It's been a while

Yeah, sorry. College is busy. My time has been split between
1. Class
2. Clubs
3. Homework
4. Eating
5. Sleeping
6. Trying not to go crazy!
So, that's why it's been a while.

My friend Savannah started a blog recently, and reading it made me realize that I need to start this one back up! Check her out at sshadypro.webnode.com

So over the last few weeks, I have been to two concerts, had 2 quizzes and a test, and made several new friends! I guess that's how I'll split up this post...

CONCERTS
On the 17th I went to my first concert in Austin at a venue called Mohawk. It was quite an adventure; I had to have big black Xs on my hands. Everyone was dressed to stylishly, but it was like hipster-not-really-trying-but-secretly-trying-really-hard-stylish. A British band called Daughter performed, but I really liked the band that opened for them. They were called Bear's Den. Also British. They had beards and banjos and their music was folksy-meets-bluegrass with a dash of rock. SO GOOD. It was a little disappointing when I came home, though, because they were a lot better live than they are in their recorded tracks. Anyway, I got a Bear's Den t-shirt and a headache from the cigarette smoke and enormous speakers.
Then last night there was a free concert on the South Mall. Two local bands played: Marmalakes and Wild Child. Marmalakes was pretty good. The bass player was ADORABLE and I actually went up to him and talked to him after they played! That was my brave moment of the night. Then Wild Child came on, and they were AMAZING! They are a huge group and have all sorts of instruments: violin, cello, ukulele, keyboard, even horns! Their music is indie and so cute and fun. My favorite song by them is "Crazy Bird," and they played it last night!


SCHOOL
School is a lot harder than I thought it was. I feel like I understand everything in the lectures, but then I get tripped up when it comes to quizzes and tests. I guess that just means I need to work on my studying habits. My grades are decent so far, but they need to be awesome. Luckily I have a lot of opportunities this semester to bring them up. In fact, I have a paper due next week that I need to be prepping for...

FRIENDS
My friends generally fall into one of four groups...
1. My floor
I have three really good friends from my floor in Moore-Hill. One is my roommate, Sharon. The others are Jen and Abby. We go to dinner together often, and try to go to brunch together on Sundays. Sharon and Jen went to the Wild Child concert with me last night. Abby is an architecture major and is often very busy. But we spend time together too; we even went ballroom dancing together one night!
2. Liberal Arts Honors
LAH freshmen all take a writing workshop class together on Mondays, so we get to know each other pretty well, even though we number 100+. I have made several LAH friends. We go to dinner after 102H class. I love my LAH friends because we are all high achievers and have similar interests. One of my LAH friends, Katie, also loves Welcome to Night Vale, Doctor Who, and Sherlock!
3. Hindi Urdu Flagship
There are seven members of the HUF Foundation Year class this year. I have Hindi class with three of them, and the seven of us have our private tutorial with Dr. Snell every Wednesday and go to dinner afterwards. We're all united in a common goal (learning Hindi) and we'll all be going abroad together more than once, so we've all become fast friends. Poor Chris, though; he's the only boy in the group!
4. UT Objectivism Society
I've joined the UTOS, which is a philosophy club where we discuss Ayn Rand's ideas in relation to the modern world. It's pretty interesting, and I've become friends with my fellow officers (I am this year's Treasurer). Jonathan and Corbin are very cool, and we table together occasionally. The three of us are going to California next weekend to attend a seminar! I've never been to California before, so it'll be quite an adventure!

Sorry this post was so long; I had a lot to catch up on! Until tomorrow (hopefully)!

Friday Night (pictures)

From Cow Tipping Creamery. The
"Cherry Bomb" shake. DELICIOUS.

The loverly nerdy wall of
the bathroom in the FAC.

The tower at dusk! Beautiful.

My new friends: Jen,
Abby, and Sharon.

Actual College Life

Here I am, sitting in the Student Activity Center, drinking a tall cookie-something-or-other frappuccino (I don't like coffee, but they didn't have my favorite creme frappuccino, and I couldn't justify spending three bucks on a strawberry drink that wasn't a smoothie), listening to "Welcome to Night Vale," waiting out a three-hour break between classes. It's the third class day today, and... I don't know. Classes are okay. My professors all seem great, but I can already tell it's going to be a ridiculous amount of work. Especially Hindi. We can only speak Hindi in the classroom. Which is great; we have already learned a bunch of phrases through context clues. But the alphabet (or, actually, it's a syllabary), is extremely daunting. I am nervous about beginning to write in the language. I think my UGS class -- Justice, Liberty, and Happiness -- is going to be hard too. It's basically a philosophy/history class, and we have to read excerpts from ancient classics like the Bible and the Iliad. Which is okay, I suppose. My professor, Dr. Pangle, said that for the first six weeks of class we won't read anything less than two thousand years old! I think it's funny that my two liberal-artsy classes are the ones I'm most worried about. But who knows? That may change soon. Both my Bio and Chem professors seem very nice, and the classes shouldn't be TOO bad. My chemistry professor, Dr. Laude, is a vice-provost or something, and our class champion. He also teaches only one class. He is hilarious, and has pretty much the same voice as John Lithgow, which makes it even better. He sort of spins around when he gets frustrated. He is teaching us to do math without a calculator.

