Happy Halloween everyone! I hope that you all have fun dressing up, or giving out candy, or whatever your plans for the day might be! :) I don't know what I'm doing yet, except that I will be giving out candy to little kids going through the dorms! Which will be really fun! We wore our costumes again last night for the Halloween Candlelight Dinner, which was very fun! They had things on the menu like Roasted Heart, and Fleas and Eyeballs! It was very fun! And everything was all decorated! There were a lot of people who were not in costume though! We felt special! I also decided last night that I am going to double major in Astrology and Underwater basket weaving, with a minor in advanced bee-bee stacking. We were trying to figure out what kind of science I would like to do last night, and came to no conclusions! Although in looking at the course book, I am fairly close to a minor in Classics with the classes that I intend on taking. I'm going to go and see CP&R later to see if I can get an appointment to take their little aptitude test things. Hopefully that will help! It's kind of frustrating though, because I don't know what I'm doing, and I really need to figure it out! Especially for science, because those majors require so many classes! Like, we looked at the Physics major up at Mudd, and that would be virtually impossible for me to do at this point. I would have to take five Physics courses a semester, and add in all the ones for Scripps! Insane! I wouldn't do that anyway, Scripps has their own Physics major, but we were comparing. I'll figure it out eventually though. I thought about just staying in college forever and trying everything possible, but then I realized that it would be very expensive, and that would not be a good thing. So I won't do that. :) We learned how to Shag in swing on Sat. :) No, not like that. :) It's a different type of swing with really fast footwork! It's fun, but it's a bit crazy because your feet have to move so fast! There's another MOB on Fri. which is cool because we will get to wear our costumes again! :) Four times in one week! I think that's pretty good use of a costume! But they are so gorgeous, how could we not?! I think though that Camille and I might trade for Fri. night, because then it will look like we're wearing something different, since we already wore our dresses to the dance party, and a lot of the same people will be there again. I've been invited by three different guys though! It's fun! Well, not really invited per se, but they wanted to make sure I knew about it! :) I love all the dancing up here! It is fantastic and fun! Well, I better head off to class! Happy Halloween! :) Boo!

Well, it's a bit late now, and there's so much to say! I've had traumatic experiences with rain in Southern California! But today was great! I'm not sure why, just everything went well! Classes were good, I got my psych. exam and paper back. A 99.5% on the exam, and a 48/50 on the paper. Not bad. :) Dance was fun! We were learning polka! I danced with Ian for quite a while! It was fun because he's a good lead, and he was having fun with polka, because it's kind of a silly dance, so we had fun together! Orchestra was good too! We just sightread through the new pieces! They are definitely going to be challenging! But Steve and I had fun, and we got out an hour early! That was interesting! Steve was definitely encouraging of my taking math up at Mudd, and I think I'm going to see the professor tomorrow who will tell me whether I can do what I want to do! Hopefully it will all work out! Anyway, I'll have to write about the rain later! I miss you all!

