The New Maison and Academics

I realize I am incredibly behind in my blogging, and an incredibly large amount of things have taken place since my last post, so I will try to summarize.

I arrived back in the land of Walla Walla mid September and moved into my first apartment! I use the word "apartment" lightly. When talking to people I still often refer to it as my room since it is that small. It is a tiny studio apartment with a bed, two desks, a ridiculously small kitchen, and bathroom. But I think the decorating efforts have paid off well and I feel quite content in my little dwelling.

Classes began with a bang. As of a week ago when my schedule unexpectedly changed drastically to my disliking, I am now taking Research Writing, Western Civ., Senior Seminar, French, Voice Lessons, Quartet, and Choir. Research Writing is a joke. I'm in the middle of writing my senior history paper (~30-50 pgs.) and here I am writing a 6 pg. research paper. Western Civ is also a joke, a really easy freshman history class, but a requirement. It is nice though because I have several friends in there. Seminar is...seminar. All the senior history majors get together and moan and whine about how awful our paper is and how little progress we've made and how much research we have to do. French is awesome. Lame as this sounds, I walk in there and start hearing and speaking French and I get all peaceful and think to myself "this is right. this is how it should be." As a class, we've had class at a coffee shop, gone to a pastry shop, brought bread and tea to class, and next week we're going to Jean-Paul's for dinner. How I love being a French major. (We have done real work also; we write weekly papers that we present before the class and correct and have lectures etc.) Voice lessons are going well, gearing up for my senior recital, scary! But I get to sing some really awesome songs in French by Ravel (who's amazing, by the way), as well as some pieces by Vivaldi and Saint-Saens, who are also pretty darn cool.

Also intensely involved in Amnesty International of course, as well as the French Club. Amnesty is putting on a huge year's worth of events on human trafficking awareness and prevention which we are really excited about. More info on that to come.