longing for biscotti

Do you know what I am so hungry for? Chocolate-filled biscotti.

http://www.goodhousekeeping.com/recipefinder/chocolate-filled-biscotti-4297?

My family friend Marie and I made this at her house a few weeks ago. It is absolutely delicious. Not typical biscotti--more like a slightly chewy soft cookie. Oh I am longing for this so badly! Try it, it's fabulous!

I never wanted to bake before I got to college, but now I wish I had ingredients so I could do that. We have a mixing bowl, spoons, and a 13x9 pan (I think that's the dimensions). But I don't have flour or a mix or eggs or anything. I think I might get some when I go shopping next...maybe. This feeling will probably pass pretty soon, I'm not typically very domestic!

I still feel like a huge weight has been lifted off my shoulders because winter formal is over. I have some responsibilities that I didn't anticipate beforehand, which is a bummer, but at least I don't have to worry like I did before.

I don't think this weekend is going to be much fun. My best friend Kristen is going to a leadership conference of some kind, and I have piles of homework. More specifically, about 10 pages of papers to write for 3 classes. They've given us plenty of time for this, but I'd been busy with planning the formal last week, and then last weekend I had Wicked and the formal, so I didn't get any done then. And yesterday and today I studied for physics instead of doing other homework. So this weekend I'm buckling down. I probably will try to do a lot tomorrow night, even though it's a Friday. I had my fun tonight instead of tomorrow: I went to the Wafflehouse with my friends Chris, Peter, and Alan. I was really starving tonight, so I texted them and said, "Let's go out to eat!" and they were up for it. I had TWO BLTs and two cups of hot chocolate. Yeah, the BLTs were kinda small, but still--that's a lot of food! I was really starving. Actually, I'm STILL hungry! I've gotta find a way to get to Wal-Mart this weekend--I need food!

People have been campaigning to be Student Senate President for the last few weeks. Cyrus is one of the presidential hopefuls, and he was the first one to put signs everywhere. He also has made a big point to talk to as many people as possible to see what people would like out of Senate. Sarah Ricks also came around and talked to us. Both of them are putting food in their campaign: Cyrus wants to make Meal Deals for the weekends, and Sarah was talking about major Marbeck overhauls. Meal Deals are when you go to Bob's, the fast-food-type-place on campus, during a designated time instead of going to the cafeteria (Marbeck Commons). You get a certain amount of money to spend that acts as your meal for that period of time (say, lunch on Tuesday). It's convenient when your schedule is wacky and you don't get to go to regular meals (although the hours for the Commons are pretty accommodating). So I'm still on the fence about who to vote for, and I don't know much of anything about the two other candidates, Holly and Zach. We'll see if they come courtin' my vote before the primary!

Well, it's late, and I'm exhausted. I gotta get my sleep so I can possibly, hopefully pass the test for physics tomorrow!

Oh, and as promised, some more pictures of Winter Formal...

This is Mel, me, and Jen--President, representative, and Vice-President of Ropp Hall Association, respectively! Aren't we cute?!



This is a picture of our "photo spot" during set-up. (See the paper towel roll still on it?!) The fountain broke (started leaking) so we stuck balloons in it instead! The blue mat in the background is a little annoying, but whatever--it was still cute!

YES! THE WINTER FORMAL IS OVER!

WHOO-HOO!!! The event that has consumed so much of my time and energy for the past like 3 or 4 months is over. Winter Formal was on Saturday night. In case you're new to my blog, I was the chair of the committee. It was really stressful trying to remember all the little things that needed to be done--and sometimes I wasn't very good at it, like forgetting to buy tape/ask someone to buy tape for the floors (we had cobblestone-pattern paper as a walkway). (Although to be fair, we didn't know what kind of tape we needed until a couple days beforehand.) So anyway, I want to say thank you to everyone who put in all of THEIR time and energy to help make it such a success. And it WAS a success! We had almost 200 people--which is about 75 more than we had planned on! And I've been hearing great things about the dance; everyone seemed to really enjoy themselves. They liked the little twist that we had--the 1920s theme with a band coming in to play--and the gym looked fabulous.

So special thank-yous go to my committee members, particularly Tabitha Wile, Amy Tracey, Kim Ringler, and Laura Dennis. They headed up sub-committees, such as Reservations, Publicity, Prizes, and Decorations. And thanks to everyone who was on the decorations committee and helped out in any other committee and those who helped us set-up and tear-down. I don't have a list of the names of people on those committees or who came to help out, so I don't want to put any names in case I forget one and hurt someone's feelings. But know that we couldn't have done this without you!