Well, I didn't go shopping this weekend, I went to the Getty museum instead. Just as we were getting ready to leave, Talya and her mom dropped by to see if I wanted to go with them, and Camille convinced me to go because I had never been before. I'm glad she did! It was fabulous! There was one room with somewhere around seven Monets, and then Van Gogh's Irises in the same room! It was fantastic! I really enjoyed that room a lot! All of it was great though. There were also two Degas in another room. Apparently there is an ancient art exhibit downstairs that I would like to go back and see at some point. It's amazing how much art one guy could collect in his life! The garden was fun too! There was an azaelia maze, but it was in the middle of a pond, so you couldn't really go through it. :) Anyway, I enjoyed the museum! We went to dinner that night at Bucca di Beppo's, which was really fun because they bring you a gigantic platter of whatever you order, and you all share it! Talya and I have decided that we need to take our whole group out there for dinner one night! Especially because if you take around ten people, dinner costs two dollars a piece, and you can't get much better than that! Sun., Camille said good bye to here mom, and John, and Talya said goodbye to her family, so that night we stayed together because they were both feeling a bit lonely. We played Set and Apples to Apples, and Xactika, which we all decided is rather addicting! Camille and I also went to the farmer's market and bought lots of fruit! I found these absolutely delicious apples called Pink Ladies! They are so good! And we got six kiwis for $1.50! We also found out that the bagel shop, which sells their bagels for 75 cents a piece, also gives students a ten% discount! And I got a cinnamin-raisin bagel fresh out of the oven! Oh, that was yummy! So, we have our supply of fruit for the week! And bagels for the last two days. We went to Frank last night for dinner, that's the Pomona dining hall. They have chocolate milk! :) They also have really good food! We met Mike there last night, and he came back with us to play games. We played Set again, and I won, again. :) We played Xactika, and I lost, again. :) I lost the first time with -13! Last night it was -8! I'm getting better, but still! It's sad! Camille won with 7 points. We also discovered that Mike is really good at Apples to Apples. He won twice over because we played to ten green cards, then decided we were having so much fun that we would play to fifteen! He had ten and fifteen first! When John arrived (John is Camille's boyfriend), we were playing BS. We had a couple good rounds of that, then we went back to Apples to Apples. John won, but Mike was in second. Maybe it's just that guys have an advantage! I did get a rough draft of my essay done yesterday though, so it wasn't all play, and I have finished most of my work for the week today, so I have been productive, which is good. Although my printer ran out of black ink, so I'm going to have to remedy that problem in the next couple days. :) Yay! Break was fun! And tomorrow classes start again. I start back into the swing of things tonight with orchestra and Lindy! It should be fun!

I am feeling a bit lonely this morning, but I am also sparkly! Camille and her mom have gone to breakfast, and I feel like I'm the only one in the dorm! It is so quiet! It's quiet anyway, but this is unusually quiet. Yesterday, I was walking to get my mail, and I only saw three other people! It was nice though, to walk between the trees, just me and the birds. Quiet moments like that are fun. But I miss you all. It would be fun if someone were down here with me. Next year, we'll have to plan for Fall Break. This morning, Camille did eyeliner on me! She has colored eyeliner, and then she puts glitter over it! It's really pretty! So today I have sparkly eyes! :) I think I might ask her to do it again for the Halloween party. That would be fun! I'm going to try to do my hair the way I had it for Mattress, but it might be hard, because I have dance rehearsal that afternoon, and it's hard to dance with a head full of curlers, but I might just make do, because I like my hair all curly, and it will be up, so I won't get too hot dancing that night. We'll see how things work out! Last night, Camille's mom drove us to 21 Choices. It's a frozen yogurt store, and they have several flavors of frozen yogurt to choose from, and then you can choose a topping and they mush it in to the frozen yogurt! It's very cool. I had pumpkin pie frozen yogurt! It was delicious! Yum! It was fun because Scripps had given us gift certificates there, so mine was free! You've got to love free things! Especially when they're delicious! Meagan and I went to the Green House for dinner last night. It's on Pomona campus, and it is actually in a green house! It was very fun! They had good food there too! The dresses that Camille's mom brought us are gorgeous! Camille's is the prettiest, I think, because it's blue and got pretty shimmery stuff on it, but all of them are really nice! Mandy's is pink, and she's going to love it, I can tell already. Because not only is it pink, it has silver lace for trim! She's going to be so excited! Becca's is sea green, and it is pretty. It has a bit of a train on it, so she'll have to try it on when she gets back. She was worried about the train getting in the way for dancing. There's a red one, which Camille wore for her senior pictures, it is really pretty too! I like it a lot, so I hope Talya likes the other one, because I would really like to wear the red one, but I'll have to work it out with her. I can hope though! The only thing the red one needs is some cord to lace up the bodice. We might use the silver ribbon that Mommy sent with me, but I think I'll look for some cord today when we go out, to see what else there might be; just because I don't know if there is enough ribbon. We are going shopping this morning. When Camille and her mom get back from breakfast. We are going to stock up on some things like hand soap and kleenex, so that we don't have to get any again for a while, and then hopefully, we'll go to the mall so that I can look for something black! I really want to find a cute skirt! Hopefully I can! I think I'm also going to get a curling iron, because no one I know has one! You would think at a girl's school, there would be curling irons everywhere! Nope! :) Oh, here's a funny fact: apparently, when construction was going on at Scripps, there was a sign out on Foothill Blvd. that said: "Scripps College for Women Under Construction." :) I like it, because it has a double meaning, and we really are under construction, so it works!

