Fine, I'll update

Last weekend it was 41 degrees here. It was 80 degrees in California. Every single Friday since I've been here, it's rained. Guess what's forecasted for this Friday. And I have turned from my summer tanness into a pasty white. College will definitely bring out the worst in me.

So, what have I been up to? I went apple picking in Indiana, for a start. It was a lot of fun: there were several different varieties (including fuji, but I think I found a new favorite, sunburst), and you could walk around the orchard just eating and picking them. After I gorged myself on a ton of apples, and Mary Kate just nibbled at them, we got PUMPKIN fudge.

I've also starting tutoring a 7th grade kid, Darrius Armstrong. He's the best guy. He wants to be a choreographer and a cook when he grows up, he loves Aaliyah, Ashanti, and Beyonce, and he won some sort of dance thing over the summer. He also takes great pleasure in pointing out how un-cool and un-hip I am, but it's fun nevertheless, especially because he's actually grateful that I'm helping him with something and not one of those annoying kids at the Boys and Girls Club at home who I mostly just wanted to boil in a vat of tar, or just wanted them to have kids like them when they grew up.

There's also this elementary school I go to to help out in a 2nd grade class a couple of times a week. I completely forgot what it's like being in second grade. For example, today a little girl starting bawling because she thought the girl sitting across from her took her pencil (it was a completely ordinary wooden pencil, but they all seem to have a special attachments to these pencils), which she wanted to give to her cousin, and another girl started to cry because the cardboard box she sticks her books in lost the tape, so the box fell apart. Endearing, but I would never be able to be a second grade teacher.

Ummm, also done a few things I won't talk about for the risk of being even more embarassed than usual, just this and that.

My right foot looks like it's been through a meat grinder, by the way, so if anyone wants to say anything nice to my feet, it's welcome.

It's hard being average

I just finished watching Episode V of Star Wars. wow, what a treat that was.

So last night, when a few friends and i were eating downtown, it was accidentally discovered that I had not yet seen a single episode of Star Wars; I was a proverbial "virgin," as the word would have it. After about a minute of frantic pointing and astonished outbursts, then ten seconds of everyone silently contemplating what life would really be like without having watched a single Star Wars movie, someone finally popped the much expected (and usual) question of "how did you live?"

For a while now, I have been out of the category of "the living." Since kids have been old enough to know what pop culture is, and i've been old enough to know that there was something different, i've come up with a few criteria it seems I was supposed to fulfill within the first 13 years of my life to be considered alive:
1. Watching the original ninja turtle series on tv
2. eating artifically flavored popsicles and/or fruit-by-the-foot snacks before the age of 9
3. Watching ghost busters
4. Playing mario brothers
5. If none of these, then having a boyfriend, because that would have provided an equal amount of amusement, disturbance, mindless entertainment, and waste of time as the previous requirements

The group decided to take it upon themselves to educate me. After eating the rest of our gyros, walking through i dont know how many blocks in the rain trying to find a busstop, and stopping for a while underneath the giant metal jelly bean in millenium park, we finally reached our destination in front of a tv set and in front of star wars.

I did enjoy the fourth episode. I was a kind of experiment, where my reactions were watched almost as attentively as the tv itself. and naturally, no surprises were given away. not that there's much to give away, i guess.

but tonight we watched the fifth episode in the lounge. and that means that all the star wars fans emerged from their holes and joined us too, carefully respecting the virgin among them and not pointing out anything. I've also discovered why in the past years conversation would sometimes die down when i approached a group of people. They were talking about Star Wars and they didnt want to give away any crucial details, naturally. Every dog knows his own, and every star wars fan can tell who's seen it and who hasn't.

So i guess this leaves me with sitting here pretty late at night updating blog. i've had fun this weekend. Today, it was experience chicago day, and even though I didnt get to go on the neat trips they had planned, i did go to the top of the john hancock building, and see the gorgeous view, and then go eat dinner with a few people. The weather is pretty chilly now. You know it's cold when even when you step out of the steamy shower (during which you heard someone on an other floor trying to sing something like opera) and into an equally steamed up bathroom, you get the chills. I might survive.

Our room is looking a little better than last time. too bad no one from home will get to see all the way cool decorations we're putting up. not to mention the pieces of rags hanging around on the fire sprinkling poles.

I guess sometime in the near future i'll be watching the rest of the star wars movies. I haven't always liked the cult followings that have developed over movies...it's like an inside joke no one can get, some people become too obsessive over characters, it's a waste of time, makes no sense, yadda yadda, etc. etc...

but im looking forward to watching it