I’m sorry blog… you have been so neglected lately. Have a piece of cake!

So I just realized I haven’t posted a new entry since right after my visit to Arizona over the summer. How sad is that?

I’m generally an easily amused person… and as such I guess I’ve become amused with so many different things that I have a hard time sitting down and working on just one of them. I used to write a lot, but apparently this has fallen by the wayside as you can see with my severe lack of entries. My new friend Hannah Page posted an entry on facebook today that said it was national writing month or something… something she had heard from a couple friends. This inspired me to post to my rather neglected blog. D:

There is going to be a lot of subject jumping in this entry…

So I’ve made some new friends lately and I’m very happy about all of it.

If you’re an anime fan, you’ll understand this. Has being into anime ever brought you together with people you didn’t know? Anime has a weird way of helping me make friends and I love it. I figured that out 4 or 5 years ago and I once used it to my advantage so blatantly that it’s kinda sad. I went to Houghton’s Spring Fling event which is basically a lock-down in the gym where you can do fun things, eat, and meet people. Well I wanted to make some new friends with similar interests and at that point I was totally into drawing (especially drawing manga and anime). I came up with a stupid idea which was to put all of my drawings in front of me in a sort of fanned-out appearance so that you could see all of them. I had a picture that I was working on so I drew it within plain sight of anyone walking by. Before I knew it, a fish had taken the bait— a fish that was actually a girl just my age who was just as much into anime as I was. We hit it off and talked the whole rest of the night.

It’s too bad she didn’t respond to the emails I sent her later. xD Maybe some day she’ll show up.

Anyway, all this to say that anime seems to be a way that I meet a lot of my friends. After all, even my roommate and I go to be friends through common interest in anime.

My new friends, Hannah, Marilyn, and Anastasiya (her name is beautiful…and yes, she’s really from Russia!) all like anime to varying degrees. =D It’s so exciting to meet more people because up until now it’s really just been Lauren and I and our episode-a-night thing that we have going on. Hannah also introduced me to a new show called Hetalia Axis Powers which has a ton of educational value and is something that I would think about using if I ever need to explain something related to one of the world wars in one of my English classes. We watched it on United Nations day over in Gilette. That was the first time I even went into Gilette this year.

This Saturday, Cameron (and I think Josie) and a bunch of other people will be performing for the Invisible Children benefit show. I’m hoping to go to that. On Sunday I want to set up a showing of Samurai X: Trust and Betrayal for anyone who wants to watch. It’s too bad I don’t have a projector. xO That would be awesome.

I’m getting more and more involved with the actual “education” side of my education. Up until now, I’ve been doing a ton of integrative studies classes that are required for me to graduate from Houghton. There are a lot of classes that fall into the IS category since I do go to a liberal arts school. I’ve now officially completed 55 out of 53 IS credits needed so I can put all those behind me!

Along with that, my English major has a few more classes until it’s completed but it looks like I’ll be done on time which is awesome. I’m going to try and student teach in the Fall, if I can. I would love to do that so that I can start from scratch just like my cooperating teacher. I want to learn names when she does and hear her make the rules and everything. It would be so much easier to just be there from the beginning. I hope my living arrangements will work out. If I do my rural placement first then I should be able to live on campus and reserve a spot in a townhouse that won’t go away while I’m teaching up in Buffalo.

I also signed up for my classes next semester. I’ll be taking English methods, lanuage literacy and curriculum integration, literature of the enlightenment, and modern and contemporary drama. I’m so excited. I’ll finally have a semester with ZERO integrative studies requirements involved.

On a random note, today in Connie’s class (Secondary ed. curriculum and assessment), we talked about how if we’re a soft-spoken person, we should maybe practice our teacher voice and practice showing confidence.

This is what it looks like when Ruzena practices her “teacher voice.”

Halloween was two nights ago and at the end of last week, Lauren and I spent over 4 hours carving our pumpkin. I had wanted to do something asian-themed but not exclusively anime-related. Sooo…of course I thought of a geisha. I found a picture online and recreated it as a rough line drawing. Then Lauren did the real line drawing and transferred it to the pumpkin. We kept taking turns.

Me detailing the kimono

Lauren doing some of the head work.

The finished product, all lit up. ;D

I love Halloween. I can’t even express why, exactly. It’s too bad we didn’t get more trick-or-treaters in the dorm. We would have had more if they didn’t ignore the pumpkin by the door that tells them we have candy. Dx *sigh* We had so so much. D:

Thankfully though, the room got swarmed by a bunch of college students that either like candy a whole lot…or just really REALLY wanted a little container of play-doh. Yes. We gave away play-doh. We’re just that awesome. It’s all gone. Sorry.

I have a lot of reading to do this week. It’s sad that all of my professors seem to think that their class is the only class I’m taking. The amount of reading we have due each day is borderline mental and physical abuse. I’m not even in any English/literature classes right now. D:

Please keep me in your prayers the remainder of this semester. I’ve been doing “okay” but “okay” isn’t really good enough for me.

I would especially like prayer for a grade I haven’t yet gotten back for my presentational speaking class. I don’t even want to know what I got on the speech. I froze up in the middle and then just couldn’t get it together until I had the class watch the short video I had prepared. I was able to get my thoughts together and pull everything together somewhat. However, I didn’t cover everything I wanted to and I’m not sure I made the right connections. I know freezing up during a speech happens to the best of speakers, but I’m still worried since my last speech that I thought I did decently on ended up being graded an 87. I know I didn’t do so well on this one but I guess we’ll see what happens.

Jeremy caught the swine flu but he’s feeling a lot better. It sucked so much when he had it. :O Totally kicked his butt. Poor guy.

I, on the other hand, got vaccinated and will hopefully not be exhibiting pig-like qualities or experiencing any form of swine transformation in the near future.