It's a sad day this morning. Everyone is leaving! Actually, not everyone. Camille's mom just called to say she's arrived and is coming over! But Becca and Sarra said good bye this morning. Mandy left yesterday, and Talya will be around, but her family is here, so she won't be spending a whole lot of time with us. I made tentative plans to meet Lisa (we have writing together, and she does Lindy Hop too! She's really sweet.) for dinner on Sat. so that Camille and her mom can go to dinner by themselves. I also got an e-mail from Mike, and it sounds like he'll be around, so we might do something. It's been nice to have a rather quiet morning. I read the first section of Nickle and Dimed, it's really fascinating! It's about the minimum wage worker's struggles. It makes me glad and feel very lucky to be in college and to have had the life that I have! We went over to Mudd last night and found out how bad at pool I am. Grant and John tried to tell me it's all about geometry. Well, if it is, then I'm really bad at geometry too. :) Actually, it seems more about physics than geometry to me, but maybe that's just me. I had a really weird dream last night. It was something about my being an undercover agent, and no one knew, but it seemed so obvious that they should have figured it out, and my "mother" was evil and she was trying to work against me. It reminded me a lot of Alias, when I woke up, that is. Let's see, after midterms yesterday, Camille and I cleaned the room. We cleaned places that we decided hadn't been cleaned since the dorm was built! It was nasty! Like the top of the door frame, and there's the ridge of molding around the bottom of the walls. That still isn't clean, although I tried very hard! Yuck! But now most everything looks really nice. We'll see how long it stays that way.

