Happy Halloween!!! The day of the ghosts, vampires, pumpkins, and many many family birthdays! Well, just two. But they're quite important though! Today is my sister's 21st birthday and my cousin's 20nd birthday!!!! Too bad I'm not there to celebrate it with them *sniff* :( Oh yea and yesterday was my other cousin's 29th birthday. We have an insane amount of October bdays for some reason. Neena and I were analyzing that last night. haha. 

Ooh and I'm not sure if I explained who Neena is. She's my roommate, the most wonderful roommate ever! Thanks to Liz Derickson (Swat alum & housing coordinator) who I finally met today for putting us two together! I write paragraphs about Neena all the time for French so if you ever want to read them, go ahead and ask me. Well of course I have to tweak Neena a bit everytime for the particular assignment...so I suppose if you read all that I wrote about Neena, it wouldn't really fit together into one person. haha. but Neena doesn't mind (I hope)! All that aside, we get along so well together. We are able to effectively distract each other from homework and we are even perfectly capable of having 20 minute laughing/giggle sessions! I know that sounds so "girly" or whatever one may want to call it but we do seriously have lots of fun, especially when we have our ____ nights. For example, we have nights where we will only listen to Destiny's Child and Neena makes the BEST faces ever when she's singing "Say My Name"! Haha...I suppose if you come to Swarthmore, you can beg her to sing for you ;) And the other night, we just had a J. Lo night. I think the best thing though is that we look out for each other. If one of us wants to nap, talk, hug, or simply vegetize after a crazy day, we're there for each other. I don't think Neena reads this thing but if she is, Neena, I love youuu!! 

So second order of business, actually first, sort of, I'm not too sure, of why today was such a good day...I LOVE MODERN DANCE. That class is amazing! To put this into perspective, the first time I ever heard of a college Modern Dance Class was from my sister. She basically said it was a class for sleeping...and other things. And so when I told her that I was taking Modern Dance, she laughed and told me to "have fun" or something along the lines of that... So I went into the class being a bit skeptical of what I would be doing. And since I'm taking it for PE credit only, there are no papers to write and I'm just required simply to show up and work hard! I've gotta say, after 8 weeks of taking this dance class, I am finding myself more and more engaged in it everyday. Sharon, my dance teacher also Dept Chair, is one of the most inspiring teachers I have ever had! She always connects dancing with being confident in life, connecting with ourselves, and all the great artsy connecting-with-myself stuff I never think about. And if you ask anyone from high school, I was the antithesis of a dancer. I am scarily horrible (how awkward) with dancing and coordination and in fact, during the first days of class, I couldn't even walk correctly. Haha, yea, I know, how sad. But this class is something I'm really starting to appreciate because it's so different from my other academic classes. I think dancing is just something that really takes work and effort. Something that Sharon always pushes us is to stop making half-baked (I went to find a synonym on thesaurus.com and this was the best one I came up with--lame, I know!) moves but to reach F    A      R, and make our movements STRONG and BOLD. I'm thinking of taking Modern Dance II next semester but I really want to try out Ballet so we'll see.

Well I'm going to do some Hardcore Trick-Or-Treating tonight at 10:40 pm with some friends. And by that, I mean that we're going to try to win this trick-or-treating contest by hitting up all the dorms ....within an HOUR. Hah! 

Have a great Halloween night!

My biggest dilemma so far has been...WHAT SHOULD I BE FOR HALLOWEEN!? You would think that after so many days of being here that I would have bigger and more important problems. But, no. I refuse to step foot into Upper Tarble this Saturday without a costume. And like a sophomore told me, I'll be lame if I don't have a costume. So perhaps I'll have to resort to sticking a paper bag on my head...or wearing a paper bag.... After some thought (approx. 5 seconds), I've decided those ideas are way too hard for me. I'll just stick to wearing my birthday suit...

Haha, uh, no. I'm just not the most creative cupcake on the block and so if you have any suggestions, let me know! before Saturday! So I don't have to show up at the party dressed as a Swarthmore freshman *shudders* ;)

Anyway, highlight of the week besides coming back to seeing everyone at Swarthmore was Tom Kelly's lecture yesterday. I had to go anyway because my Modern Dance teacher is one of the coordinators for the new study abroad program in Northern Ireland (deals with the peace and reconciliation process--sounds amazing!) but long story short, his lecture had me sitting at the edge of my seat with my eyes wide open. He's one of the world-famous Bogside artists from Northern Ireland. He and two other guys (one of which is his brother) painted large murals in the town of Derry. They depicted scenes from the conflicts in their area including Bloody Sunday. His murals were frighteningly honest but yet inspiring. His lecture just made me realize how much I don't know about the rest of the world, including conflicts that don't involve the U.S. And that behind those conflicts, all the people who suffer and die as a consequence have stories on their own. I really want to learn more about Bloody Sunday and Irish history in general, fascinating, yes, it is!

So tonight, there are three lectures again! The thing I love about Swarthmore is that they are constantly bringing in alums, professors from other colleges/universities, etc. to come speak to us. I was deciding between the Big Bang lecture w/the Swat alum who just won the Nobel Prize in Physics (in 2006 I think?) and the lecture by a GWU professor about Congress and the federal courts. Hmm, and unless I decide to switch at the last minute, I think I'll go to the Poly Sci lecture because I've been itching to learn more about the federal courts, esp. after I resolved to learn more about the individual judges last summer! 

Alrighty, it's time for Sharples. My friend IMed me half an hour ago and was very excited that they have chicken parmesan today. Haha, well, last night was MY Sharples night and I suppose everyone has their favorite nights. I have lots of time tonight so perhaps I'm going to throw something together in the wok for the very first time!