New Look Blog

Something happened to the host of my blog layout, which is sad, so I'm playing with a new one, I don't really do colours and that, as you all probably know, so if it's not working for you, it clashes, gives you a headache or whatever, let me know and I shall be changing things!

The great catch up Blog Post

Apparently I'm just going to blog every 3 months and try to fit everything in.
So here goes....
Since I last blogged I did a little of this :

I danced like this:

and this:

and this :

Maybe I shouldn't dance so much...

Anyway... I also dressed up like this:

          And like this:

In short, Mount Holyoke ate what little was left of my dignity. 

I also hung out with some fabulous people, including this wonderful lot:

All of which excitement culminated in marching in a parade dressed like this :

And the following day I went and got me one of these:

(In case you're wondering, "one of these" is a certificate saying I'd survived a year at Mount Holyoke College and a hug from the President, while wearing a ridiculous black robe and an even more ridiculous, poorly-fitting hat.)

Following which Half-Pint packed up my room while I wept into a box of Kleenex, then she drove me home to Plymouth. Where I ate and slept and read and got to see some of my amazing camp friends. The following day Half-Pint and I went shopping and hung out, and then her mum drove me to the airport. I bought and read the new book in the Hunger Games series, and then flew on my merry way home, in a fabulous seat with plenty of leg room!

And thus endeth the adventure in the Land of the Free.

Onwards to new things!

Oh hello there!

I'm terrible at blogging, so I am going to summarise the last couple of months in pictures and captions:

Firstly, it was my birthday, on my birthday I did not leave my building, because there was an ice storm, and the first snow day at Mount Holyoke for approximately 800 years. So instead I made my friends come to me. There are no nice pictures of this, however a couple of days later, when the weather had sufficiently calmed down to venture into the big bad world, I had a party of sorts and it was lovely. Here is a pictorial representation of this gathering:

We played taboo and I wore a hat shaped like a birthday cake :

Then I joined Frisbee. This was fun because I got to run around a lot and be part of a team. Shortly after joining Frisbee I played in a tournament, this resulted in a trip to a real life American ER. I felt like I might be on an episode of Grey's anatomy. Here is a picture of the out come of this adventure:

Also in February it was Valentines day, I got a whole bunch of Valentines, and this excited me, as I had never received one before. Here is a picture of some of them:

Another thing that happened was the Drag Ball, which supports people whose parents cut them off financially when they find out they're gay, we all dressed up in Drag. Here is a picture of my friends and I dressed as men:

Over Spring break, the Frisbee team went to Georgia, we drove all the way there. It took us 17 hours. I was not built to be in a car for 17 hours. We stopped off in DC. Here is a picture of me and my car-mates by the Lincoln memorial:

While we were in Georgia we played some Frisbee. This is the only evidence I have of ever having set foot on a Frisbee field. I am the one on the far right looking the wrong way. Excellent.

Here is a picture of our entire Frisbee team, or at least, those of us who went to Georgia, as you can tell, Georgia was pretty and sunny and we had the most excellent time ever.

Since Spring Break I have been hard at work doing academic type things. Part of this process is Study Parties. This is a strange Mount Holyoke thing I think. At study parties one hardly ever actually studies. Instead one gets conned into climbing into (and subsequently being locked into) cupboards under sinks:

And drawing pictures of the study party-ers on the black board in the room in which said study party is being held:

So that, in brief, is what I have been up to. Hopefully now I am up to date, I will keep up to date. That is, as always, the plan!

J-Term Adventures.

Other than moving furniture around my room, I did actually do interesting things over J-Term. These mainly involved snow orientated activities, such as sledging and snow fights and walking on lakes (I have still to try out the ice-rink on the lake because I'm not to sure how it's going to work without the wall to keep me upright, but I think I shall find someone who is good at ice-skating to help me out. It's funny because I used to be fairly proficient at ice-skating, but somehow I have lost much of my prowess in the interim period, but I digress...) The two other exciting things I did over J-Term were going to Magic Wings, and also on fantastical second-hand shopping expeditions. 

