Graduated, I guess

Well, so, I'm now officially an alumna of Scripps College. It's really quite weird. Hasn't sunk in completely that I won't be going back. Even though I'm here in the Bay Area trying to figure out what the next step is. Applying for jobs at any number of research places. Hoping that one of them will agree with Alan and Stacey and think that I'm a wonderful neuroscientist. We'll see. It's kind of a weird state of being, knowing that I've graduated and now won't be back for classes, dining halls, white walls and red roofs... it's strange the things you miss. And I've only been gone a week. Ah well. I suppose everyone has to move on at some point, and it's my time.

Been dancing up here, it's weird, the leads seem to have funny habits, that I wouldn't have thought they would, since it's always been drilled into me from a very basic level that you keep your shoulders parallel to your partner as much as possible to maintain that connection that you have. And it's weird when I'm dancing with someone and that connection suddenly dies because he pulls his shoulders away. But, I suppose I'll have to get used to it. Or at least figure out who the leads are who don't do that, and dance with them. :)

One advantage to being graduated is that I get to read novels. :) One completely finished, another over half finished in the last four days. Not too bad. Plus, I've been applying for jobs. And doing fun things with Sandor. Went and saw The Da Vinci Code yesterday. It was interesting. I can see why the purists are up in arms. But it definitely wasn't horrible like the reviews said it would be. Just, different. There was also a beautiful sunset yesterday as we drove back from the theatre. I wish I had had my camera with me. Then I could share it with you. But, you'll just have to imagine fog on the hill sides and brilliant gold and orange clouds in the sky. It was amazing. Anyway, off to do more fun things. :)

Hair go Bye Bye!

So, for those of you who haven't seen me around campus yet, I donated about a foot of hair to Locks of Love. So I have very cute hair now. So here's a picture: (Not a great picture of me, but you get the idea.)

Best Phone Message Ever!

So, this was the message left on my phone:

In a world where swing dancing is the only thing that matters, and the Charleston is fun to do, one man struggles to get to Speakeasy before it closes.
This Spring, Jeff M. Lewis stars in: The Traveling Swing Dancer.
(Faster) He's leaving at 11:15, will hope to get there before 2am, not suitable for all children.

I just had to immortalize the wonderful cleverness of my friends. Because Jeff is awesome. He even did the voice. It was so very amusing. :) Thanks Jeff!

Medals

So, medals exams happened last Wednesday. It was a rather crazy stressful day, for many reasons. But I think the fact that I couldn't stress over the dancing was a good thing, because I just got out there and danced. It went really well actually. Except that the floor was slippery and I slipped in the paso. Oops. Ah well, what can you do? I recovered rather well I thought. But he didn't let me finish the rumba routine! Which made me nervous, and a litle mad because the sliding doors were coming up, and I had worked really hard to make them good, and I didn't get to do them! Also because rumba is my worst dance of the latin dances, and so I was worried that I had done it really badly, even though it felt pretty good. Turns out, my highest score was in the rumba. It was crazy. I got High Honors. So did Becca on her Standard medals, which is awesome. And Paul did too, which is great because I was dancing with him, and it's always wonderful when your partner does well. :) Congrats to the other two. You guys are amazing! I still can't believe I high scored in rumba. He must be insane!

And then there was Concert

So, Concert, ended up being amazing. I'm really impressed with how hard people worked to pull it all together. Through injuries (Paul had stress fractures in his wrist), costume malfunctions (the cha cha shirts kept getting holes in them), and more, it all worked, and it was awesome! Saturday and Sunday were by far the best performances. It was awesome. Thank you to all of those who came out to support us. You are wonderful. Hopefully the video will be able to capture most of the awesomeness this year, for those of you who couldn't make it down. Here are some pictures, a taste of the wonderfulness that was Concer this year:

The amazingness that was our solo: (Thanks to Paul, and to those who helped me make my dress!)






We also had a pretty cool new standard medley:


And our new Theatre Arts routine, which had beautiful dresses