tigers waiting to be tamed

well the past two weeks have been absolutely crazy. the last time i wrote i had spent exactly one day on campus... that was two weeks ago and i was feeling pretty wierd about being back. but now i feel completely at home and it's so wonderful. the tuesday after my last post was probably one of the wildest days i've had in a while. w e-mailed me sunday night and asked if i was interested in going to columbus with some students from his Promise neighborhood. i agreed, and it was such a wild day. we were basically there to interact with the kids and lend a hand in keeping them all wrangled up. we went to the statehouse and took a tour. it was really amazing to see how the kids interacted and how they thought about the world. these kids are in varying levels of poverty and their elementary school is the center of the promise neighboorhood - an holistic approach to improving the kids' lives with the help of the community, schools and neighborhood. i spent the day around w, even though we didn't really have a chance to talk once we were with the kids and in columbus. but we spent the busrides there and back getting to know each other a little better... i don't know why i was compelled to have a heart-to-heart with him on the way back, but we ended up talking about a lot of deep stuff.

the rest of the week i didn't really do much besides work in the music building. rachel and lis renovated the practice rooms this summer, and i helped rachel finish them up, clean and get everything back in the rooms. i also spent some time in the choral library filing music because there was no sense of organization in there before. and guess what else? more filing! the handbell room needed to be organized also. so at the very least i'm happy to get a paycheck for this month.
classes started on monday. here's my crazy schedule:

mwf classical musics of the world 9:10-10:10
mw conducting 11:30-12:30
mw brass methods 12:40-1:40
mwf history of 20th century music 1:50-2:50
mw percussion methods 6:30-7:30
tth cave ecology 9:40-11:10
tth band 5:30-7:00
w handbell choir 4:10-5:45
th trumpet lessons 12:20
f piano lessons 11:30

blahhhhh.

this week has been really crazy. getting back to the whole classes thing is tough to begin with, because i'm up earlier in the morning and up later at night. the past couple of days i just kind of hit that wall at 2:30. which is terrible because that's in the middle of my history class, and consequently i have to eat during class otherwise i'd fall asleep. thankfully i haven't had too much homework yet, so i can go to bed relatively early. (aka 10:30 one night!)
but for the most part all of my classes are really great! i'm so excited for all of them, and they're all interesting in different ways. i think i'm really going to enjoy this semester. super super much. and hopefully getting a paycheck will be better because i've been really trying not to spend money - had to buy a lot of stuff for the apartment and the bank account was dwindling. but things are looking up, i think.
that isn't to say that i don't miss elyria... i really do. i talked to my dad the other night and we had a really decent conversation. he sounds interested in the stuff i'm learning, and he wants me to tell him about it. and of course, i miss all my friends already. sigh.

so yeah. just a short update. yay school! i love it here!!

back to school

yeahhhhh. last post was july 12. let's catch things up a bit...

the second week of july, i helped with vacation bible school at my church. tracy asked me if i would be in charge of music this year. i taught the kids four songs, and at the end of the week they sang them for their parents. i learned that keeping 15 pre-schoolers occupied for half an hour in a hot stuffy room is near impossible. i learned that one has to be creative, excited, animated, and open in order for kids to respond. i learned that it's much easier to go with the flow than to try and make a stink about things that aren't going your way. and in the end, the concert that they sang was amazing... smiles, loud voices, fun... it was really very exciting.

on the 18th, i played gershwin in church. i know, right? gershwin in church? let's just say that it was kind of a different service than we were used to.

on the 22, i went to the doctors. i have been having these really wierd random bouts of nausea, like it'll just come out of nowhere and i feel like i have to vom. so they took blood and i scheduled an ultrasound for my gallbladder and etc etc etc.

on the 24th, brittany, my mom, and her friend judy made the trip to canada. this was our fifth year going up there, and it was definitely the year of adventure. first, our fridge didn't work, so we had to buy a new fridge and get it into the cabin (let me remind you that the only access to the cabin is by boat...); judy's nephew and his family traveled from california to stay with us for three whole days; we gave a guy a tow across the lake when his boat motor died; brittany got a rock imbedded in her foot when she fell/jumped off the dock. i really enjoy going up there because except for the few people with us, there is practically no one around. no neighbors, no lawn mowers, no garbage trucks, no anything. i think my favorite part, though, was when we went outside at night to look at the stars. since we're in bloody wilderness, there isn't any city interference so it gets DARK at night. we would go out and have a 180 degree view of the sky. millions upon millions of stars, including the Milky Way. i saw a total of four shooting stars over the two weeks.

when i got back from canada i finally got my utilities set up for our apartment. since i don't have any credit and my state id is very new, they couldn't prove i said who i said i was. so i had to go through the bullshit of faxing a copy of my passport and birth certificate to the electric company and the gas company for them to get our bills in my name. but i finally got it situated.

yesterday i moved back to school, into my lovely new apartment!! i'm so excited to be living there this year, even though it's hot as balls because it's like 88 outside. i got all my stuff unpacked and organized, and i have to say that the place is actually quite big. i think i am really going to enjoy living there with S.
the only downside is that i haven't been able to connect to the wireless yet, so i don't have internet.

today i went to see w for the first time since i had left. he took me on a tour of the newly remodeled blair hall, which i must say is quite nice. we talked for almost an hour and a half but i could tell he was anxious to get his grant paperwork done and i was preventing him from doing that. he wants me to help him with some projects this year, and i am fully willing and ready to do so. he's got so many great things going on and i wish i could be a part of them. he's starting this program called a Promise Neighborhood, where he's taking a neighborhood-change approach to battling poverty. it sounds like something that i can help with, and something that i believe in, so i hope i can contribute something to the mix.

anyway, since i'm sitting in the music building's computer lab freezing my ass off, i think i'm going to head back to my sweltering apartment. i literally layed on my bed for two hours today with the fan pointing at my head. i don't care - there's really nothing to do because not many people are here to begin with.

until next time...