School: As everyone knows, I have three classes: Dance 101, English 302, and History 261. School has been going fine, but I find this to be a particularly boring quarter, which may be why our blog has been slow as of late. There's just nothing that interesting going on around here!
Dance 101 is usually pretty fun, but it's 101. It's really basic stuff. When I started, I was a little bit out of shape so the simplicity of the class was a nice was to ease back into it, but I wish we could do more advanced things now. I am excited though, because we got discount tickets to see Alonzo King's Lines Ballet at the end of November, which is really amazing. It's like ballet and martial arts combined to make a performance medium, focusing on the lines and shapes that the body can make. It's really cool. Other than that we are going to start working on group choreography soon, so I'd better find a good group.
English 302 is a required class for English majors, so I'm glad that I'm getting it done. The title of the class is Critical Practice (see why I've been putting it off?) and the theme for the class is always up to the teacher. For this class, it's Electronic Literature and the Future of the Book. *pause for emphasis*. The only thing we've really read are essays and a book called Electronic Literature: A Critical Approach, which is all about how books may someday become obsolete. It's frustrating because I don't agree with most of it (I'm a big book fan), and we have to "read" works by new media authors from a disc that makes my hard drive sound like it's either about to take off into outer space or explode. Some of the works that are supposed to be considered "electronic literature" don't seem very literary at all, but more like a computer game. Oh well, I'll make it.
History 261 is technically called Crusades Through Arab Eyes. It's extremely interesting, but a lot of information to be thrown at someone all at once. I have a research paper due pretty soon. Lucky for me, the English majors in the class seem to have a leg up on the history majors in the writing department, so the paper doesn't seem to be too difficult to write. I just have to be motivated to get it done.
The last two weekends, Eric and I have gone home. My friends Kaylie and Craig are kind enough to pick me up at the ferry, and Eric tags along so that he can save some money by eating at home. On the 24th, Kaylie's family was having their annual pumpkin carving party, which I was invited to. It was a lot of fun! We went to Albertson's and grabbed some pumpkins and carved some lovely designs. Mine was a classic pumpkin, with a cute little smile, but Kaylie, Craig, and Marcea's were more elaborate. My friend Riley's was a bit...abstract. After we carved pumpkins, everyone just hung out and had fun together. Kaylie's cousin-in-law, Ross, was watching Wheel of Fortune so that he could practice. He recently took a trip down to California to play Wheel of Fortune. I guess he did pretty well, but he's waiting until the show airs in December to let everyone know how much he won. I will definately be watching! Plus, I hope the people on the show don't edit out the part where he kisses Pat Sajak on the lips! The next day, we drove all over town because Kaylie was taking senior pictures for Marcea and Craig. It was a gorgeous weekend, and a perfect time to get some photos.
I also got to go home for Halloween. I didn't get back in the time to dress up, but I did go to the half-time show at my old high school's football game. We are notorious for sucking at football, but the dance team did a remake of the skeleton dance that I did my sophomore year, which was very cute. Mostly, I went to see Kaylie's sister Marcea. She is in the marching band and they did a really great Halloween show to Thriller. It was awesome! Other than that, we visited my house and handed out some candy to cute little children in costumes, which is really what the holiday is all about right?
We decided to stay at our dorms this weekend. On Friday, we hung out with some friends of mine named Freddie and Lew. Yesterday, we had a twins day which involved going out to lunch and visiting the U Village. Today, we might visit the Burke Museum again.
As far as exciting things on campus go, on October 30th you may have heard that a man lit himself on fire in Red Square, which is a main thoroughfare of foot traffic here at the UW. I was with my friend Freddie in the Suzzallo Library (which is on Red Square) when it happened. We didn't actually see the man on fire, but when we tried to leave fifteen minutes later, we were trapped in the library because the police had roped off Red Square and wouldn't let anyone in or out. A bunch of people were standing around outside the taped area which was full of cops, fire trucks and vans, and an ambulance. There was a pile of blackened stuff, which turned out to be clothes. We had to go through another library and then around the back way to get out of the building. We were on site and we didn't even know what was going on. We kept hearing rumors abour a protestor, but nothing concrete. As our classmates began to trickle in, we heard that a former UW employee, a 61-year-old man has doused himself in gasoline and lit a match, burning himself alive. There were a lot of rumors as to why he did this (my favorite being that the Russian mafia was after him), but the truth is no one knows why he did it. He was rushed to Harborview, but died there later that day. My heart goes out to his family. I can't imagine what would prompt anyone to want to go in such a horrific way. I also feel for those people who had to watch it happen; that must have been traumatic. I'm glad we waited long enough to miss it!
Well, that's about it. I hope that everyone had a safe weekend! I'll make sure Eric catches you up with his life soon.
And in case you guys are wondering what Eric and I do with our spare time...
2 comments:
lol nice pics!
Those are some gorgeous photos!
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