Second-hand clothes are magical things, because they are so much cheaper than regular clothes and because you feel like you are doing your bit to save the environment but also find a cure for cancer/help homeless people/feed people or whatever charity it is that you are supporting through buying said items of clothing. This combination of factors leads me to buy a lot more clothes than I would usually buy. Also there is a really nice shop in Northampton which sells second-hand designer and brand clothing. It is almost as bad as the Oxfam book shop in Guildford. I have yet to enter and leave without buying something. The main problem is that they put the retail price in the label so you feel like you're getting a good deal. It's mean. So over J-Term I acquired: one knitted jumper dress, one knitted body-warmer/vest/thingy-with-a-hood and the warmest lumberjack-style flannel plaid shirt you've ever seen in your life. I feel ever so Mount Holyoke when I wear it. 

The other adventure was much more legitimately adventurous than charity shopping. A friend from my Old English class took me on an excitable adventure to a butterfly conservatory named 'Magic Wings' where we wallowed in the amazing warmth, and took pictures of butterflies and the like. There were also birds, and reptiley type things, although the latter were kept in tanks and cages. We even saw a pac-man toad. I will put some of the pictures I took in here somewhere. I took hundreds but a lot of them were pretty blurry because I haven't quite figured out how to change the settings such that I can take pictures of moving objects, I'm sure I should change the aperture or something, but I need to read about it, and I currently don't really have the time. We also went to Yankee Candle Village. Which was a pretty bizarre experience. It's the biggest candle shop I've ever been in. Also, Santa and Mrs Claus live there, and there's a count down to Christmas, and there's a room where it snows every four minutes, lots of fake snow, and there's more candles than you can shake a stick at. Not that I know why you would want to shake a stick at candles ever. Still.

Productive Day is Productive.

I suddenly realised that J-term finishes the day after tomorrow, classes start, and I am entirely unprepared for this impending happening. It is looming, big and dark, very much like a very loomy thing. So this morning I had to bite the bullet and get on with preparing for the arrival of actual work and actual things to do. I was fairly successful in my uber productive day of productivity; I have topped up my one-card so I can do laundry, I have met with the director of Orchestra, I have ordered the books I need for my first two weeks of classes, I have set up an amazon student account, I have purchased a sketch book, I have marked all the bowings in for the first violins. Not bad for a day's work, and I still have the entire evening to get more done. Being productive is fairly satisfying. 

I spent a great deal of time marking the bowings and fingerings in on music today, it takes much longer than I had anticipated, and since it's all marked in in pencil, you can't always see everything, and suddenly 5 copies in you realise you've missed a slur or something and you have to go back and change everything. Luckily thanks to the months I spent working at the Howard, I am very accustomed to performing repetitive and mind-numbing tasks, and actually this is a little more stimulating than hours of laminating. I also discovered that it when exposed to a special brand of peppy pop music it is possible to keep fairly up-beat while doing this. Perky-pop of the minute was Miley Cyrus. So there I was, in the library, before class starts, in my new enormous lumberjack shirt, rocking out to Miley Cyrus, and scribbling all over a huge pile of music. It was then that I decided I needed a cool transplant. And that Miley needs to learn how to master the key-change. 

I am unsure why I have not previously discovered the Amazon Student account. I was alerted to its existence by a friend. Transpires, with an Amazon student account you get free two-day delivery. On everything. It's jolly fantastic! Which was pretty lucky, since classes start in two days, And my books should arrive in two days. See what I did there! I feel a little more prepared for classes now. I have bought the books for my Modern British Novel class, and my French class. There aren't any posted for my Medieval Lit class thus far, which is a little disconcerting, but hey ho! The only book my Creative Writing professor seems concerned that we get is a very particular Sketch Book, which had to be a very specific size and have a special kind of binding and certain number of pages. I went to the bookshop to purchase this magical, mythical Sketch Book. I'm more than a little concerned by this. I really am last in the artistically inclined camp. When God was passing out artistic talent, I was looking the other way. Hopefully use of The Sketch Book will be limited to cutting and sticking. I am very proficient in cutting and sticking. 

The productivity of my day is made somewhat more impressive when one considers the complete lack of  gainful activity which has been completed within the last month. Which has been so close to zero as to be almost entirely indiscernible. Also the fact that it is actually ARCTIC out there. For once in my life I am not exaggerating even a little tiny bit. It's in single figures. IN. FAHRENHEIT. Inhaling makes me cough. My lungs are rejecting the oxygen. It's that cold. And that's during the day. The other night it was -9. STILL. IN. FAHRENHEIT. That's -23 degrees Celsius guys. The high-schools in South Hadley were closed today, it was so cold! I'm going to turn into an icicle. Talking of icicles, there are some pretty spectacular icicles around actually. They're huge and lethal looking. I fear for my life every time I walk into a building. On the bright side they are also pretty beautiful. I think New England might be built for this kind of weather, all the little wooden houses, with the white trimming covered in snow and ice, it's pretty much picturesque. 