So, I didn't take any pictures of the formal, unfortunately. I was too consumed with trying to stay on top of everything during set-up, and then during the dance I was busy doing things like refilling the water. Plus, I left my camera batteries at home! And I had borrowed Kristen's camera and forgot it in my dorm room! But I've saved some pictures from other people's Facebook accounts and I'll put them up here!

Those are roses floating in the bowl on the table, with black feathers scattered on the table around it...

This is our cobblestone walkway (a little torn) with scatter grass on the sides, and red vases near the entrance with golden ting inside and little gold ribbon around the necks. Hey, those are still intact, I could still take a picture of them!

I'll post more photos next blog!

Thanks again to everyone! This turned out fabulously!

Wicked!

Last night, about 20 people (I think--I didn't count) from the Honors program were lucky enough to visit Cincinnatti to see Wicked for just $15 each. I was one of those people!

We took two vans and left right after classes ended on Friday. We piled in like sardines--okay, it wasn't that bad, we just didn't have room to spread out!--and I sat with my best friend Kristen. We talked a lot of the trip, when I wasn't trying to sleep and she wasn't counting the number of "knits" or whatever you count when you're knitting!

We stopped for food in Mason. About half of us went to Panera, and another half to City Barbecue. The program paid for the food (yay!) and we had 45 minutes to eat. That was plenty of time even for a slow eater like me :-) Then we piled back in the van and made it to the city.

I was so incredibly excited to be in a city again. Although I'm not positive I have the kind of personality that it takes to live in a heavily populated urban area, I loooove to visit, like when I've visited NYC and Montreal and just a tiny bit when I go into the city in Rochester. The hustle and bustle is so exciting and so are the variety of people, shops, and architecture. Plus, last night I was wearing a slightly fancier outfit (we had been told to dress up a little) and I was on my way to a Broadway musical, so I felt so sophisticated!

Hopefully I'll be able to get one of the few pictures that we took and post it on this blog soon. We weren't allowed to take pictures inside the beautiful theater part of the building (which was absolutely stunning) but we took a few in the rest of the building. (Speaking of the inside of the theater, I thought I was going to be a little dizzy, we were up high in the balcony, as were about half the seats in the theater, and I don't do well with heights! But most of the time I managed to forget the height.)

As for the play itself, I enjoyed it. I really loved the voice of Elphaba--I think the woman playing her has just a beautiful talent. The number "Defying Gravity" was powerful, and her voice and the voice of the woman playing Glinda's blended and complimented each other so well, it was fabulous. I just wish the cast recording featured those actual singers. These are people who are on tour with Wicked, I think, as opposed to the original Broadway cast members. But I think they are possibly more talented than the people I've heard on the soundtrack, the few times I've heard it!

I'll admit it, I cried! I cried during the song about being changed, maybe not for the better, but for good. I'd heard the song several times before when the high school chorus performed it in the past, but I had never really liked it. This time, it just got to me, with the context being there and the incredible voices and everything. I wanted to bawl my eyes out!

My friend Abby from high school had told me that I would like the musical better than the book. I had tried reading the book and it was too dark and complicated for me, I never even finished it, though I gave it a valiant effort. (Usually I love to read but this was just too much for me.) And she was right. I loved how it explained so much of the backstory of the Wizard of Oz. Kristen and I are going to get the movie soon and watch it--it's been ages since we've seen it!

But I can't spend any more time thinking about Wicked today--I've gotta get ready for the winter formal, which is tonight. Wish me luck, everyone! Pray for everyone who's worked so hard on it!

it snuck up on me!

Wow. Winter Formal is almost here. I can't believe it. We've been planning since September, I think, and it's going to be Saturday night. Oh my gosh. I'm so nervous. I feel like it's going to take a lot of luck to pull this one off. But I shouldn't discuss the details of mistakes, it's not professional! Suffice to say, I'll be praying a lot in the next two days.

Let's see, what else has been going on? I'm taking the first class that I've ever had to write a formal lab report for. It's Introduction to the Physical World with Steve Steiner, who is the Honors Program director and my boss. I've always had trouble with science; English is my strong point and science is tough. Combine it with math, which I like but which takes me a while to really "get", and that equals me having a hard time. We had our third lab today, so I'm learning how to write up lab reports properly.

