End-of-the-Semester Insanity (and Christmas!)

It's Christmastime on campus, and most people are so happy about it! The first night it snowed, my friends and I went out and made snow angels all over campus, then stood on the library lawn and sang dubstepped Christmas carols at the passersby. It was a blast. It's the last week of school until exams, and everyone is stressing out. I guess I'm lucking out this semester, since I only have one exam. (A lot of people have punched me for telling them that.) It's going to be a pretty hard one, though. The history of the Catholic Church. Oi. I'm excited for break. It's nice to have a month off, but I'm going to miss everyone a lot. I already can't wait to come back, and I haven't even left yet! Everyone on campus is trying to find ways to relax through exams. The RAs are offering some pretty awesome activities to relieve stress, and tonight in Alliot there are even massages available! Saint Mike's is way too good to us. :) To help get everyone in the holiday mood, I decorated the door to my dorm room. My roommate came back after her classes to find it looking like this:

She stood in the hallway laughing for a good five minutes before she could come back in. We haven't named the little skiing guy yet, and we are certainly open to suggestions!

It's been fun around campus lately. We had jibfest a few days ago, which was an event where they built a ramp out of scaffolding and railings and people did ski jumps and snowboard tricks. It was cold, but pretty cool. At my floor meeting last night, my RA gave us all hot chocolate and mugs, and we ate candy canes and decorated cookies. (She really is the best RA ever!) And Alliot's Christmas dinner was last night, and it was so good! They even had a bunch of vegetarian options, and their dessert table was so good that we waited around after dinner until we had enough room in our stomachs for some cheesecake. :) It's nice that classes are finally over. Next semester, I only have one class that I am not ecstatic about. (It's a math class. I'm sure you understand.) I am so excited for the other three. I get to take another philosophy class, an acting class, and my schools and society class. They all just sound like so much fun! It's going to be an awesome semester. I hope everyone has a great holiday season! Hopefully I'll have more time to blog now that I don't have teachers cramming in last-minute work!

Dorm Potatoes: how NOT to cook in your dorm room

In which I talk about how it only took 7 hours to make potatoes in our dorm room

Photos from POV

We have had crazy success with People of Vermont so far! Already, 71 people have liked the page, and we've only done one day of photos! Jan-Luis and I are so excited to keep it going! I know most of you have seen the page, but I just wanted to share some of my favorite photos here.

This girl was just absolutely wonderful. I don't think she stopped smiling the entire time we were talking to her. We had been watching her for a few minutes beforehand (we were all in a crowd of people watching a street performer) and we kept gushing over her jacket and skirt. Finally, we walked over and asked her for her photo. She was just so instantly happy and willing to be a model for a few minutes. It was joyous.

 This woman, Camille, is definitely one of the most fabulous women I have ever met. She was so ready for her photograph to be taken, but she wasn't overly cocky. When we asked for a shot of her, she whipped out her sunglasses and pulled a pose. She was so friendly and excited.

 This photo took some work. We were walking past an alleyway and could see them skating on a wheelchair ramp. Jan-Luis didn't want to approach them at first because they looked intimidating (which they did). However, Erica and I pushed him and he (warily) asked for their photo. They, too, were immediately excited. We got a few good action shots, but the group photo had the best group dynamic. It really shows their personalities. I love how they completely defied the stereotype. 

Kathleen is definitely my favorite person we have photographed so far. She was so spirited and absolutely filled with joy. She had no hesitation to tell us her stories and interact with us. She was insanely inspirational. Before she walked away (to talk to a street musician), she bowed to us and said "It's good to meet old friends for the first time."

If I could choose anyone to run our country, it would be her.

