Current Location: Couch - C-Street - Greencastle - Indiana

Ugh, I am sick. Sicker than before probably cause it hit me on a Monday... so I had the whole week in front of me. Luckily I do not have much homework to finish for Friday and I only have an hour of class til the weekend. I kind of took today off to recooperate (hopefully!) so all I've done all day is finish my landscape copy painting and lie on this couch and watch movies. I'm going to have to get up soon because the title menu for Coyote Ugly is on repeat and I've run out of food/drink. Guess now is the time...

Fall is on its way, the leaves are already turning beautiful...

P.S. Don't worry parents, I am taking my vitamins.

Current Location: New and Improved Dorm Room - Greencastle - Indiana

My second rugby game was this weekend at Indiana University... which is in Bloomington... which is 45 minutes driving from DePauw. Not bad at all, I'm kind of enjoying the fact that everything is so close here that "roadtrips" are generally under an hour. I'm sure I'm getting spoiled though and that once I'm back home I won't ever want to go on fun travel adventures. I know I will want to drive though, because I miss my Landcruiser a lot. I definitely can't handle the highways here yet... but maybe eventually I'll get those city girl skills.

Anyways, the game. We got there and it started to rain. It was windy too and then some thunder and lightning started to go as we were warming up. Fortunately I did not have to start because I was quite frightened of what this team was going to be like. We later found out that it was mostly their B team, which makes sense since IU is about twenty times the size of DePauw. They were still pretty much beating us, except in the beginning when we had a breakaway for a try.

Once we hit the second half I was completely soaked and shivering on the sidelines. That's when I got to sub in for our outside center of the back line, Banta. She's a beast on the field, I hope to be like her someday. :) Anyways, so I changed into a nice muddy pair of rugby shorts and a soaked jersey and ran out on the field to face these IU girls. I actually didn't get to do a single bit of offensive play, but I made up for it with defense. My favorite tackle was on a kickoff to IU. The ball had gone to a girl that was pretty much in front of me so I just started sprinting. She kind of fumbled the ball a little when she caught it so she really didn't get much forward movement in at all before I just plowed into her. It felt really good. The other tackles ...not so much. I got the wind knocked out of me a couple times, which is not fun at all. Especially in pouring down rain and with cleats that are full of water that feel like they are going to fly off my feet when I run.

The best/worst part of the match came when there was about ten minutes left of play time. In the scrum a few IU girls had been complaining about high tackling and other stuff and kept yelling obscenities at us. After one of these little outbursts, something happened and two IU girls ended up rolling around and throwing punches at one of our girls. The ref took a bit to break it up and had the two teams separate to opposite sides. We were all just kind of staring around trying to figure out what was going on. Our girl had a cut above her eye that was bleeding pretty profusely and she was on the ground with a couple other DePauw players who were trying to clean her up and check to make sure she was okay. It was about at this point that one of our captains Lauren told us to pack up and that we were going home without finishing the game.

I must say it was rather exciting to be a part of this little brawl. We grabbed all of our stuff and were just walking to our cars when the two IU captains stopped us and apologized about those girls. Lauren handled it really well by saying if IU ever wanted to play us again, those girls would not be allowed to participate... basically we walked out of there with pride. My car of girls ended up going to lunch in our soaking and muddy rugby uniforms once we got back to DePauw... and although I was freezing the whole time it was worth it to feel part of a badass rugby team. The shower I took afterwards is now the best shower I have ever had.... EVER!

All in all, it was a learning experience and I hope to have a bit more confidence in our next game which I think is against Earlham. I'll definitely let you know how that goes...

Current Location: Chair - C-Street - Greencastle - Indiana

So here we are... the progress I have made in oil-painting while at DePauw.



This is the first painting we did on the very first day. Just straight up black and white.





We did these by ourselves. Basically we had to paint styrafoam objects in a box with colored sides and show how the light reflects on them.




And here it is! The dreaded box painting. Ugh...way too much of my life has been wasted on this thing.




Ahh, finally something that is not a box. I really liked the blueish green vase thing... definitely not a box.




This is a copy of Vincent VanGogh's self portrait.




And this is my self portrait.

Hope you like them...

Current Location: Green Chair - C-Street - Greencastle - Indiana

Goodness it has been quite awhile since my last post. I hope everything is going wonderful in your lives out there, and I definitely want to hear all about it so e-mail, write, whatever often.

As for me... life has been interesting. Kind of up and down for a little while. There has been a big upswing in my art class as we have stopped painting cardboard boxes and have moved on to much more exciting and beautiful things. I believe my painting skills have improved but I guess I'll have to post some pictures and you can decide for yourself.

Computer Science has been excellent as well, even with the threatening exam in the near future. I actually finished the two hour lab assigned in 45 minutes...which made my day since I got an hour and fifteen minutes of napping before rugby.

This last weekend was fantastic. I'm sure the fact that my math test was over, for better or worse, made the whole weekend that much better. Friday night was spent with my roommate Olivia at my first party on campus. It actually reminded me a lot of parties at home, except it was inside and there was no bonfire. The people though, the people definitely seemed similar to those from home. I really liked getting out of C-Street for a while and meeting some new friends. We had a lot of fun that night, took a million pictures and stayed up until 4.

