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!!