest Greek community in America. That made me really happy...and miss Greece a lot. (my roomie is there right now so I'm living vicariously through her) but I had a cheese pie, one of the foods I most miss. We also went on a nature cruise into the Gulf of Mexico looking for dolphins and manatees. Didn't see any manatees, but we had dolphins following us and playing in the wake of the boat a good portion of the trip. It was incredible. They are so beautiful and playful. We even saw a baby and its mother. So cute! I managed to get one ok picture, but it was really difficult b/c you never know when they're going to jump out of the water, and my camera is kind of slow.
but here are the pictures from the balloon ride and of the dolphins.

I'm an artist...

So I've been told some of my photography is better than art school students so I've decided to try to sell some.
Go check me out .

Ireland Pictures

enjoy

Ireland

when Irish eyes are smiling

*warning...long post*
I learned so much on this trip.
I guess I'll start with the history. You always here about the fighting in Ireland, but actually seeing the cities and hearing peoples stories about how much they are affected by it made it so real. We went to 2 big cities in the north, which is part of the UK and not part of the republic of Ireland. There are walls and barbed wire fences separating the Catholic and Protestant sections. There are murals about the fighting everywhere. The one city we were in, Derry (or Londonderry depending on where you're from) just had it's military occupation leave this past October. My prof's husband lived in Ireland for a long time, and he didn't think we'd ever be able to get into that city. Hearing people's stories was really sad. Our one tour guide is a professor now, but out of 3 other families on his block where he grew up...the kids he was friends with...one family was killed in an attack, one kid became a member of a paramilitary group and went to jail for killing people, and another girl is now president of the republic of Ireland. He said out of the kids on his soccer team growing up, only 5 of them are still alive. Our bus driver had his best friend die in his arms. I can't even imagine growing up in a situation like that.

Teaching
We taught 2 classes while we were there, one in the south and one in the north. There was a huge difference between the 2 classes. The school we taught at in the south was in a very bad area and the kids were really poor. Their teacher told us that one of the girls had been found under a bridge as a baby, abandoned by her drug addict mother and was now in foster care. My group taught a learning support class of 8 and 9 year olds who were so adorable, but we didn't even get through half our lesson. They were all over the place. They weren't bad, just out of control...asking questions all the time, not sitting down, wanting to take a million pictures with our cameras. When we got to the north, it was a much more upper class school. The kids were incredibly well behaved and we got through everything, which was nice since we had it prepared...lol.

Social problems
Drug abuse and related issues as well as homelessness are the biggest social issues in Ireland. We visited a women's reform prison. Definately nothing like a prison in this country, although it is the 1st kind of this type of prison. It's pretty much a locked down dorms type of thing. They see the loss of freedom as punishment enough so the women aren't stuck in cells with nothing to do all day. Also, most of the women in prison are there for drug related reasons such as theft or prostitution. Being in prison gives them a safe place to live so they're not on the streets. We talked to 2 of the women there, which was heart breaking. The one girl started doing drugs at 13 b/c her father taught her how to administer drugs to him when he was too fucked up to give himself more. One of the girls cut herself so much it looked like she should've had stitches. The other girl was supposed to get a 3 year sentence but her mother told the judge she wouldn't be alive in 3 years b/c of all the damage her body had sustained due to her heroin addiction.
We also visited a homeless agency, and they told us about how they're set up. Their type of homeless shelter would never be allowed here. They look at from a harm reduction perspective (yeah, I know, social work talk...sorry) which pretty much means what is the most harmful to these people and how do we make them safer. So providing food and shelter is the top priority, not making sure they're not doing drugs or drinking. The shelter has a wet room for people to drink alcohol and lockers where people can keep their drugs. They're not kicked out for doing drugs as long as they do it safely. They have a clean needle program to help ensure that the drug addicts at least are using safely. I think it's a good idea. Why deprive someone of shelter b/c they're an addict? They need help, not to be kicked back out to the streets.
So yeah, those visits were really eye opening.

Now on the the fun stuff. We did so much of that too. Hopefully I'll remember the best parts at least. Let's see...we toured the Guinness Factory. Yes, I did try some Guinness, and no, I do not like it...lol. (bad pic at Guinness factory) We went on a musical pub crawl, which was kind of interesting b/c they expained the difference between reels and jigs, etc. and played some for us.
We went to see the Hill of Tara, but it was pouring so didn't really go outside and look around.
Newgrange was pretty awesome. It's the ancient passageway tomb - a huge mound of earth with a passage and room in the middle surrounded by these stones with megalithic art. It's older than Stonehenge and the pyramids. Also, there's this window box and during 5 mornings of the winter solstice, the rising sun enterse through the box and illuminates the passage and room. We saw a pretty rough simulation, but it was pretty incredibly.
Giant's Causeway was beautiful. It's this rock formation of about 40,000 perfectly formed hexagons, octagons, and even 1 9 sided stone, formed by lava...or as the myth goes, a friendly Irish giant who was to fight a Scottish giant, built this passageway to Scotland for the giant to walk across. He then realized the Scottish giant was even bigger then him, so he had his wife dress him up as a baby. When the Scottish giant got there, the wife told him not to wake the baby. He got scared and left b/c he thought if the baby was that big, he didn't want to meet the father...haha. I liked that story.
We crossed this rope bridge that was 85 feet about cliffs and water to this little island. It was pretty scary, especially since I'm really scared of heights, but definately worth it. I was shaking when I got to the other side though. The island was gorgeous. Luckily it was a really clear day, and you could see across the sea to the coast of Scotland, 30 miles away.
We saw a bunch of castles...very awesome. We even had dinner in a restored castle, A medieval banquet type thing, very touristy, but fun and cool b/c it was actually in a real castle.
This is the part where I'm a total dork. My friend and I had milk cravings one night, so we went to the pub in our hotel and asked for a pitcher of milk. The bartender goes and gets us one and walks away. So we're trying to catch his attention and finally do and ask him how much we owe him for the milk. He gives us this look like we're crazy (which we probably are) and goes it's just milk, nothing. It was pretty funny. Then Peggy (one of my profs) walks in and asks us what we're doing. We tell her we're drinking milk. She's like aww, wouldn't your parents be proud of you. lol.
We also took a ferry to one of the Aran islands - Inis Mor - and rented bikes for the day. I think that was my favorite part of the trip. We did 7 mile round trip bike ride up to this fort on top of cliff...well, you rode to the bottom and hiked up...it was amazing. There are no safety barriers in Ireland...you can go right to the edge of the cliff. If you slip, you're dead. It was about 250 feet high I think. Crazy. Beautiful. Incredible. I really enjoyed riding too. The island is gorgeous. It was also a nice work out...lol.
Our last night, we went to this pub that's been continuously in operation since 1620 (the year the pilgrims landed in america). that was pretty cool. hung out with my profs and talked to them for most of the time there which was nice.
I also discovered my favorite potter/pottery...haha...I'm such a dork. Go check it out. Colm De Ris Pottery is going to be my present to myself from now on, until I get it all...lol.