half a post...in hindi. thanks blogger.

LAME. I wrote half a post before it switched into Hindi. Blogger can now be written in Hindi but if it gets switched into it it can't go back. Not cool.

It's been nearly a week since I posted because things get crazy all at once. I have two paper and an exam this week PLUS an exam next Monday. This is on top of the regular reading and smaller projects that I have like memorizing a Shakespearean sonnet to recite for class or reading all of Gulliver's Travels in a week.

All I want to do is snuggle in my bed a read The Great Gatsby again. It also doesn't help that my roommate got me started on the first season of Heroes. I finished my paper before I got here so we're going to watch at least one more episode tonight.

Julia and I are in here tonight (along with Tracy from the Admissions Office) trying to get into the new chat module. Emily seems to have gotten on fine early this evening but we've having a hard time. Something isn't loading right and logins aren't working. We haven't gone completely live yet so we aren't worrying too much but Bryan (our supervisor) is on the road and unable to help.

You know how in high school it's really annoying but sort of fun when the fire alarm goes off? You get to leave class, chat with friends and avoid doing work, right? Yeah, it's not all that cool when it's 7 PM, you're writing a 5 page paper and someone burns chicken on the floor above you so everyone has to go stand outside the building. We sat for 15 minute in the parking lot waiting for security to give us the thumbs up before we could enter the smoky building stairwell.

At least it was a decent reason - apparently a fire extinguisher exploded last year during the winter at 4 AM and the alarms went off.

Maybe we can log into the chat module now that it's been half an hour since we got here...if not, it's homework time!

Trapped in Beloit

I've decided to carry my camera around more this semester because my first year here at Bel-wah wasn't documented all that well.

On Friday my Botany class took a walking field trip to the Turtle Creek Floodplain which is about a mile off campus.

Had we walked another mile we would've made it to the movie theater, Starbucks, Jimmy John's, Culver's, Wal*Mart, Menards and the Hormell plant. They're all close to campus but just a bit far to walk (especially since the sidewalk ends at one point). Luckily, every few weeks, a van does errands to the stores down there for free.

Along the way I took some photos of other plants which made my fried Rhiannon and I a little behind the rest. We caught up in time to hear Yaffa, the professor, explain the lab we were doing.

Look! A rubber plant from someone's yard!

We wandered in the old fields and down to the riverbank while being eaten alive by mosquitoes. The real point was to see how the land has changed since it was abandoned and turned into a park. We could see where fields used to be and the succession of the plants.

The white flowers to the left are Late-Flowering Thoroughworts which we focused on for our lab. It looks like each bundle is a flower but really over a dozen packed together smaller than my thumb nail.

That night, after watching half of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone for the 204750294385th time, Allison and I bundled up and sat outside in 35 degree weather in the new amiptheater to watch Chapters 1-22 of R. Kelly's Hip-Hopera "Trapped in the Closet".

We cheered, boo'd and had appropriate reactions to it all. By about chapter 17, Allison and I had drunk all of our Earl Grey tea and were frozen so we went back to my room to thaw.

That’s us trying to be gangsta. We were supposed to be representin’ the MW (mid-west) but our hands got cut off. Oh well.

I’ve got a paper to write, bed to make, and dinner to find (Sunday nights we’re on our own!)!!