I'm still having lots of fun volunteering as a Big Sister for Big Brothers Big Sisters. The honors program has a volunteering component to it, so I travel with Yelena and Crystal to Lima every week to meet with elementary-school-age kids. So far we've just played games, but soon we'll start on academic work. I hope I don't become the evil taskmaster who makes Thursdays miserable!

A little thing that I'm really happy about is that I vacuumed my dorm room! :-) It had been probably 6 weeks since I'd done that--it was before Christmas break, definitely. I do most of the cleaning because I make most of the mess :-) Okay, so dust isn't anyone's fault, but I keep the dorm room so messy that I think it's only fair that I do the cleaning.

All right, time to go work on some more winter formal stuff...wish me luck!!

fashion at BU...or lack thereof

Hey everyone. First, I want to start off by sounding off about this winter's trends. SO BORING! Where are all the prints? The glitter? The polka dots? The anything? Ugh. At least at Bluffton, there's not much pressure to be that stylish. People wear sneakers all the time, and jeans and a sweatshirt are typical clothes for any day of the week for lots of the student body. For chapel, some people get dressed up more--nice pants and a real shirt, with more formal shoes. But unless you're one of the few fashion majors, you're not that likely to be wearing the latest trends. That's not saying that people don't have style--but it's so casual here that the majority of people don't bother getting all dressed up. It's a little different from high school, where lots of girls wore high heels or really stylish flats all the time, and what you wore had a big role in determining where you fit in.

There are a few unique fashionistas on campus, though. There's one guy who wears flashy track suit outfits and a sweatshirt with the money symbol printed all over it. Then there's this girl--yes, a fashion major--who wears the coolest offbeat clothes, like a belt she made herself made out of pop tabs and ribbon. You won't see her in high heels though--at least, I haven't noticed her wearing them! And there are people who do dress up a lot of the time, with more professional-looking clothes, but they're not the majority at all.

What I'm having trouble with is the temperature. I can't figure out what to wear because the temperature fluctuates so much with where I am! My dorm room is generally really warm--must be 75 degrees or something--and so are some of the rooms in Centennial (the main classroom building); then it's like 25 degrees outside; and yet other rooms in Centennial must be like 65 or something, and so are parts of Marbeck (particularly if you're sitting under a vent, and Danette has an unfortunate knack for accidentally picking tables under vents). I don't want to be carrying a sweater around, so I usually just go for a long-sleeve shirt. That way I'm only mildly uncomfortable in the warm rooms and mildly uncomfortable in the cold rooms! ;-) But the stores seem to only be carrying short-sleeve stuff, even in the dead of winter. Now they're coming out wiih spring stuff, but even in November and December that's all they were carrying. And it'll probably take till April to be able to wear short sleeves outside, right? (I don't know, that's how it is in New York, or even till May. I'm not sure about Ohio.)

Did I write that I got great grades for all my classes last semester? I'm pretty proud. I feel like I was very prepared by my high school, with a strong background in English, especially. That's always been my best subject, but I definitely learned a lot from 11th- and 12th-grade English that prepared me well for Honors English here. And I had Humanities class in high school, which is just like a class here, Integrated Arts. We even watched the same video, "Sunday in the Park With George"! So even though some of my classes felt hard--particularly Media and Culture--I ended up getting B+ and up! Yay!

new semester!

Hi everyone. How was your Christmas break? We didn't have as much time off as some other people did. Like, my friends at community college had more than a month off, and we had 3 weeks. :-(

It was really hard to come back from break. As much as I love the campus and the friendly atmosphere, I knew I was going to get homesick. But I made it back. Gotta keep going!

We started our classes last Monday. I'm taking:

--Public Speaking and Persuasion (Honors)
--Women and Culture (or something like that)
--Into to Sociology
--The Physical World (a lab science)
--Intro to Biblical Worldview

I have 4 classes on MWF and just one on TT. But the TT one really messes up my day! It's right smack dab in the middle--1-2:15 PM--so the whole early afternoon is taken up and it takes time out of the day that I could have scheduled meetings in. Oh my gosh I'm swamped in meetings. OK, so it hasn't been bad so far this semester, and soon Winter Formal will be over, so that's good. But then we have Little Sibs Weekend, so planning for that starts as soon as WF is over. Oy vey.

I spent a lot of time this weekend at a family friends' house. They live about 5 minutes away from campus and they have a lovely cozy house with a woodstove thing, and they have such good food. I gotta admit, it was disappointing to come back on Sunday night and have dining hall food! I think I might spend a little more time with those friends this semester because it's like a little taste of home, a little getaway from the dorm. Sometimes you need a mom figure and some peace and quiet!