Waking Up

I have found that it is useful to set alarms before you need to actually get up. I have been waking up well lately. Unfortunately, I use a good number of alarms. Oops. But by the time the last one goes off, I will be pleasantly awake.

I have also found out that my natural wake-up time is about 9:30. It is when I tend to open my eyes, whether I want to get up or not.

Right now my professor is teaching me how to research. Which means that it is the boring database talk we have been getting since freshman year. Luckily, she is not taking us on a fieldtrip to the library.

Found out I got a 79.8% on my Japanese test that I thought I failed. Good for me, ne?

I don't know how I did on the other test, but my hopes are not high. I was tired, stressed, poorly fed, and had only poorly studied.

At least I am not failing so far... well, as far as I know.

Now enough rambling. Maybe next time I will catalogue my weird dreams.

Ugh.

So,

I have gotten over my three weeks of sicknesses, which persisted so long due to lack of proper eating habits and sleep. I am no longer ill, though Alexis and Annie are. Sadness!

Anywho, I am now dead due to the sudden whirl of shit to be done. Yesterday (Monday, Feb. 16), I had two exams. On top of that, I had a big paper due. Grrrrrrr.

So now I am relaxing in the fact that there is nothing due tomorrow, and I can just chill. Then I will have to do a shit-ton of work again.

My love is a butt-face. He keeps teasing me. At least he is not depressy anymore. I hate when we fight because we are both in bad moods. He cannot blame it on hormones, either. I can... mine tend to make me go off the wall at times. At those points I appear bipolar because the moods shift very suddenly from really happy to angry or sad, or vice versa.

Now I have to go to work(MMWR).

Ja ne.

Don't lick random plants

Okay, so it wasn't on purpose. I was working on a project in my GIS project that involves what is called a Total Station and a Prism. My job was hold the prism above the point we want to plot after we take all the data and start plotting the points. In order to reach the edge of the stream and not fall in, I ended up in the deep embrace of a plant that I did not identify and cannot. So I don't know what I licked. Talking into the walkie talkie, asking if they can see the prism, I managed to almost eat a leaf, so I licked it and bit into it a bit. Tasted gross.

SO...

Last night I was trapped in really vivid, trippy nightmares, missed my Japanese class AGAIN (fuck, they really are gonna kill me!) due to sleeping through my alarm and subsequently waking up halfway through class, and have the headache from hell. My head feels stuffed with painful cotton. Ugh.

Now to write a paper, attempt to study for an exam I may reschedule, and.... yeah, in general be dead.

And Then There Were 150 More

We have been infiltrated and totally invaded!

Except not, and I am really excited...

Willamette has a sister-school in Saitama, which is a province of Tokyo, where Salem has a sister 'city'. I use the term loosely as it is a province of Tokyo. They have a sign pointing to Salem, which notes that it is somewhat over 7,000 miles.

This sister school is called "Tokyo International University" (TIU). This sistership allows the two schools to trade students in "exchange students". We send students with the Japanese Study Program (JSP), and they send their students as Tokyo International Students of America (TIUA), and send them to the sister school on our campus.

As of two days ago, the monotony of campus was broken as 150 TIUA students arrived, fresh from Japan, and started their orientation. They generally have an expression that says "Oh. My. God." Americans are much more forward, like to look people in the eye when speaking, and tend to have different rules about personal space. So they are practicing acting 'American' by not having issues with eye contact, being less personal-space-bubble-paranoid, accepting open displays of affection (like hugs) that are unseemly in Japan, and trying to keep up with the language.

English, despite popular belief of those who grew up speaking it, is really difficult and complex. People who speak all the other billions of languages in the world have a better chance of learning Russian and German (difficult to English Speakers) than learning English properly...

And then there is the interesting fact that TIUA students tend to, when they know English from books not conversation, have 'perfect', grammatically correct English.

And then they come to Willamette, where it all goes to hell as they learn conversational, very poor English.

There are a good handful of them in WISH, and they are all really nice. I look forward to hanging out with them soon.

Oh, I spent a good hour talking to them instead of doing homework (HW). And being shown off as the resident Native American in WISH, as well as having my jewelry, basketry, and flute shown off to the awed TIUA students.

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For more general news, my schedule has gotten more busy. Every Monday and Wednesday I am going to Sparks with Alexis. We are only there for half an hour right now, but I was told not to do more than that at first after having not been going and working out for a loooong time.

