Friday, January 16, 2004

 

Wow! I had another package-ful day today! Gan mao ling from Graham, photos from Monee, and a card from Cass -- hooray! Thank you, everybody, I love you all!

So, as promised, here are further details of my future that have emerged from my plotting and scheming of the last week (and believe me, there's been a lot of that!) ....

So you know, if you read Tuesday's blog, that I changed my major, and dropped one of my ESR (Environmental Studies) classes and signed up for an anthro class in its place. Well, I dropped another ESR class (the uninspiring intro one with a terrible professor that encouraged us to be dumb). This brings me down to 12 units. I'm not going to sign up for another PSU class, but I'm certainly not going to waste that time. I'm designing my own French course, based on online tutorials, textbooks, audiotapes and tutors in the hopes of becoming at least marginally familiar with the French language before I go to France.

Now, onto the France bit. What I'm hoping... no, planning on doing is actually spending a good deal of the summer in France, starting with probably about a month of language school. I haven't quite figured out where I want to go yet; I still have a lot of research ahead of me. I picked up a bunch of catalogs and things from the International Studies department last week, and one of the programs that looks most intriguing is the EF International Language School in Nice (It's nice in Nice.) I would love to get some good language training there, and then stay in France for a while and travel and maybe do some sort of internship or volunteer work, but that's still a bit far away to think about concretely. The language school thing is definitely going to happen, though. I would really love to learn a language and have it actually stick with me. Also, if I do well enough, I'll be able to place out of some of the lower level French classes at PSU and come in at a higher level when I come back.

So, as you can see, I'm getting very excited about this whole thing. And I'm enjoying school and everything! (Did I mention I only have classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays now?) It's all very exciting, and I'm thrilled! Okay, I'll stop now. :}
# posted by Lacey 7:26 PM

Wednesday, January 14, 2004

 

I was the only person to show up to the 12:00 yoga class today, so I got an hour of private instruction! It was a teacher I hadn't had before, and I could tell she wasn't quite sure how to deal with a one-person class; she said, "You get to decide if you want to be the only person in the class," basically meaning she wouldn't complain if I decided to chuck it altogether. I was thinking, well, it may be a bit awkward, but why on earth would I turn down a private lesson? She wasn't the best teacher, and I don't think she ever really got comfortable with the one-on-oneness of the whole thing, but it was still good. I always like hearing how different people describe the same poses and try to help you deepen them, and she definitely had some good insights and ways of breaking down the poses. And, of course, she was pulling and pushing me and correcting me all over the place, which doesn't happen too often with an entire class full of people that need attention. So it was good, but my lower body is definitely going to be sore tomorrow -- she was definitely a legs and hips person rather than an upper-body person. But that's good, since my upper body got its workout with the snow shoveling last weekend. :)

I went to the library today and checked out a bunch of French language books, dictionaries, etc., including a "Visual Language Guide" with pictures of carrots and aeroplanes and teapots and things in it. It's cute. I'm frantically ruminating (are those words contradictory?) about a bunch of academic stuff at the moment, and have some more changes in the works for myself coming up pretty quick. It's fun! But I'll tell you about those when the time is right. I should get back to school work now.
# posted by Lacey 3:32 PM

Tuesday, January 13, 2004

 

Guess what -- I changed my major! Yes, after all that expounding and all those justifications for sticking with Environmental Studies, I've changed my mind. I'm an anthropology major now! Well, I haven't done anything official, but my mindset has shifted, which is the important bit. I did sign up for Anth 103: Introduction to Social and Cultural Anthropology, and I'm going to drop my Environmental Impact Assessment class. And fortunately, what with the storm closing campus Tuesday through Friday last week, and the anth class meeting on Tuesdays and Thursdays, I hadn't missed any classes! I signed up last night, and literally got the very last spot in the class. The teacher is awesome -- the only downside is, she's a visiting professor and will only be here one more quarter. It's a one and a half hour class, but doesn't feel like it. The professor is very engaging, loves to talk, and has tons of cool stories about her field work and projects and things. The other interesting thing about the class is the location. It's held in -- and I'm not kidding -- one of the theaters of the 5th Avenue Cinema. Apparently the cinema has been transformed into classrooms, so we're getting a lecture in a movie theater! It's funny.