Staying up 'til 4 was not a good idea when I had to wake up three hours later and drive to Indy with the rugby teams. The girls didn't actually have a game but we were there to support the guys through their three or four games. It was so hot out though, and because I'm an idiot I had to have worn jeans. Basically I just sprawled out on the field and tried to move as little as possible. I got a little sunburnt that day, but also had the pleasure (ugh!) of seeing a Zulu run in action. Basically, if a guy scores his first try (kind of like a touchdown) he has to run around the field completely naked. Yeah.... that was very funny and a little disturbing.

After the games we ended up at Irish Fest in downtown Indy. It's a lot like Concert on the Lawn back home but with an Irish theme instead of Woodstock. The girls and guys rugby teams ended up bonding pretty well there so hopefully we can be closer than those teams of the past. It was really fun scrimmaging with them at practice so I'm hoping that will happen more often too.

So that is all for now... I'm sad that our Mariner boys didn't beat SoHi, but there's still a shot for state so if you are in the Homer vicinity, cheer extra loud at the games for me!

Current Location: Dorm Room - C-Street - Greencastle - Indiana

It was the first football game of the season for DePauw today... vs. Anderson University. And we won! Yay, go team! It was a pretty good game, not super exciting but not dull either. I don't even remember the final score but it was something like 23 to 13.

Although it was very sad to be watching from somewhere other than the sidelines... I did enjoy playing in the Tiger Pep Band. Now pep band is not cool like it was in Homer, I can definitely tell we are viewed as a crazy bunch by the rest of DePauw U. But since I'm not exactly going for popularity or anything, I had a great time singing Hey, Baby and doing other crazy cheers.

I'm pretty much exhausted right now since I stayed up late last night learning to play Eucher. It's a card game that seems to have its roots in Indiana, and I was forced into a game of it. I actually ended up winning with my teammate so it must have something to do with luck too cause I know I don't have skills. :) Anyways, I am probably going to lie down for a bit... maybe finally catch up on my sleep!

Current Location: Desk - C-Street - Greencastle - Indiana

Yes! Just got the results back on that math quiz I almost slept through completely.... ten out of ten!! Yeah! I have learned that taking math quizzes ten minutes after you've woken up is horrible because everything seems to make perfect sense. Cosine is the same as sine, isn't it? Sure! 4 squared equals 8, right? Sure! I am never going to do that to myself again... never!

Wow, I just realized I did not write about that quiz at all yet. Basically Friday morning me and Olivia slept through our alarm clocks and ended up waking up at 10:08am... and we both have classes as 10:10. Mass confusion erupted and I ended up running out of our room a minute later, still very much asleep. I had planned to study for this quiz for an hour or so before it...but that plan obviously failed. So I walk into the dead quiet classroom about five minutes late and my professor just smiles at me and hands me the quiz. I really have no idea how this worked out but all the questions seemed really easy.... much too easy.

Anyways, lesson learned. I will not turn off my alarm and decide to remain in bed for any amount of time. I will study for math quizzes the night before. I will get more sleep, period.

Hope all is well with you guys. There is a strep throat epidemic running amok on campus and I woke up feeling sick, but other than that I'm doing great down here in the crossroads of America!

Current Location: Dorm Room - C-Street - Greencastle - Indiana

This weekend began with a relaxing Friday with friends. We had an enjoyable rugby practice in which we ran through some plays to prepare for our first game against Ball State on Saturday. It was much better weather than our previous practice on Thursday which ended with absolutely pouring rain. Anyways... It was pretty quiet in C-Street since about half the dorm went home for the weekend, so we watched Moulin Rouge that night and ate Ben and Jerry's... definitely a productive evening.

The next day was exciting. All the girls piled into five cars and headed out to Muncie.... about two hours away. I was incredibly nervous for most of the ride and once we got to the playing field I was questioning my decision to try out for rugby. The girls at Ball State were mostly bigger than us and the few opportunities I got to tackle somebody, I kind of screwed up. With the first two periods combined, I had the ball for maybe two seconds and one step forward before I getting laid out. All in all I felt pretty unfulfilled when I was sitting out for the third period. I really felt like I could have done a lot better.



Luckily I got another chance. Unluckily, it was because one of our players broke her wrist. Still, I got to play for another ten minutes. I was trying to be really fearless out there to prove that I really could tackle, and it worked! I got probably four good tackles in which made the whole day worth it. I didn't get a cool black eye like I wanted, but I did get a really sweet bruise on my left arm that looks like a butterfly.



Yeah, I was probably flexing here... :)

I was exhausted the rest of the day and pretty sore so I didn't enjoy the social after wards too much, especially since I was an awkward freshman with a bunch of people I didn't know. I just chilled on the couch and watched a few football games with my rugby friends Gabby and Laura.



I really didn't have time to do anything else this weekend except sleep, watch Wedding Crashers, eat, sleep, do homework, finish my oil painting, check my mail, watch an insane Bruce Lee film, eat more and sleep more. Mail was definitely the highlight of the weekend though, thank you Mom for sending the cleats and mouth guard...though I ended up borrowing some cleats from Kevin and bought a cheap guard from Walmart. And thanks Christi for the wonderful Homer update! I miss all of you guys and Homer so much!!



(My study group! Rob, Kari, Kate and Masha!)