Those are my favorites from what we managed to grab on our first day out. We got so lucky; no one said no to being photographed and put online. Burlington has some wonderful and amazing people in it, and I'm so excited to meet more of them. :)

Saturdays in Burlington

So for the past few weeks, my friends and I have made Saturdays into Burlington trips. We usually hit City Market for groceries and the farmer's market for fresh veggies and granola. Afterward, we always end up wandering around Church Street. Church Street is always really nice on Saturdays, even when it's cold and raining (like it was today).
Today, we had a specific mission. My friend Jan-Luis and I have started (tentatively) a project we are calling "People Of Vermont." POV is a spin-off of Humans of New York, a beautiful and poetically comedic blog. JLo, Erica (my roommate), and I took some awesome pictures of people today and had some great conversations.
Despite the pre-winter chill, there were a lot of really talented street performers out today. One guy, John Stork, juggled fire while balancing on four chairs and a table, then added another chair ad did a handstand on the whole stack. He was hilarious. We also talked to (and photographed) five or six street musicians. We even found a band, Tricky Britches, who had such a smooth sound and awesome group dynamic. Most of the music played on Church Street is similar in style, but we managed to find an Iranian boy playing freestyle acoustic guitar, and his talent was extraordinary. After listening to a bunch of music and watching performers, we walked down an alley to the park, where a group of teenagers were skateboarding. They looked intimidating at first, but when we asked them for their photographs, they immediately got excited and really into it. They ended up being really friendly.
At one point, I even ran into someone I knew! We went up to her at first because her hair was colored so beautifully, but when she told us her name, I realized I knew her. She went to the Champlain College Young Writers Conference last year as a mentor. I went as an attendee. I told her I recognized her, and she remembered me as well! It was just a nice reminder of the small world we live in. :)

POV is brand new, so everyone should go like it! We will be posting the photos from today throughout the week. :)

Jeffrey Gettleman and why it's important to go to the Saint Michael's College speakers

This isn't going to be a long blog post, but I feel like it's important anyway.
Yesterday, a man came to Saint Mike's to speak to students and community members about his life and what he stands for. Jeffrey Gettleman, journalist and Pulitzer Prize-winner, didn't waste any time getting to the interesting part of his speech. He jumped right in with a story about how he and a few other journalists and photographers had been captured and held at gunpoint by insurgents in the Middle East. He also told us about his experiences writing about foreign conflicts- often while he was in the center of the action- and we had the pleasure of hearing a moving story about how he helped organize a rescue of a Pakistani boy being held captive in Iran. I won't even try to begin to tell his story, because I can't do it justice, but here is a link to Gettleman's twitter. His articles can be found at the New York Times website.
Gettleman's speech was moving and made me want to take a part in changing what is happening in impoverished areas of the world. A couple weeks ago, we had Leah Bolger come speak at Saint Mike's to speak about the drones America are using in Pakistan. Her speech also left me charged and wondering how I could help out. We've had other speakers and topics as well, but those two left me feeling the most charged and ready to kick some unjust-government butt!
It's important to go to these speeches and talks, even when they don't look incredibly interesting. I wouldn't have gone to the Jeffrey Gettleman speech if it wasn't assigned for a class, but I am so happy I did. He is one of the best public speakers I have ever heard. He knows how to tell a good story and keep the audience hooked. I know others who didn't go to listen to him speak, and almost every one of them said they wished they had!
Saint Mike's offers so many opportunities to help out in the community and the world, and it's awesome to be able to go sit in on a lecture by someone who is as widely acclaimed as Colman McCarthy or Jeffrey Gettleman and listen to how they have impacted even some small part of it, like the life of the one Pakistani boy Gettleman helped to save. It gives me hope that I, too, can make a difference, even if it takes years.

Side note: Leah Bolger showed us this video of her protesting the Congressional Super Committee. I think it's worth sharing, in part because she is so sensible about her arrest and in part because I think Leah Bolger is a boss.

An Insider's Look at Switching Rooms

I will be one of the first to say that college life has treated me well. I have made a lot of really great friends and I feel completely at home on campus. I even started using the toaster to cook my bagel in the mornings! (That was a big step.) If there was one thing I would want to change about Saint Mike's, it would be my housing situation. So guess what I'm doing this week?