So I basically have to start from ground zero in anthropology, but even with that, I can still graduate in less time than I would with ESR -- the major has half as many required credits, and I don't have to do a minor (I was going to minor in anth anyway, so I figured why not major in it and cut out the chemistry?) I do have to have foreign language proficiency at the 2+ year level, which will take a while, but I'm actually looking forward to that bit as well -- I'm going to learn French! And I'm going to go to France! I got all my passport stuff taken care of and sent off today, so I should have my passport by March -- hooray!

Anyway, the basic point I'm trying to get across here is that, finally, after all this time, I'm actually really excited about school! Wow! I never thought that would happen. I think most of this stems from the fact that, somewhere in the last couple of months, I made the decision that I was going to make things work for myself -- that I would be proactive in finding and pursuing things that spark my interest, and to turn possibilities to opportunities for myself, and make some changes in my attitudes to allow and encourage good things to come my way. And, what do you know -- it's working! So thanks to everybody who's been with me through this process -- especially to Mom and Hugo for letting me bounce all sorts of ideas off of them and giving me encouraging insights. Where would I be without people that love me?
# posted by Lacey 7:29 PM

Sunday, January 11, 2004

 

Wow -- I feel special. I went away (up to Hugo's house) for three days, and I came home to find four packages waiting for me! One from each of Mom, Graham, and DeMara, and one from big bean music -- the Kris Delmhorst c.d.s I ordered last week. Thanks to everybody who sent me packagelets. Hooray for people that love me! :)

School ended up being cancelled for the entire rest of the week last week, so I went up to Hugo's house on Thursday night to spend the weekend, since I didn't have any homework to do. I ended up spending a few hours each day shoveling snow from the driveway in the hopes of making a passable route to get Roger (Hugo's dad) down to the van, which was stuck at the bottom of the driveway. Small tangent here to describe the geography of Hugo's house so my reader can understand what this means. It is a very long driveway that runs from the road uphill around to the back of the house where the back deck leads to the kitchen. (Key word here is uphill.) The front door does have steps down to a path that leads to the bottom of the driveway, but that route is even steeper, covered in even deeper snow, and extremely unconducive to wheelchair access. So we were trying to make it possible for the van to get up the driveway to the back of the house so we could get Roger into it (the van, not the house -- he'd been stuck there for four days.) Back to story. "The Big Thaw" was supposed to begin on Thursday, so we were hopeful that the ice would melt and allow the van up the drive. Unfortunately, it still hasn't happened, so we couldn't. Also as a direct result of this, they had to reschedule their flights again for Saturday, and we decided to skip the Portland airport altogether and just drive them up to Seattle instead. We spent Saturday breakfast brainstorming ways to get Roger down the driveway to the van, one of the most innovative (and the way we very nearly did it) being to sit him in an opened hard-case suitcase and pull him down with a strap. This was after discarding the stretcher idea and the carrying in a chair idea. We ended up being able to wheel him backwards all the way down (verrrrrry sloooooowwwly) in the wheelchair, but it was not a pleasant ride. Anyway, the upshot is, we got them to Seattle, their plane left, and we all got home safe and sound, if rather worn out and exhausted. I don't know why I felt the need to recount that entire story to you poor people reading this blog, but there you go. I think I was talking about shovelling.... In any case, I'm quite sore and I'm going to take a nice hot bath tonight. Mmmmmm......

That's about all I've got to say for now. I have to go to school tomorrow. It's almost like having to start all over again with the first day of school, since last week didn't really happen. Silly.
# posted by Lacey 6:02 PM