Okay, my room is hard to photograph, but I tried. (The second two were taken while sitting on my bed.)

And here are two of the many beautiful places on campus:

And I love this phrase on Graffiti Wall, from the design for the class of 1933:

15 September 2007

utterly

Oh my god, I am eating the BEST BREAKFAST right now and it tastes godly after an early morning run. I mix 1/2 cup of dry muesli (essentially what granola is before you add the sugar and oil) with 1 cup of nonfat plain yogurt and 1 tablespoon of orange juice, and let sit for ten minutes. Mix in one diced apple and a handful of chopped pecans and devour! Rahhhhhhhhhhhrrr. That plus coffee and a warm shower... bliss.

I'm pretty excited because I have a hot date today... with Plato.

14 September 2007

starry

Yesterday I washed my feet in the sink twice - first in the morning because they were dusty from hiking, and later in the evening after I spent some time up in the Bell Tower celebrating a birthday with friends. Washing your feet in cool water feels really good!

This school week felt really long, hectic and boring. Luckily (and mysteriously) I have quite a bit less homework this weekend than last, and I may have time to go into Pasadena or LA tomorrow and visit a museum or see a movie. Several of my friends are going surfing/tanning in Santa Monica but since that has zero appeal to me I think I'll do my own thing.

I bought a bunch of sunflowers a few days ago and put them around my room in bottles and glasses. They are so bright and happy... and aren't showing any signs of wilting yet.

09 September 2007

pinch

Wow, it's already Sunday. It was Thursday night two seconds ago! Anyway, I am sitting on my bed, warm and cozy and sipping a cup of hot coffee after getting up early to go hiking with Catherine and Eva. I didn't sleep too well because (1) my mattress is old and getting softer by the day, and (2) it was pretty warm in the room because I didn't leave the window open - you never know who will stumble by, loud and drunk, on a Saturday night. I have so much reading to do for tomorrow and Tuesday that I thought I'd put it off another half hour and write. I got into all the classes I wanted: Politics in a Globalized Economy (essentially IPE - International Political Economy), Political Theory, American Politics, Great Works of Western Music, French and Concert Choir (the one class for which I actually pre-registered). I'm done with classes at 2:30pm on Thursday so essentially I have a packed 3.5 day week... and then 3.5 days of homework. It's going to be a challenging and really interesting semester. I'm so glad I changed my major because it's clear that Political Science and International Relations are my true academic passions.

Despite lots of first-week-of-school red tape with regards to using the various gyms, I'm getting up between 6:15 and 7:15 almost every morning and going running, hiking or swimming. I love being up early and going outside, seeing the world still asleep and watching the sun rise. I've decided to train for the Pasadena Rose Bowl Half-Marathon on December 8th because I like having goals. So yesterday I ran three miles, which lines up with the recommended distance for week one of the 12-week training schedule I have. The only concern I have is that I'll soon develop shin splints because I always tend to get them when I start running 3.5 - 4 miles, and then I have to take a break from running which isn't an option anymore. My friend Mina's boyfriend is a hardcore runner and last night at a barbecue he gave me some tips about stretches and ice, but I'm still nervous. I'm also going to lift some weights and cross-train so hopefully I'll protect myself from too much injury. Catherine and Keri ran a half-marathon last winter and had a really good experience, and then they went on to run the LA Marathon in March which was obviously less of a fun time and more of a huge life accomplishment. It's great having friends who are all active.

This weekend was surprisingly good. I started doing homework Thursday night - something I never did last year but just seems necessary now... I'm definitely becoming more focused as I take classes I actually look forward to studying for, and as the stakes rise higher. On Friday night Eva, Catherine and I went to an off-campus party at the apartment of a senior Pomona guy that Eva knows from class. When we got there around 10pm, there were only eight or ten guys drinking beer, and the three of us, but as the night went on another dozen or so people showed up. So we sipped vodka and cranberry juice, stood like sardines in narrow hallways and small rooms, and talked to what turned out to be the nicest group of guys ever. Yesterday I woke up a bit late since I went to bed at 2am, worked out at the CMC gym, ate a delicious salad at Full of Life, and tried to study in two Starbucks but was driven away both times by the loud music. I went to the library which definitely had a better atmosphere, but I kept losing focus and drifting off so I came back to my room and took a long nap. A transfer from last year named Margaret turns 23 today, so last night all the transfers went over to her boyfriend's house for a fun barbecue. There were sunflowers in bottles, chips and salsa, and every kind of alcohol imaginable although most of us didn't drink. Afterwards we got frozen yogurt and drove home blasting Keri's 90s mix and singing to Blink 182 and Enrique Iglesias at the top of our lungs.

On Wednesday it cooled down dramatically and the rest of the week was gorgeous... high 80s, breezy, and cool at night. I can deal quite easily with this weather for a while, although I'll always look forward to fall and winter.

Time to suit up for a long day of work.

