They will stare and say how empty we are.

Ughhh so much has been going on.

Ever since this semester started I have been crazy busy.
Schedule:
Mondays: Instrumentation from 10-11:15, research 11:15-1:30, physics 1:50-3:05, dinner, math 5-6:15, homework
Tuesdays: IPRO 8:35-9:50, research 10-11:15, history 11:25-12:40, UB meeting 1-1:30, lunch, signals 3:05-4:30, gym/homework
Wednesdays: Instrumentation from 8-11:15, research 11:20-1:30, physics 1:50-3:05, dinner, math 5-6:15, homework
Thursdays: IPRO 8:35-9:50, research 10-11:15, history 11:25-12:40, Bog meeting 1-1:30, lunch, signals 3:05-4:30, gym/homework
Fridays: wake up, homework, physics lab 1:50-4:30, research
Saturdays: homework, attempted social life
Sundays: church, homework

Basically, no time time to breathe, no less blog. However, I am going to do everything in my power to continue blogging.

Lots of bad stuff has been happening lately. Friends are going through some tough spots, my computer stopped working so now I have to mail it in for repair so it will be gone for a couple of weeks, etc. I just gotta try to keep my head up..

I think I'm gonna go hang out at Kappa tomorrow. I need a break from the harsh reality of the universe. Sasha said they are having a game night. It should be a lot of fun.

Jon bought me food again today because right now I can't afford to buy my own. Our moms are coming to see us October 10. I am so excited to see my mommy...

Breathing in a new mentality.

OOOOOOOHHHH MAN, WHAT a WEEKEND!!

Friday-Sunday was the first (of 2) weekends for the Sophomore Leadership Retreat. I expected it to be pretty cool, but I NEVER thought it would be as wonderful as it turned out to be.

On Friday we left on the first bus around 1:40 pm. The entire way to Lake Geneva we watched V for Vendetta. It's the first time I ever saw it, and it was REALLY awesome.

Once we got to Lake Geneva, we dropped our stuff off in our rooms and headed out to have some student/faculty competitions. There were heats for tether ball, horseshoe, badminton, shuffleboard, and volleyball. I was on Sarah's team, and we gradually worked our way up. EventuallyNikhail and I decided to team up for the championship round against 2 other students (to determine who would play Bruce [director of the Leadership Academy] and John Anderson [president ofIIT]). Nikhail and I prevailed, but unfortunately, we lost against Bruce and President Anderson 10-7. It's ok , though, because we were able to get to know the two of them fairly well, which was really awesome! I mean, these are two powerful guys atIIT, and they sat there and talked with us AND played horseshoes with us! Awesome.

After competitions, we headed to dinner. After dinner, we played this version of dodgeball called "star wars", and it was SO fun (basically dodgeball but with stuffed animals, etc.) After that, the 2nd bus arrived. We were divided into "teams" and did a bunch of extremely fun (and silly) team building games until about 10. Then we had free time, and a lot of us went to bed.

On Saturday morning, we had breakfast, then we had Team Olympics. We had to come up with a team name/cheer, and our team was team 'Bumblebee Tuna'. Our cheer was basically us in the formation of what we assumed a bumblebee tuna would look like, and it was a LOT of fun. The events were basically a bunch of team building/problem solving exercises, and I don't think our group stopped laughing once.

After Team Olympics, we had lunch. Post lunch, we had our first activity. Our team canoed first, and it was really fun. We canoed all over the lake, and learned how to right a tipped canoe in the middle of the water. We got to a spot where a bunch of us jumped out of our canoes and swam around. It was just a really interesting experience.

After canoeing, we got to go sailing. I have never sailed before, and I was pretty freaked out about doing it in a really deep lake (we had life jackets but I was convinced there was a lake monster that would eat me). The person I was with wanted to tip the sunfish (keep in mind a sunfish is a 1 to 2 person mini sailboat). When the big sailboat came by I discovered there was a ladder that went down the back of the boat to the water, so I bailed out of the sunfish and swam over to the big boat. :)

After sailing I took a quick shower and headed over to dinner. After dinner we had a brief speaker and then we had free time. During free time, a big group of us went to the Observatory. We got a tour AND we got to look through the huge telescopes to see a bunch of really cool astronomy stuff.

