It all started with a tennis ball...

Well hello! (By the way, if you saw me in person, I would be impersonating Mrs. Doubtfire when giving you this greeting! Just try and get that image out of your head...) I hope that this blogtastic entry finds you all well and wishin' summer was back :) I've just been getting back into the swing of things and am now boycotting homework so I thought I would tell you all the wonderful goings-on around here. It's been quite the last week and a half! Classes are going just fine, although I started the process of overwhelm-ment last night. I just have to learn to discipline myself and work steadily towards my research projects, something I'm DEFinitely not used to doing. Heck, last year I wasn't even sure if I was a student or not! Another reason why I decided to lay down my RA cape... One thing I've been pretty good about, schoolworkwise, is my Microbial Physiology stuff. Our draft research proposal is due this Friday so I've been trying my best to open up this bohemith and stay awake long enough to get through a sentence. Successful?! We'll see... I had my first Exceptional Learners and Inclusion class on this past Tuesday and it was... well, interesting. We have 9 students in the class and half of them are taking the course for graduate degree credit so it's doubling as a 300-level (aka Junior) and 500-level (aka not Junior) class. Strange, huh?! Anyway, we have a test and a paper due every week of class so let the good times roll!

As far as other stuff goes, I've been having tons of fun meeting new people and hanging out with my housemates! I do have to tell you this one story. Last Saturday (so a week and a half ago, not this most recent... I dunno, does saying last still work?!) was very eventful: I had tour guide training, a few coffee dates to reconnect with friends, a birthday dinner for a Duvallian and our school's annual Bingo tournament (at which my friend won a Snuggie...). After all this, Steph and I decided to spend time with one of our old friends from freshman year and it so happened that he invited us to play urban golf on campus. He met up with 5 other guy friends who were all dressed in suit jackets and shorts (truly short shorts), smoking cigars and pipes and drinking Arnold Palmers to celebrate the drink's namesake's 80th birthday. It was pretty dang funny, so what do Steph and I do?! Join them! We grabbed a golf club and a tennis ball and starting whacking at the lawn like you wouldn't believe (ahem, can you say divet?). Anyway, we were laughing and having a jolly-old time getting to know these new friends when I saw my green in sight: the campus totem pole. I had a perfect shot between one of our school buildings and one of the players (wearing the shortest shorts of all... I don't know, in guy world, does that mean he won or something?!) and thought, I can make that! I've only hit the shins of the other guys a few times. And don't worry, this was around midnight so there were no unsuspecting students walking to and from class. I took aim, made a beautiful swing, and my ball ricocheted off the building and hit the guy (who is bending over at this point) right in the butt. And I'm not talking a slight glance, I'm talking "BULLLSEYE!" So I thought I'd let you know how I make friends :)

This week I gave my first tour and it went great! I was fairly tongue-tied but they said I did just fine... I'll take their word for it. It's always disconcerting when a past alum is coming with their son or daughter (or, if you have my tours, their granddaughter!), I feel like saying "you could probably lead this better than me!" but thankfully there's tons of new stuff to show them. Like the wide open expanse that was Keola! And by the way, my housemates and I are going camping on the Keola lawn as soon as the grass seed takes root. This weekend was the first home Football game and skydivers flew down onto the field. We didn't really know how to react, so we kind of golf clapped... probably not the reception they were expecting... then it started to rain. And as you can see, we were not pleased. Before the game, Steph and I met our freshman year RA and one of my best friends, Kendel, and had breakfast in Manito park. It was wonderful to sit down and talk to her again. Saturday night a few of us went to an improv comedy club close to campus called the Blue Door Theatre and that was pretty fun! So, as you can see, I've been keeping myself fairly busy. I've been kind of turned upside down by this whole not RAing thing. I don't really know how to handle not being frantic and frazzled! It's an incredible blessing and I still get to be involved (apparently I'm on the planning committee for Feminight again... woot... I should have known I could never escape it once I started it, not until I graduate at least!) and today I still went to Community Building Day (full of weed-pulling, compost-shoveling, laughing, and being horrified at the state of our bus and bus driver). I still see Asiz, Sarah and Asim every week and am now a legitimate volunteer for Global Neighborhood (the organization Steph and I met them through). So I just realized how scattered this past paragraph was. Oh well, there it is for ya.

Okay, I may have missed some things, but I'll hopefully be writing again soon. Lots of work to do and very little time to do it in, so I'd best be off. I hope your days are filled with love and compassion and that you make the difference you want to see in the world. As Mother Teresa said, "what we do is less than one drop in the ocean, but if that drop were missing, the ocean would be lacking something".

Love your lives,

Chels

P.S. I made it into Women's Choir... woohoo! So if you are in the Seattle/Bellevue area in December you might just wanna hit up our wonderful Christmas concert tour... Just saying :)

P.S.S. I'm really bad at taking pictures (I actually took these last few from Steph) but I'll get better, I promise!