The prevailing weather conditions are proving the time for the somewhat outdated heating system in my building to show its worth. It has been almost unbearably hot in my room. To the extent that I've kept my window open pretty much since I moved in. The heating has turny dial, but I'm pretty much convinced that this is nothing more than a placebo dial, and not a very good one at that. From my experimentation the only thing that changes as you turn the dial is the amount of noise that emits from the heater. Apparently all the noise is made by steam. This is hard to believe, I am of the opinion that it is more likely a gremlin which lives inside the pipes. With a spanner (a wrench for all you American folks). A loud bashy spanner. Nevertheless the excessive efficiency of my heater is proving rather helpful because despite the fact that there is currently ice on the inside of the window, it is pleasantly toasty in my room. 

In other news two of my friends have broken their feet. Sadly they both broke the right foot. I think it would have been somewhat marvellous had they broken a left and a right one so I could have mix and matched friend feet. Or something like that. One of them is legitimately in pain, the other has been walking around on the broken foot for several months and very very bad at not walking on it cast and all now purple casty-ness has been applied. Clearly with all the ice and snow, now is not really the best time to be crutching around campus. So I get to go on fun crutching adventures to the Dining Hall and look like a massive fatty while I help myself to two plates of food. It's all fun and games. 

Oh and guys! it's my birthday next Wednesday! Just as an FYI!

The Art of Feng Shui

So mainly what has happened between my last post and this post is EVEN MORE SNOW. And when I say even more snow I mean literally 2 feet of snow. Sadly I did not take any pictures of the monstrous snow because I was too busy frolicking in it. We went on a hike, well ok maybe a glorified walk, but still in a LOT of snow and we even went off campus. On the way back we trudged through a huge field of snow which no one had crossed before and it was above our knees and it was AMAZING! Apparently this is what is called a "Nor'easter" and it's going to happen AGAIN THIS WINTER! I will try to remember to take pictures next time. 

Anyway in an attempt not to make this a whole month of posts about snow, I am going to talk about my recent forages into interior design. Well actually, when I say "my recent forages into interior design" what I really mean is, I decided that having my desk by my window where there is a draft the size of a breeze, was not going to be good for my productivity. Also I was getting frustrated by the challenges associated with opening and closing my window over the top of my desk. Small things make all the difference you know. Anyway, so I decided to make changes, but being almost entirely spatially un-aware i had to call in the cavalry, in the form of my much more spatially aware friend. 

I'm pretty pleased with the result, and the vast majority of my friends were similarly impressed by the dramatic changes hauling some furniture around a teeny tiny room can make. I even have a little tea corner, and my room has become drastically more tidy because everything is more open and so the mess notices more because you can't hide it in corners. The only slight downside is I can't sit in bed propped up against the wall anymore because neither ends of my bed are against a wall, but i can sit sideways in bed, and hopefully this will encourage me to actually work at my desk, which will be an exciting change in my life. 

This room rearranging happened while I was supposed to be writing my last final paper from last semester, which I didn't manage to complete on account of my body's rebellion. (Just on an aside, I finished it! I'm finally free of finals! Yippee!) So clearly it made a great deal of sense to do some research on the possible implications of the move on the energy within the room.

It's actually pretty easy, you use a handy dandy mapping type grid like this one:

(which, co-incidentaly I found at this website : http://www.designingonline.com/home_decorating_articles/feng-shui-decorating-tips-bedroom.html which has some tips for if you're actually feng shui-ing your room.)


Anyway, so the basic analysis of my room shows the following trends in energy, which range from fairly satisfactory, to down right bizarre. My romance corner has been blocked off by my chest of drawers, my desk is in my creativity area, and my knowledge and spirituality are locked firmly in the closet. My bed is in my wealth area, I'm not sure what this says about anything, but I do know this has become a running joke among my friends. I haven't really kept to the colours either, since everything in my entire room is turquoise. 


It's nearly the end of J-term, I have my last J-term classes tomorrow, and then I start again with actual classes that mean things the following Wednesday. It's weird to think that I'm over half-way through my all-American experience already!

I'm dreaming of a white... erm... January 9th?

