And it's June now...

Ok, so I've honestly been home for over three weeks now. I can't believe it. I didn't believe my friends when they told me summer would go fast, but so far it has. I still have 73 days left until I move back to school though :o( 

Anyway, so the end of the school year went well. That last Sunday, there was some MAJOR work done on research papers for a couple of us... I was up until close to 2 am helping a friend of mine who clearly is the master of procrastination (his paper was due on Monday and he had three pages done when I got to SJU after Mass). Otherwise, it was hanging out as usual. We had classes on Monday, but I didn't have to go to mine, since we had already handed in our final paper, so I had essentially two study days. I pretty much did nothing on both of them. I only had two finals, one in French and one in Comm, both of which were on Wednesday. For Peace Studies, I had a five page research paper that was due on Tuesday, and for FYS, I had the big research paper every first year has to do, and that was also due on Tuesday. Finals went fine in both classes, and it was very nice to be completely done on the first day of finals.

Brittany and Heather left on Thursday, so Wednesday night we all hung out in our typical spots: Heather in Christian's room, and me and Brittany with Jon. It was tough to leave that night, because we'll never have a chance to hang out there again. It was a fun night though. Thursday morning, we got up, ate breakfast together, and then started packing up Brittany and Heather. They both left soon after lunch, and it was tough to watch them go. Merideth and I finished up a few things (or in my case started.... I got about half of my room packed up in an hour and a half), loaded my packed stuff into my car, and headed over to the SJU beach. We were at SJU for the rest of the evening, but it was kind of quiet because people were either studying, packing, or out celebrating being done with finals.

Thursday night into Friday morning, I was up packing and doing laundry, and finishing a few corrections on a couple of French papers. I stayed up until 4:00 am, before finally falling into bed to sleep for a couple of hours. Friday morning, I got up and finished loading up my car, showered, checked out my room, collected Merideth, and ran over to SJU. My boys were leaving, and we helped them finish packing up cars, and then waved as they left. That was the worst. I hated watching them leave, since they were off to Italy and California, and I won't get to see them all summer. The rest of the night, we just kind of hung out. Jordan took me out to dinner and a movie, which was a lot of fun, and then I hung around on Mary 2, talking to the guys that were still there.

Saturday morning, I got up early, showered, and headed to church for commencement masses. We had two, and I sang and played piano at both. The first one was the hardest, because it was my last time singing with some really great people. We definitely had tears in our eyes a few times. After the masses were both done, we put the chairs away, and went back to the dorms, where I helped Merideth and her mom pack up their car before going to my room to wait for my mom. She got there around 3:00 and we headed home for the summer. 

xo, Rachel

Updating

Yes, it's been a couple of weeks since I've been on here. I don't want to bore you with all of the past two and a half weeks at once, so I'll get on here and update a few times over the next couple of days. Let's see. The last week of school that wasn't finals week was busy. It was our last few days of each class, so I had a lot of "end of the semester" assignments to do. Since the weather was just gorgeous, it was very difficult to stay inside and do those assignments, but I managed well enough. It was a sad week though, because I knew it was going to be my last real week with my friends before we were scattered all over the country (and world). We hung out at SJU like usual every night, but all of us had to finish up our research papers, which left little time for socializing. Even with the homework load being somewhat more than normal, we managed to get outside and enjoy the weather by playing volleyball a couple of times. 

Work also finished up for everything that week. It was a little sad to see the end of the year, especially since I'm losing people in both jobs that I enjoy spending time with. Next year will be very different in both departments, as we have people graduating, studying abroad, or just plain quitting. 

I didn't pack anything up at all during that week, since I didn't leave school until Saturday the 9th because of work. However, Sami packed up all of her things, and it was super weird to be living in a room that looked only half lived in. It was kind of nice though, because a lot of the time I felt like her half was overflowing onto my half, and it was hard to get around in our room sometimes. I can't wait until next year, when I live with someone that I get along with and am not afraid to move her stuff if it's in my space. 

The weekend was full, just as it always is. Friday night, when I got to SJU, the floor was a mess. All of the lofts had to be returned on Saturday, and of course none of the boys had bothered to take down their lofts before then. I hung out in Jon and Felipe's room, and helped/watched them clean and organize the room for the last week of school. It was very interesting to see the room transformed. I liked it a lot, but it was very different from the rest of the year. We all piled on the futon and watched movies until it was time to go. Saturday was boring, not much going on. Sunday was our last student led Mass, which was sad for all of us, but we had a great turnout for musicians, with both Brandon and Leslie showing up. 

That's about all I can remember from that week, so I'll be done for now. Tomorrow (or the next day, knowing me) I'll get on again and fill you in on last week. Love to all!