Now to stop rambling and let you go back to the regularly scheduled tedium of the day.

As Per Usual

I set this weekend aside to do homework. I have quizzes to make-up, a new quiz on Monday, sleep to catch up on when not doing homework, as well as two papers to work on before the weekend is up. I planned on doing nothing but eat, sleep, and do homework for all of Saturday and Sunday.

So, naturally, I don't do it.

I spent today (Saturday) eating with Alexis and Phillip, scouring used bookstores in the area, purchasing beads for my beadwork and jewelry, making jewelry while watching a show, and it is currently 1am on Sunday and I am waiting for my rechargeable batteries to charge so I can take pictures of what I have done to show off.

Go. Me.

Better Listen to Mamma

So, I have been feeling miserable in the mornings, and in general over the week. I have realized it is because I don't listen to my Mamma.

I go to bed at 2am after working on HW, so my brain is still busy and I don't fall asleep till 3ish am. This is bad as I need to get up at 8:30 so I can get ready for class. As a result of this, I have missed Japanese almost every day this week. So my Japanese Prof. is ready to kill me, I am missing half the chapter, and I have to pick up HW I missed and get ready for the Oral Performance (Oral Exam along with one other student, kind of like a role play.) and the Unit Test.

So the new idea is to go to bed sooner, stay on top of HW, sleep, eat better, and go to sparks twice a week at least.

Huh.

Eat well, study hard, make sure to sleep, exercise....

damn.... I guess I'd better listen to Mamma.

Why I hate my Schedule

Okay, so I am busy as hell a lot of the day. Really, it is worse than High School was. Gasp! I know!

Here is the basic lowdown:

Monday
9:10 - 10:00 Japanese
10:20 - 11:20 Water Resources
11:30 - 12:30 GIS (Geographic Information Systems)
12:40 - 1:40 Environmental Geology
1:40 - 4:50 Environmental Geology lab
5:15 - 6:30(ish) Dinner

Tuesday
9:10 - 10:00 Japanese
10:00 - 11:00 Work (MMWR)
11:00 - 1:00 Lunch
1:00 - 4:00 Work (MMWR)
5:15 - 6:10(ish) Dinner
6:30 - 9:00 Work (Art Dept)

Wednesday
10:20 - 11:20 Water Resources
11:30 - 12:30 GIS
12:40 - 1:40 Environmental Geology
1:50 - 4:50 GIS lab
5:15 - 6:30(ish) Dinner
8:30 - 9:00 NAEA Meeting (Every other Wed.)

Thursday
9:10 - 10:00 Japanese
10:00 - 11:00 Work (MMWR)
11:00 - 1:00 Lunch
2:00 - 3:00 Work (MMWR)
5:15 - 6:10(ish) Dinner
6:30 - 9:00 Work (Art Dept)

Friday
9:10 - 10:00 Japanese
10:20 - 11:20 Water Resources
11:30 - 12:30 GIS
12:40 - 1:40 Environmental Geology
1:45 - 2:30 Lunch


There is roughly two hours of Homework every night, and open time on Thursday is filled with things like dishes, laundry, cleanup. The empty space on Friday is getting HW done, curling up and dying.

The weekend tends to be less busy, but half the time Josh is here, so that is more busy. However, it is generally the good busy of fun-ness.

So, basically, I took the workload from hell this semester, and next year will be relatively easy. I envy my next-year self. Unfortunately, I curse my last semester self that chose to do this smart but painful thing.

In Water Resources and during Work (MMWR) I tend to have my computer with me to AIM, and at Work (Art Dept) I have the work computer with AIM (but no other program. fuu.) So we can chat. Otherwise, I am usually busy and text is the best way to get a hold of me. However, I will have to wait till my 10-min between time to reply most of the time, depending on class. GIS I could respond, Japanese and Environmental Geology, not so much.

Ugh.

New Blog

For those of you who may have actually read my last blog (named Happenings Back Home), it is no longer my main blog and therefore will no longer be updated. The sole purpose of the blog was to amuse my friends who happened to be in Japan while I was still in the United States.

Now this blog will be about me, my randomness, and will mostly not make sense.

Now is the time to evaluate whether you want to read it or not... do you dare?

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BOO! (okay, so I am bored already)

~N