Woohoo! I am done! I just finished my third midterm, I am done for the day, and I am done for the week, because I don't have class tomorrow. The one class I would have, we took the midterm today, so there's no class! And I won't have class again until Wed. because of Fall Break! There's still lots to do, like tomorrow I will proably write a rough draft of our essay for Writing 50, but, it's nice to have some time off! And Caille's mom is coming tomorrow, and bringing our costumes, so I will get to see those! I am so excited! I can't wait to see what they look like! I hope they are pretty, Camille assures me that they will be! :) I had a prospective student spend the night Mon. She was very nice. Her name was Sarah, and she lives on Bainbridge Island, so fairly close to home. She seemed very interested in Scripps, though she was looking at Pomona too. Remind you of anyone? :) She came to social dance with me, and seemed to enjoy herself. She already knew how to salsa and cha-cha, which was good because we did some of that along with learning more waltz steps. I can waltz now! I love it! She stayed with Camille during orchestra, and then we all went to the Motley. I found out a week ago that I shouldn't drink chai before bed, because it has caffeine and that is bad when you want to go to sleep! But I am now in love with steamers! It's just steamed milk with a bit of the flavoring that you would use in an Italian soda, oh, they are so good! So I have one of those when we go to the Motley now. Anway, we were there for a while, and Meagan came over, and she and Sarah went to the same high school, so they talked about people they both knew, and how things were going. We went back to the room about 11:30, because I was tired, and Sarah had an interview at Pomona in the morning. She saw my Set deck though, and we had to play a game because she knew about Set! So we played, and she won! I sent her off the next morning after breakfast. I think she really enjoyed herself, or she seemed to, so I hope that she actually did. My first prospe! Tuesday night was Lindy hop and snack! We did these frame exercises in Lindy, which were funny. We did a whole bunch with our eyes closed. And there was one where the girls were "shopping carts!" It was rather funny. We won't meet again until next Tues., I'm kind of sad. I enjoy Lindy a lot! It's fun to learn something new. Apparently though, I'm still not holding my arm quite right. I free danced with Tatsu after the lesson (Tatsu is the teacher Tues. nights), he was the one who first taught me about frame, and tension. Well, he was trying to tell me what I was doing wrong, and I understood, but I couldn't figure out how I was supposed to do it right. So I went back to the room, and we went to snack, and then I studied for the psychology exam I had the next day. I think that one went well. It was funny because I was reading through the study guide, and I saw narcolepsy, and I knew what it was, so I didn't think too much about it, but I thought it was rather strange that it was there. Later, insomnia showed up. And then it clicked! The chapter on sleep was going to be on the exam too! I'm so glad I realized that when I did! We had social dance, and we reviewed our waltz steps, and learned some fox trot steps! I like the fox trot a lot! It's fun, a kind of faster waltz. In the middle of class, he turned on a polka! Sarra and I knew what it was, and we knew the basic step, but Jay, who was my partner at that point didn't know it. Ian knew, but he was too far away, so we were polkaing around by ourselves in the corner while the rest of the class stood around going "we don't know what this is." It was funny. Sarra got her ballroom shoes. I hope mine come soon! I want to start practicing in them, and it would be fun to wear them to the Halloween party if I feel comfortable enough in them, but I can't wear them if I don't have them! I went back to my room, and Becca was already there making flash cards of the authors and pieces for Core. Talya came down shortly after, and Meagan came over to join us. Mandy popped in and out throughout the night. We went over the flash cards, and then I quizzed them by reading quotes from the texts and having them identify them. We went to the study break around 10:30, and then Meagan, Talya and I took a break from Core to talk about Writing until 11:30. I went back to our room, and looked over my Latin quickly. I figured that if I didn't know it already, I wasn't going to learn it then. I went to the Motley for breakfast this morning, and got things for Mandy and I. They didn't have any yogurt though, I was sad. The Latin midterm went OK. I know that I missed a couple things, but overall, I feel pretty good about it. She asked us to help her name her cat, in the translation part of the midterm! It was funny, because she told us that she really did want us to answer that. She got a new cat yesterday, apparently. I went straight to Core after that. The room smelled funny, but it wasn't too bad. Not like the vacuum smell in our room that one time! The Italian professor told us that one of the lights had burned out, and she had called maintenance to come see why it was making funny smells. We decided that we could live with it, and Prof. Aisenburg passed out the midterms. We were already running five minutes late because he was late. A few minutes later, the light came back on, and a maintenance guy walked into the room, but while he was there, the light flashed, went purple, and went out again, except this time it started smoking! And the smoke smelled bad! So we decided to move! So by the time we relocated to the auditorium, we were running about fifteen minutes behind. He let us have some extra time at the end, and I did finish, but I didn't do the extra credit, there wasn't time. But what I did, I think I did well, so hopefully, I'm right. I went to lunch with Sarra and Taly after saying goodbye to Mandy. She's going home for the break. Then we went to writing. The prompt for the midterm wasn't hard. I knew basically what I was going to write as soon as I read it, which was good. I read the story looking for quotes for about 20 minutes, and then I wrote my essay in an hour, which was normal because that's what our in-class-writes were last year. I feel pretty good about that one too, so hopefully I'll do well on all of them! In the meantime, yay! I'm half way done! I can't believe it! Time is flying so fast! It's fun though! It's been rather chilly here, our room stays around 75, which is nice, I think outside must have been around 60 or a bit colder. It was chilly, but normal for home. Although I heard it's been a lot colder there lately! Yay for a five day weekend! :)

Today, my pancake fell in the cream of wheat! I was so sad, but it was rather humorous! They had these really big pancakes with real blueberries, but the pancakes or french toast are always behind the cream of wheat, and today that was a bad thing. :) I picked up my pancake, and a piece ripped of and it fell in the cream of wheat. So I tried to get it out, but it just kept ripping, so I ended up with a bunch of cream of wheaty pancake pieces on my plate. It tasted kind of weird, but it was good. I thought it was hilarious! Hopefully things go better the rest of the day! :)

Today, I vacuumed and the vacuum made our room smell really bad! I just couldn't stand a dirty floor any more! So, we had to deal with the smell the rest of the afternoon! Yuck! It smelled like burning ickiness. I went to Lindy Hop, and danced for around three hours! It was so fun. I'm getting better, which makes it more fun. Matt asked me to dance twice! He's really good, so I learn something new from him each time. Camille and John bought a big pumpkin for us to carve! It's now in our closet for a while until it gets closer to Halloween and we can carve it without it rotting very quickly. We think it would be really fun to get a giant pumpkin for our dorm one year and carve it and put it out in front or something, though maybe it would get squished. I hope not, but some people are weird like that. It was really humid today. So my hair was really incredibly frizzy! It was rather annoying. Hopefully this one works! :) I miss you all!