A Day On, Not A Day Off

So today is Scholarship and Creativity Day here at good old CSB/SJU. That means that we don't have any classes, but as our profs keep telling us, it's not a day off. We're to go and support our fellow students that are giving presentations.... yeah, that's not happening. I slept until 11:30, took the bus back to CSB, and just now got back from lunch with Brittany. Last night, we had a scary movie night in Jon's room, and it was TERRIFYING! We (meaning me, Brittany, Heather, Merideth, Rogers, Ben, and off and on, Jon) watched the Shining. I'm not very good with scary movies as it is, and when I'm watching them in a dark room, it's even worse. I had Brittany's and Heather's hands in death grips for most of it, and then ended up on the floor in Merideth's arms because she wouldn't let me leave the room. Around 12:00 am, someone knocked on the door really loudly, and I jumped a mile, picked up Merideth I was squeezing her so tight, and screamed my head off. I have a scratch on my cheek today from the zipper on the sweatshirt that Merideth was wearing. So yeah, good times.

In other news, the past week has been a good one. I've been in a great mood for the past couple of weeks, which is always nice. I celebrated my birthday with my family last Saturday, and it was nice to see them again. Otherwise, nothing too exciting has gone on. The weather has been BEAUTIFUL, so it's been hard to go to classes, but I'm hanging in there. I've been spending a lot of time with the girls, especially Heather, and with Jon, which has been fantastic. I'm not looking forward to the end of the year, but I just try not to think about it.

That's all for now! love to all...

Back to the Grindstone

The rest of my Easter break was fabulous: the family came up on Sunday, which was great, and then on Monday we got up around 9:00 and headed out an hour later. Back at school, we unpacked, and did a combination of laundry, homework, visiting, and procrastinating until about 6:00. We ended up at SJU by 7:15 and hung out there as people got back. I brought back a huge basket of Easter candy and cupcakes, courtesy of my mom and aunt for the boys, which went over VERY well with them. They had it gone by mid-evening Tuesday :o) As the evening wore on, more and more people came back, which is always fun. Brittany, Jon and I headed down to the dock to check out the lake (which is completely open!!!) and caught each other up on our breaks. Brittany and I went back down later, after the stars came out, and chatted. You'd think that after spending five days straight with each other, we would have run out of things to say, but it's not true. Then it was back to CSB for bed so we could be "well rested" for classes on Tuesday.

As I did no homework over break, I've been playing catch up for the whole week. I had a quiz in Comm this morning, and a portion of my French novel had to be read and deciphered, with answers to questions to go along with it. My first draft of a 12 page research paper is due tomorrow night, and I have a bunch of reading and journaling to do for Peace Studies. However, I'm completely done with classes for the week (no class tomorrow; yay!) and my birthday is on Saturday. Thus, I'm not too worried about any of it. The weather has been beautiful, Brittany and I have had nightly dates at the dock, and I've gotten to spend a lot of time with Jon, so I am one happy camper.

I hope all is well with all of you... Enjoy the rest of the week and weekend!

The Adventures of Brittany and Rachel Part 2

Well I made it through the last day of school with surprising ease. I ended up staying up until almost two a.m. in order to finish my annotated bibliography for my research paper that was due on Wednesday, since I kept getting distracted at SJU, but getting out of bed in the morning wasn't too bad. I even made it into jeans and a t-shirt for class rather than sweats! Class was class, boring as usual, but then I caught a bus to SJU to pick up some books for my paper, wish Jon and Heather good luck on a presentation, and see everyone one last time before break. I ended up staying at SJU until 1:30, so I could spend a little more time with Jon before he left, so I got back to CSB around 1:45 and headed up to my room to start the packing process. Brittany was in class until 2:00, and then had to pack as well, since neither of us had started at all. I finished first, went over to her room and helped her finish, and picked out songs to put on our mix cd for the car. It ended up taking us almost two hours to do all that, and we took off around 4:00.

We rolled into Princeton a little after 5:00, picked up some movies from Coborn's and headed to my house. We made it home much earlier than expected, so we joined my family for dinner, and then went down to the basement and made ourselves at home. In our basement, which..... drumroll please..... after ten years is finally finished!! It's all done, with carpeting, ceilings, paint on the walls, things all cleaned up, and it looks FANTASTIC. The last time I was home, the floors had just barely been started, and it was a mess. I keep looking around and getting shocked with how different it looks down here. Since it is so nice, we've decided to stay down here for the whole break. That way, we can watch movies and stay up late, as well as sleep late with not too many problems. 