We have a three day weekend starting... today, I guess, for me, which would make it a three-and-a-half days weekend. Which is perfect, since I already have a considerable amount of homework. Plus, I need some sleep. College life keeps me up late and gets me up early!

Spilt Milk

Not so much spilt as overflowing. Because, you know, liquid expands when it freezes, and our fridge is ridiculously cold. It expands, then leaks, then turns to yellowish sticky awfulness that will try its darndest to stay stuck to your tile floor. It took two teenage girls, armed with fingernails and cleaning wipes, to finally clean the floor. Those girls were Sharon and me. In case you were wondering.
In addition to Sharon, I have made two new friends from my floor: Jennifer and Abby. Jennifer is really chill and funny and Abby reminds me more of myself. She is from Chicago! Her accent is pretty cool. The four of us had dinner together, then went exploring, then hit up Milkshake Monday at the dorm, THEN -- of all things -- went and worked out together! And by worked out of course I mean spent 15 minutes struggling on the elliptical machines. But, hey, it's a start!

Walking, Soccer, and Awkward Mingling

Sorry, everyone, I was too tired last night to post. So, here's my Sunday post (a little late).
The thing about Sundays is that most places aren't open until, like, 11. Which sucked for me because I decided to go shopping for some essentials that I forgot at about 9. Walking down to the Drag is bad enough in this heat, and then discovering that there's NOWHERE to buy flip flops for another hour and a half is just the icing on the cake.
So, to kill some time, I went exploring. And by exploring, I mean searching the Tower area for a comfortable place to wait it out. Turns out, all the libraries are closed so my plan of sitting in the beautiful Life Science library I discovered last year was foiled. In fact, the entire main building wasn't doing much for me, so I found Garrison Hall, the one building that I have a class in and was not sure where it was located. There were couches in Garrison (thank God), so I sat there for about an hour before I ventured out of the A/C and toward Tyler's, where I purchased some overpriced flip flops and moved on with my day.
Sharon and I went to a soccer game in the afternoon with our neighbor across the hall, Brooke. It was hot and we were hungry, so the three of us left at half time and walked to Kerbey Lane, the most insanely tasty cafe on the Drag and maybe in Austin.
In the evening, the residence hall hosted a cookout in the courtyard. It had a luau theme, and was decorated with leis strung from trees, tiki torches, flyaway napkins, and RAs doing the Wobble. Needless to say, watching people dance got old pretty fast, so we ventured over to the Start Fresh Fest, which was equally disappointing. We did, however, meet a few other girls from our hall, so that was an upside.
At one point, Sharon commented that all the mingling we'd been doing felt like a waste of energy. At a school with 50,000 kids, it's unlikely you'll ever see anyone again.
Today is the Liberal Arts Honors walk I signed up for. I'm pretty excited! Only two days left before classes start.

First Night

Random thought: I never thought that I'd have too many photos for my dorm bulletin board! Granted, I did bring almost 100...
I moved all my stuff into my dorm last night. That was quite an adventure! Parking at my school is hellacious, and we had to park around the block from my dorm. So we carried four loads of extremely heavy furniture, clothes, and general STUFFS all the way to my dorm, then up three flights of stairs and down the hall. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I live on the fourth floor of a dorm with no elevator.
I unpacked most of my belongings last night as well, getting my room as close to perfection as possible. My mom insisted on making my bed for me. That almost made me want to cry, for some reason. Yesterday was an emotional roller coaster, though, so I guess I'm not surprised. I went from excited to terrified to sad to this "unfeeling of nothingness" more times than I can count.
I slept at the hotel with my mother and sisters last night. I didn't sleep very well.
This morning, my family and I explored the campus while my roommate, Sharon, moved in. We dropped by to see her and meet her family, then headed over to Phil's Icehouse, which is this AMAZING burger place connected to an Amy's Ice Cream which also serves the nectar of the gods (aka cactus fruit lemonade). I was getting really freaked out at that point. We swung by HEB to grab a couple things and then my mom drove me back to campus and literally dropped me off on the side of the road. I teared up a little, I'll admit, as I walked back to my room. But then I started hanging my photos (not enough room for all of them) and my roommate came back and I was sufficiently distracted. Sharon and I explored the campus, grabbed sandwiches for dinner, and are headed to a comedy show at one of the dorms tonight. I even squeezed in a tiny (and unexpected) nap. So far, so good.