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Today was just corkin'! I mean, I've never had so much fun in my life, besides the time that I had my wisdom teeth pulled out and, you know, everything else that happened during my existence. (thumbs up for teeth removal!)

Okay, what did I do? Thankfully, I only had one class today. I thought I was doing pretty well in Japanese (we've learned the whole Hiragana alphabet) but I completely suck at reading. It's just this horrid, slow process of figuring out what the characters are: "ee...ta...d-...DA...kee...ma...su!" Okay, maybe not that bad, but sometimes it can be like that. It's worse when there are long vowels and double consonant stuff. Then again I guess it'd be easier than trying to make do with English, where letters sometimes sound like one thing and sometimes don't sound like anything. Japanese is pretty straight forward in that sense, and it's kinda nice. But my brain still goes through a long process trying to remember what a character sounds like.

Last week I went home for the weekend (and I'm planning to do the same thing this weekend) and also went to Mitsuwa where I picked up anything that was free and had Japanese on it. Reading is pretty limited when you only know one alphabet (that has more than 50 characters...which means nothing when it comes to Kanji which has 5.6 x 10^8 characters or something). Everyday I practice reading a children's book I have that is nearly all hiragana, and that hasn't been getting much easier. It's more likely that I'll just memorize it than actually be able to read it by...reading it. Um. Yes.

So after Japanese I went to check my mail (nothing, but I did get a great letter from Rebecca early this week...! :D Also I ordered some stuff online from audio dregs [three cds, and they better be goood!] and toothpaste for dinner [the new t-shirt and a book] so I hope to get those next week) and I bought some apples from the Retreat. The Retreat has much better fruit than the ACDC, which sucks because on the meal plans you always have a buttload more points for the ACDC. I don't know why it works out that way (why certain points can only be used in certain places and blah blah) but it sucks for me because I've been buying peaches at the ACDC more, even though they don't taste as good as the ones from the Retreat. The Retreat has a lot of local farmed fruits, but I don't think the ACDC does. :( The apples are SO yummy, I have to remember what kind they actually are. They're a light green with a pink tint to them, as though they are blushing. :)

My big thing for the day was "DO ENGLISH ESSAY" and that is what I did, which is why I had such a good time spending the entire day cooped up in my room. YAY. This is college, after all. I don't think it would have taken a normal person so long to write a 500 word essay, but you know, I'm not normal. And the essay sucks. Badly. I started it at around 3 PM and ended at around 9 PM. And the essay is so bad. I couldn't bring myself to read it. I'm going to read it again tomorrow and...well, print it out so I can hand it in. Our assignment was to reading the first three chapters of In a Sunburned Country and an essay by Peter Conrad called "New New World" and then write about what criticisms Peter Conrad might make about Bryson's book and why and well, I had NO IDEA what to write, so today has felt very long. Yes. Did I say that my essay is really bad?

Okay, I didn't write straight for 6 hours, as I did have to eat and pee every now and then. I've never eaten a meal outside my dorm room in school since classes have started. Is that a bad thing? Ho hum. Anyway, we got our first papers in English back yesterday and my teacher said if we were to get grades (nothing is graded in class) we'd probably all get Cs. To me, that sounds GREAT, because it's better than an F, but I think some people were thinking "Wah? A C? Noo!" Yeah well, get used to it. I had a lot of screw ups in my paper because it sucked, but my teacher said he liked my title, which barely constitutes anything in the paper. He also said my writing was laregly error-free, so...yeah. That's. Just. Great. Alright, it's better than nothing, so I guess I'll count my blessings. A lot of my classmates were complaining about how everything that was drilled in their heads in AP English was now useless (my teacher told us to throw out everything that we previously knew about writing essays), making me wonder if I was better off not having taken AP English. But then I wondered if I was the only one who hadn't, which might not be good.

Tonight I have to read another chapter of Culture and Truth for anthropology. It's actually not such a bad book, but I dread all the reading in that class. There's just a whole lot of it. I guess if it were all leisurely reading, it could be FUN, but no. No fun! Fun is not allowed.

Last night I went to a meeting for the Vassar Greens, not that I really think I will get involved. I was just curious to see what they did, and...well, I could get involved in something I guess. After the meeting I ended up talking to someone from my anthropology class; she remembered my name because there's another person in our class with the same last name as me. I can't remember ANYONE'S name in that class, so I'm glad she has some kind of memory. And it was nice to actually have someone talk to me. So far I'm still completely not social and I don't intend on trying to climb the social ladder, seeing that I will probably spend lots of 6-hour spans of time locked in my room with my laptop and a basket of peaches and apples (man, I can't even say how much I've been eating lately...okay, lots of fruit and nuts), so that is me. Yes. I suck. Okay, what was I saying? Yeah, I am bad at remembering names and about two seconds after this girl told me her name, I forgot it. Then later when we got back to the quad, I kind of remembered it but screwed it up. But now I have definitely remembered it. I think.

Kathryn gave me a photo taken of nearly our entire freshman group on the floor...take a lookie! The top row is Peter, Ian, Vanessa, Maura (not a freshman, a student fellow), Annie, Abel, Dan; second row is Kathryn, Allison, me, Simon, and Walter. Funny how I ended up being right in front of all the food even though I knew I wasn't going to eat any. Hohum. Simon and Abel are the guys that live across the hall from us (and are the only other freshman in our end of the floor). As far as I know, everyone's pretty cool...maybe. Okay, maybe not. But all the girls are definitely cool. :) Allison is in my astronomy class and makes it much easier to get through.

Actually, astronomy isn't that bad, but I have no idea what I'm going to do when the test comes. On Sunday we had to go to the observatory to look at Mars for our lab, which said to describe Mars as seen with the unaided eye and through the telescope and to draw Mars as seen through the telescope, labeling any features. So what did I see? A yellowish, blurry, tiny circle. It looked more like the moon, except the moon is much clearer. Without a telescope. So that was rather uneventful. My teacher insisted that you could see the dark spots and...junk n crap, but I saw nothing. Nada. My lab write-up is going to be pretty bad.

Sooo I plan to go home this weekend to pick up a lamp I can stick near my bed and get a bunch of things Kathryn needs. And to get food. Or just eat it. Mmm. I really love eating. I would never be satisfied with a pill that could fulfill all the nutrients I needed.

---comment replies!---

Alex: I haven't seen any food thrown out in the bathroom here...yet. That WOULD be gross. So far it's just the bathroom tissue, which is pretty harmless. There are lots of garbage containers around here though, so I guess people aren't going to throw out food in the...bathroom. :)

mika: that continuously flushing toilet sounds really...freaky! And that is wasting a lot of water, nooo! :O Put up those magazine clippings! :)