Wednesday night, we were both exhausted and were in bed (aka a mattress on the floor) by 11:00 and slept until almost 11:00 the next morning. We then proceeded to do absolutely nothing productive with the rest of the day. Neither of us changed out of our jammies, and we pretty much sat around and talked and read for the whole day. We watched a couple of movies before falling asleep around 1:30. Now we're both up getting ready for the day, since we're going to Mass in a couple of hours. We both have a lot of homework to do, but neither of us has the motivation to start it, so we've put that off so far. It's been nice to get away from school for the last couple of days, and plus, Easter is getting closer and closer, which means we can eat chocolate again soon!

That's about it for now, so have a great day and see some of you on Sunday! xo

Quick Update

One day left... I can do it! This weekend was a good one; I was in bed by 10:30 Friday night, and my evening/afternoon before that consisted of a two hour nap, a quick dinner, and a movie in my bed. It was great. I loved it. Saturday, Brittany, Merideth, Jon and I went into St. Cloud to hit up Target for some necessary (and unnecessary) items. Joe was taking his ACTs at SCSU, and he came out to meet us when he was done. We walked the mall, then came back to CSB to drop off the other three, and then Joe and I headed back into St. Cloud. We went to the blowout sale at the Sportsman Warehouse, back to SCSU for a quick tour, and then out to dinner. My little brother is growing up- he took me to Applebee's and paid for it all! It was great to hang out with Joe for awhile, especially since we hardly ever get any one on one time. 

Sunday, I hosted a prospective student for the night. She came around 3:30 or so, we did homework for an hour and then headed to SJU for dinner and a concert. After the concert, which was amazing, we went to Mass in the Abbey, and came back upstairs to watch a movie with the boys. It was fly-in weekend, so almost all the boys were hosting students as well, which was kind of fun. What was not fun was the fact that my prospie had to come back over to SJU for an 8:00 am class.... and I had to come with her. Blech. 

The past two days have just been class and work and getting ready to go home for a few days. Brittany is coming home with me and I am soooooo excited. We can't wait to get away from all the drama and just hang out. Granted, we both have a ton of homework to do, but at least we don't have to get up for classes or worry about working. 

I hope everyone's week goes wonderfully and that Easter is great, just in case I don't get back on here before then. Love you all!

On The Go

What a week! Last Wednesday, Brittany, Merideth, Erin and I signed up for our rooms. The four of us got two rooms right next to each other on Lottie three, which is exactly what we wanted. Molly and her friend are living on the other side of Brittany and Merideth, and two of Erin's friends are just down the hall. We're all really excited to be living by each other and we've started making room plans. I think I've found a futon, and Erin's going to get a t.v., so we're pretty much set. I can't wait to live with someone that I can actually talk to, someone that I feel comfortable asking to leave so I can sleep... etc. etc. 

Thursday through Saturday brought new activities every night. Thursday night, the GAC jazz band (Karl's jazz band) played in Albany, which is only about 10 minutes away from SJU, so Brittany and I headed out there after dinner. The concert was phenomenal, and it was GREAT to see Karl again. Linda and Colin were there too, and we all went out to DQ after the concert to chat and catch up. Friday night Brittany, Heather, Ben and I went to the musical review on campus and that was absolutely wonderful. I knew a lot of the performers, and they did a great job. The four of us that went got all dressed up and had a blast. Saturday, after I got back from celebrating Easter at my grandma's house, nine of us went to see Noises Off which was a really funny play, and then we went into town and got some pizza and hung out for a while. Sunday was a bit of a rest; I did some homework, went to church, and then went to SJU for the remainder of the evening. 

The beginning of this week was rough. I had three tests yesterday, one right after another, and the days before that were filled with studying. Luckily for me, we had another snow storm hit on Tuesday, and because the roads were pretty bad, classes were cancelled, and so was work. That was fantastic! Brittany, Heather and I spent the day hanging out, doing homework, reading, and watching movies. It was really nice to relax here at CSB for a day, and I got to go to bed early too, in preparation for my tests. My first test was at 8:00 am at SJU, and then I just kept going from there. I got done around 12:30, grabbed lunch with the crew, headed back to CSB and got ready to register for classes. Unfortunately, I got an email about 15 minutes before I registered, saying that one of the classes I wanted to take was full, and that there would be no more sections opening up. That was a bummer, but I had picked out another class to fill that spot too, just in case.... I went to register, only to find out that I couldn't get in to that class either. That was a bummer, and I had to do some juggling, but I ended up with three comm classes, a math class, a math independent learning project, and piano lessons. I still have an 8:00 am at SJU, but it's a comm class that I'm taking with one of my friends from my math class last semester, so it should be fun. My other new news is that I withdrew from piano lessons for the remainder of the semester. I decided that with everything I have going on for the rest of the semester, I just don't have the time or energy to play catch up. I'll keep my scholarship on a disability claim, and resume lessons next fall. 

Now, I just have to make it through the next two days and it's the weekend. I can't wait! Love to all.