It's not that I absolutely hate where I am living. I was placed in Ryan Hall, first floor- not a bad place to be. It's usually pretty quiet, and the construction secludes us from the other halls. It's a nice get-away from regular college life. It's not that my roommate was a terrible person, either- sure, we aren't best friends, and yeah, we don't communicate as well as we could, and there have been a few awkward encounters and moments of inconsiderateness, but we didn't see each other that often and things tended to only get weird when one of us came home past midnight. (Doctor Who marathons for the win.) I also have really wanted to live in Joyce Hall since the second week of school, when I discovered that every single one of my friends lives there.

There have been some fun times in Joyce already. There was that time Jan-Luis and Erica were watching Doctor Who for the first time:

(photo cred to Emily)

That time Jan-Luis stuck googly eyes onto my cardboard cutout of Edward Cullen and we walked around the res halls, scaring people:

 That time Jan-Luis and his roommate, Ryan, kicked Erica and I out after a particularly long homework night:

 And last night, at the birthday party social. It wasn't really anyone's birthday, but darn it, we had a party!

(I am drinking a delicious F'Real mango smoothie, sold at Cumby's or the Knightstand)

I was so nervous about requesting a roommate change. I had spoken to a few of the RA's and one of the RD's about it, so I knew it would be somewhat easy. I already had my roomie chosen- Erica, one of my friends whose roommate moved out earlier in the semester. I was mostly just nervous about telling my roommate I was leaving. I didn't know how to approach her and say "Hey, this isn't really working out, so I'm moving" without it being awkward.

After about three full days of procrastination, I finally bit the bullet and told her. And guess what? It was easy! She totally understood, and said that she had also considered moving out of Ryan.

I'm really excited to move into Joyce. I'll be closer to my friends Emily, Jan-Luis, Erica (my new roomie), Katie, and Lauren (who is very funny, cough cough). It's closer to my classes, so it won't be as stressful to leave my building in the morning unsure of whether or not the Alliot printers will actually print my homework. (They are always broken or out of paper right before the 8am's.)

Now that I've told my roommate, I just have to fill out the paperwork. That does sound like a complicated process- I have to get signatures from all kinds of people- but I have been reassured by many, many people that it will be easy. Everyone is so civil and helpful. I love it!

I can't wait to be a Joyce resident. I was told I should be moved in by the end of the week or next week if I can get my paperwork in ASAP. So anyone who comes to Saint Mike's and ends up in a housing situation you're not comfortable with, rest easy! It's a pretty simple process to switch rooms. Everything will be okay. :)

Am I a hipster yet?

Last week, my friend Emily told me about a ten dollar bag sale going on at a thrift store in Burlington. I had been to the store before, and it's a high-class, expensive place. They have really nice clothes, very retro, and it is better organized than most current-trend stores. Ten dollar bag sale?! Yes!

Emily and I went to the store, Downtown Threads, and stuffed our bags to our hearts' desires. Some of the clothing was almost painful to look at, but that's expected in a thrift store. We ended up finding a few really nice things for each of us- Emily picked up a few beautiful dresses and I grabbed as many vests as I could see.

Last night, my friends Katie and Lauren and I took a very, very, VERY late bus into Burlington to do a little bit of grocery shopping. We ended up at City Market, which is a glorious place. Here's a link to their website: http://www.citymarket.coop/ If you live anywhere near Burlington, check out this store. It is affordable and wonderful. There is even an entire section just for locally-made cheese!

I bought crystallized ginger, which should help as sickness-season passes through Saint Mike's. I feel as if everyone I know is sick! I considered arming myself with clorox wipes, lysol, and hand sanitizer, but I think the crystallized ginger will work fine. :)

I am completely wiped out after last week. I had way too many papers due in a short period of time. It was all manageable, but my brain is fried. I was so tired last night that I accidentally created a new snack- crystallized ginger on wheat thins. It sounds terrible, but it is the perfect combination of so many different flavors, and is very calming. This might become my new study-food.

Here's looking forward to another thrifty, organic, and studious week!

Also, this video is fantastic: http://laughingsquid.com/somebody-i-used-to-know-played-by-obsolete-electronic-devices/