Crazy Days

The crazy days of the last two weeks have begun. Registration, housing applications, final projects, travel arrangements, and the end of year Music Festival are all beginning to take shape... Everyone is stressed and excited and the general mood on campus is very happy.

Whenever I have writer's block I like to revert to lists.

Things I am excited about RIGHT NOW:

1) Being a floor rep next year. The residence council team is going to be sweet, and I can't wait to get to know the new students and begin a new year.

2) The Dancing Bear Music Festival! A bunch of people have worked really hard to get so many great bands up on campus.... The Paperboys, the Fugitives... and I am hoping to run a tye-dye table. I think tye-dye is my calling.

3)Planning my Olympic Break next year ( we can't stay on campus during the Olympics, so its a great excuse to travel). I think I am going to look at living in some eco-village in the southwestern states, I need a cheap, warm, fun, winter excursion.

4) Springtime in Squamish.... is gorgeous.

5) Getting back home to Juneau and getting my cavities filled. I can feel them in my teeth and its terrible.

6) My final project in History of Math. I am reading the Edwin Abbott novella "Flatland" and trying to make a skit or a puppet show that would be rel event to show to my class. I'm a little stuck at the moment, but I've still got time.

MATH!

I arrived back at school from Tofino last Sunday dirty, tired, happy, and very very smelly. The trip went great and we all got sunburned, which was unexpected because its only ever been rainy when we have been in Tofino before. The meal plan I created was a success- we ate a lot of beans. Beans for breakfast, chili for lunch, burritos for dinner. Needless to say the tents and the cars were very smelly for pretty much the entire trip-- all that gas has to come out sometime.

We all made it back happily in one piece, and fell into bed (after a shower) to rest up for the first day of our last block. For me it was History of Math, with the legendary Glen Van Brummelen. I have been in class for a week now, and can honestly say it has blown me off me feet. I have never been more excited about math. We have been doing Egyptian arithmetic, Babylonian geometry, and learning about the hometown of Pythagoras in Samos, Greece. There have been so many Ah Ha! moments for me so far in this block, I feel like I am getting smarter everyday.

I have also fallen completely in love with Glen Van Brummelen, and would love to listen to his lectures forever. He is the cutest grown-up nerd ever. I feel like my life would be complete if I was as passionate about anything as he is about math. He LOVES math. It melts my heart. On our first day of class we had " math therapy" where we all talked about our relationship with math, and all the math traumas that we had gone through in the past years. Glen was very sympathetic and nodded and smiled and I think everyone felt a little happier about math after that.

Today we are on a field trip to Simon Fraser University in Vancouver. We are here to check books out of the library for our final projects, but I have found that my attention span for that lasted only just till lunch time, and since then I have been looking around the campus. Simon Fraser is HUGE, its like its own city. It has movie stores and hairdresser, Greek food and bubble tea. I am finding it quite unnerving to be honest, there are so many people, like 10,000! It gives me a whole new appreciation for the familiarity of Quest. I like knowing everyone I bump into, and the fact that everyone talks to each other and eats dinner together. It's so cliche, but we are such a big family at Quest. Perhaps I should stop... I'm getting sentimental.

Adventure once again...

The Adventure Club Lives! And as we have all been scrambling to finish our final homework assignments, the last surf trip of the year has also been slowly coming together. The weather looks good in Tofino this weekend, and the waves are calling to all our resident adventure junkies. I have been preparing the meal plan, writing up grocery lists, and budgeting our limited funds all afternoon. Grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup on the beach? sounds pretty nice to me.

Sometimes I wish I was a little more cold tolerant, and could actually enjoy bobbing around in the freezing cold waters of Vancouver Island. But I have tried, and failed, to be a passionate surfer. I am instead a passionate chef. I'm okay with that. After all, everyone has to eat.

In addition to planning the Adventure Club trip, I have been mulling over, at great length, my housing plans for next year. Should I run for floor rep? Should I apply to move into the new condos across campus? I would really like to start a dinner co-op next year, and have been talking about it with a few other students. It would save everyone money, and allow us to cook together as a group. On the meal plan, though the cafeteria is really good, I waste a huge amount of money cooking for myself, while still having to spend my whole budget at the Caf.

I have been dreaming of summer....

Things to look forward to:

1. Gardening. My own big huge vegetable garden with carrots and broccoli...and much more.

2. Solitude. I am living in the middle of nowhere. No city, no car, no Internet, no cell phone service... It will be my own Walden.

3.Home. I miss Alaska.

4. Bonfires on the beach catching fish, skipping rocks, and playing in tide pools.

Homesick? Naw.