The snow finally came to Mount Holyoke last night. It was actually pretty amazing. The snow came, and then when I got up this morning paths had been all cleared in the snow and everything is running as normal. Literally. Nobody stopped driving, busses are still going, and we had food as usual. If only England was so efficient in times of adverse weather. Well actually, I quite like getting a week off every time we have snow. Also there is a great deal less childish excitement about snow in general. Which is kinda sad. I think the most obvious sign of this is the fact that with the advent of snow there was not the mass facebook hysteria which would have ensued in England. Most people's profile pictures have remained largely snow free. Statuses continue as if nothing had changed. It's kinda a little sad. 

Luckily I managed to find several people who would indulge my childish adoration of snow and sledging. Which meant I got to trial the tray which I borrowed from the dining hall all those months ago in preparation for such an eventuality. I donned my ski jacket, fastened the snow skirt, put on my wellies and ventured out into the snow. After some practice I became very efficient at the sitting on the tray and sliding method of sledging, but one of my more enterprising friends decided it was necessary to test the face first approach. Being the gentleman I am I let her try this first. It was a disaster. However, I was undeterred. Transpires the art of face-first-tray-sledding is all about your position on the tray. The trick is to get the tray low enough on your boobs that all of your groin is on the tray and then you have the leverage to pick your legs off the ground while keeping pressure on the back of the tray; it's scientific. 

I also spent a great deal of time skidding around on the ice on the lake in my wellies. Literally hours. It's surprisingly fun, and almost as good as in actual skates, with the added advantage of being less likely to fall over and look like a fool. There's a section of ice which has been cleared for skating and there's edging type things around it. I guess on monday someone might come and clear it again. To be honest I was just excited to be walking on a lake. Which was when it was decided that we should walk across the lake towards the waterfall. I have to admit it did not feel hugely safe. At all. But it was very exciting to be walking along in the snow where there should be water. And the snow was all clean and fresh and pretty. And crunchy. There's something very satisfying about being the first person to go crunching through some snow. Particularly when that snow is on a lake. I wonder if the snow which is currently falling will cover up the tracks we made into the middle of the lake or not. 

Also today we went to see Tangled. Which is adorable. It was a really funny, really cute, really lovely movie. I went with a bunch of girls who I don't really know all that well, girls from various classes I was in last semester and friends of friends, who are all in one friendship group together and then I guess I somehow managed to infiltrate. Anyway they were just the right level of dorky where you quote lines of the movie back at each other. And make jokes about how the protagonists head was larger then her waist, and in fact how her eyes were larger than her waist. It's films like this though which give young girls unrealistic expectations of romance. That and the story a friend told me over dinner about her parents meeting while getting on/off a lift at the same time, and then falling in love. Which suggests that this kind of thing actually happens in real life. Although I remain largely unconvinced. 

Talking of things I am unconvinced about, one of the previews before Tangled was for a film called "Gnomio and Juliet". Yeah. An animated version of Shakespeare's romantic tragedy featuring a cast of garden gnomes. And whilst I don't doubt the ability of animated garden gnomes to carry the full weight of a Shakespeare character, I do doubt Disney's ability to, well, deliver the ending. It is a very sad ending. Everyone dies. There is a double suicide. There is not really much in the way of happily ever after. Disney is pretty much known for its happy endings. What would be the point of a Disney movie which did not have a happy ending? Romeo and Juliet just isn't really a family friendly plot line. I really can't see it. Which means, clearly, that I'm going to have to see it when it comes out. Because I'm so confused as to how they are going to make this work. And I hate to tell you this Disney but either way I'm going to be angry. Romeo and Juliet with a happy ending is not ok. However, Disney movies without a happy ending is equally not ok. 

Right now I should be finishing up my 10 page paper on constructions of childhood. Clearly I am not. I will have to finish it tomorrow though, because it's due on Monday. I'm really excited to be rid of the paper. Because then I will feel more free to do other things. Other things I need to do include practice clarinet, and send emails, and figure out what I'm going to do with my life this summer. Also spend more time hanging out with friends rather than sitting in my room pretending to be writing essays while actually procrastinating on the internet by writing super long blog posts about my day. Well. I spend a fair amount of time with my friends. It would just be nice to not feel bad about it all the time. Like I shouldn't be having fun and should be writing papers. I like having fun. Ok. I'm going to go write some essay and then sleep and then write more essay, and so on until the essay is done.