Happy November!

I can't believe it's November already! I mean, c'mon school just started...didn't it? I love holidays, so I've been excited for Halloween, but then it crept up on me so quickly I almost didn't realize it had arrived. One of my students, who is a basketball player, was talking about how his first game is November 4th. I just said, "Whoah, that's next week!"

One thing I am really excited about is the fact that we got to turn out clocks back an hour today! I have a lot to do today, so it's really bought me some time. It feels like I've done so much already, but it's only about quarter after 2:00! Woohoo! Tomorrow, I'll be adjusted an it won't really matter, but for one day it's fabulous. I remember last spring, in Europe, I got to experience the time change twice since they do it later in England than they do in the US.

So, my week mostly consisted of dance and tutoring again. It's mid-term week, or the week before mid-terms for a lot of people, so I've been talking my students through writing their mid-term papers. I only have an hour to do so at a time, so one of them has asked if I can come in this evening and look over her finished paper before she turns it in. Even though it's nice to have a break from tutoring on the weekends, I really love it when students take an interest in their work and also take the initiative to ask for extra help. It shows that they are comfortable with me and my skills as well.

This week, we studied flamenco and tango in my cross-cultural dance class. Our practicum was on flamenco, and our teacher was so great! I've already been inspired to try out several of the kinds of dance that we've learned about in class, but this is one that would be really cool to actually perform. I would love to be able to do the dance styles that I've practiced all day long. I'm going to look into classes after I graduate. Normally we just have dance lecture on Friday, but this week we only have a half-day of lecture. My teacher brought a friend with her and they taught us about tango and demonstrated for us, then we got to learn a little bit about how to do it.

On Friday, I had lunch with Eric and we hung together for a little bit afterwards. When I was leaving, I saw a few interesting costumes. My favorite was this tall, skinny Santa Claus that was walking into a building near Eric's dorm. I also saw the most realistic-looking bloody wounds, which were gross, but pretty cool. On Halloween, my friend Caitlin came in from Mill Creek and our friends David and Dan picked us up and took us to Dan's friend Alysha's house to watch some movies. Now, neither Cait, Dave, Dan, or I like horror at all. David had brought The Nightmare Before Christmas, Hocus Pocus, and The Rocky Horror Picture Show, all of which are Halloween-y movies, but decidedly not scary...and all REALLY good! Alysha, however, loves horror movies. So, we started watching "Chukkie: Child's Play". It was creepy, but so campy and silly that it wasn't really scary. Not only that, but the copy she had rented from Blockbuster stopped working, so we watched Hocus Pocus instead, which was a lot more fun. I hadn't seen that movie in years! We played Apples to Apples all the way through the movie and counted our cards at the very end. I won; I had 21 green cards. Then we went to an irish pub that was near Alysha's house and had cider while we played Trivial Pursuit. There was a party going on upstairs, and some of the party-goers has the most interesting costumes I'd ever seen. I particularly like the mountie, Napolean Bonaparte, Jon and Kate Plus 8, and Jesus (although it was almost offensive, it was extremely creative). There was also a girl dressed as a unicorn with a mustache and sunglasses, which was remarkably funny considering I obviously didn't get it...anyways, today is my blogging, laundry, cleaning, homework, etc. day so I'm off to try to get some things done. Have a great week. I hope everyone's Halloween was fabulous!