03 September 2007

sizzling

Oh, it is hot. Very, very hot. It's too hot in my room for water (the cold tap water quickly becomes un-refreshing warm filtered water), for flowers (my roses all wilted within a day!), or for sticky tack. It doesn't really matter that outside it is in the 100s, because you can avoid being outside. What matters is that the dorm itself is hot, so there is no A/C refuge near me other than classrooms and the Motley coffee shop (which doesn't open for another ten days). The dorm is now retaining the heat from the day - whereas last week the building cooled off considerably at night, it can't now that the temperature outside has been scorching for over a hundred hours straight, e.g. it's 9:30pm and 94 degrees outside. Today my friends and I went to Starbucks, Target and Ikea just to be in air conditioned buildings to cool down our bodies. Thank god the heat wave is supposed to break tomorrow and Thursday and drop back down to the high 80s/low 90s, but in the meantime it is pretty brutal. We are getting used to being sweaty and feeling dirty all day, and rinsing off our bodies with a cold shower at least once a day. Luckily, I can sleep at night reasonably well... some girls can't even do that. I know that in a few weeks the temperature won't be an issue and we'll have eight months of comfortable living, but right now it's hard to remember what it felt like to wear a fleece and jeans in Claremont last winter.

After seeing all my friends' rooms, it's clear that I have the smallest room in Toll. The closet backs up to the sink area, so a third of the room is basically unusable; I really have very few options for where my furniture goes which may actually be a blessing in disguise. I'm going to have to keep everything in the same place for the entire year, something I don't like to do. At home I change the layout of my bedroom every four to six months. I think it will be healthy for me to develop a tolerance for staying in the same place for a good period of time. When I graduate from college it's not possible to move in and out of apartments whenever I tire of my surroundings. I think this may be more to do with not being very happy for a few years in high school and therefore not wanting to be reminded of the past meant I abandoned all familiarity often. Now, though, I am generally a happy individual and all the changing to forget the past is unnecessary now... although the habit remains. So I'm finding the positive in my room (north light, a sink, equidistant from my friend's rooms, tolerance development) because it's useless to complain. I'll take a few pictures of it tomorrow morning.

Classes start tomorrow, finally. I'm ready to have stuff to do in the evenings, for the Motley to open (I applied to be a barista!), for my schedule to be confirmed and for things to settle down in general... routine and predictability keep me grounded. The freshmen registered today and all but one of my classes still have a few openings. I won't know for sure until tomorrow and Wednesday when all the actual enrollees show up, but I'm feeling confident about my Politics classes because of my major and class standing. Unfortunately, the French class I wanted is full, and even though I could try to get in I'd rather be in a smaller class so I'm going to go to an open Pomona one that is held around the same time. This will also get me off the Scripps campus once a day... it gets to feeling very small here. So I'm excited to get syllabuses and meet the professors and write in my new five-subject notebook. Back to school!

01 September 2007

bongos

Phew: it's the first of September! It definitely does not feel like the first of September though... southern California is in the middle of a severe heatwave and today it was 107 degrees in both Claremont and Scottsdale. Fabulous! My dorm is not air conditioned, being built in 1927 and all, but luckily I am on the first floor (as opposed to the second, with clouds of hot air hanging in the hallways) and my window faces north so it never gets direct sunlight. It's still probably eighty, eighty-five degrees in here during the day but I keep the windows shut until sunset and then the cooler evening air wafts in and brings the indoor temperature down a bit. It should be back to normal (i.e. 90s) by next Tuesday, but we still have a good six weeks of summer weather before true fall weather moves in. I find that Claremont doesn't like to let go of seasons... it will still be warm well into October and chilly through April. Luckily this is the only time this school year that it will be very hot and I will have to sleep mostly naked on top of a cotton sheet!

I came to Scripps early to work with the IT department for freshman orientation. The first two days we trained from 10-5 and learned the standard procedures for getting laptops updated and protected. The freshmen moved in on Thursday and the campus has since been saturated with the bubbly, innocent airs of fresh high school graduates both nervous about and excited for college. While they've been scheduled up to the brim with meetings and group activities and managing all this in the midst of this heat advisory, I've been freezing over in the computer lab. The work is pretty dry, but I like feeling helpful because we all know that getting your computer hooked up and working is a big priority in this era. And I've liked almost all of the freshmen who have come in; 2011 seems like a really good (not to mention super smart) class of Scripps women. So it's been freshman mayhem for three days, but returning students come back tomorrow and I'm really excited to see the last three of my friends who are not yet here. I can't wait to check out everyone's rooms; all but one of us have singles in Toll, four people on the first floor and two upstairs, so meeting up for dinner and getting ready to go out is going to be so much more fun now that we live down the hall from one other. I love my dorm! My room is totally set up and looking very cute, and I feel confident that I'll spend an entire school year in one room... a record!

The other day I met with the chair of Politics and International Relations, went over the courses I'll be taking, and officially changed my major and my advisor. I hope the freshmen don't take all the spots in Intro to American Politics. But I'm not too worried - I'm a junior, a declared major and I need to take these courses this fall in order to graduate in two years. New students only have two courses to register for (the other two are required a humanities course and writing). Anyway, cross your fingers! It'll be a jungle on Tuesday. I'm always a little unsettled until my add/drop slips are signed and turned in to the registrar: then I'm safe.

Yesterday, early in the morning, four of us went hiking on the 5-mile loop in the wilderness preserve near campus to get some exercise and wake up with the sun. It was so beautiful. It took a few days of adjusting to being back on campus and sorting out the IT work, but now, despite the crazy heat, I'm really happy to be back. I love this place. In a way, this summer was monumental for me - I became more focused and disciplined yet also more flexible and these changes also changed who I am for the better. I'm excited to see how my life unfolds this year.