I left the observatory and went to bed. On Sunday morning we had breakfast and then our 3rd activity. Our group had low ropes, and it was WAY cooler than the name lets on. We had record time for this one challenge (6.5 seconds baby!), and it was cool to work together on all the others.

After that we had lunch and a leadership seminar to follow. Although, during the seminar, we discussed how it shouldn't be called that, because the term seminar implies boring, long, monotone speech. And oh no, this was definitely not a seminar. It was a hands-on, interactive, ridiculously entertaining activity. I loved it.

Right from the seminar we got on the buses and headed back to campus. We watched The Devil Wears Prada on the bus on the way back, and it was pretty cool. Once back, I did laundry, showered, cuddled with Marsala, and went to sleep.

It was a ridiculously awesome weekend, and I met a bunch of kids I had never really talked to prior to going on the retreat. We had a blast, and I expect the fun to continue through this school year. I HIGHLY recommend the retreat to any sophomore at IIT. You really can't understand how fun that weekend truly is!

The only survivor was miraculously unharmed.

I love, love, LOVE my first class of the day! It was my IPRO, or interprofessional project, and it is absolutely perfect. I'm taking orthotic and prosthetic education for Latin America, and I am already super excited about the work we're going to do this semester. I'm hoping it will help me figure out exactly what I want to do within the field of prosthetics when I graduate, and right now I'm leaning a little bit more towards pediatric orthotics and prosthetics. Regardless, it's an 8:35 class, so it's a very good thing that I love it. It will help get me motivated to wake up for it in the morning.

After work yesterday I went to the delt house for the steak dinner. Oh my goodness, it was SO delicious! They started everything off with this delicious salad that had little mandarin oranges and some sweet vinaigrette dressing. After the salad they served steak, shrimp, twice baked potatoes, and green beans. Naturally, since I hate seafood, I gave my shrimp away. However, I DEVOURED the rest of my dinner and it was absolutely delicious. After everyone had finished their main course, we were each brought our own banana's foster for dessert and OH MY GOSH. It was heaven.

After dinner I briefly went to the MTCC Ballroom to visit the Kappa's event. They were doing country dancing, but I was both exhausted and stressed, so I decided to leave after a couple of minutes to start preparing for classes that began today.

When I went home I pet Marsala (she has been locked away in my room the past day and a half because her and Echo don't like each other) and took her in the bathroom with me when I showered so she could experience a different room. After I showered I got all of my notebooks ready for all of my classes and discovered I could return my ECE books because I changed my schedule at the last minute yesterday. This fall, I am now taking:
IPRO 497-309
Math 333
History of American Women
BME 315
BME 330
Physics 2

After my next class (history) I'm going to go home to put Marsala back into my room and let Echo out (I had switched roles so she could experience daylight today). I also need to eat lunch and pack for the sophomore leadership retreat, and my third class isn't until 3:15. It's really nice because tomorrow the only class I have scheduled is my physics lab, and labs are never held the first week of classes, so I have the day off tomorrow!

We always assume the worst!

Yesterday was fun. After I left work I headed over to Kappa to hang out. There was a Project Runway event that they did where we all had to make an outfit for a model to wear out of a bunch of stuff from the dollar store (things like garbage bags, tin foil, a shower cap, a curtain, etc.). It turned out to be a lot of fun, and our outfit turned into an 80's era design. It was a great way to help break the ice and let us get to know the sisters.

Today ASA and the delts are having a steak/shrimp dinner and a boat cruise followed by fireworks. I'm definitely going to the dinner, not sure about the boat cruise yet. I have an 8:15 am class tomorrow morning, and classes all day (oh how I'm dreading it!) so I want to get back and in bed at a decent hour.

Campus is very busy with activity again. Aya Eid and I are working on making the camping on Siegel Field a reality. We are going to meet with Ray Ballard (Union Board president) to figure out more of the logistics, but we have a target date and plan that we came up with.

Other than that, nothing too new or exciting has happened. Each day that passes builds my anticipation for the new Underoath CD.....!

You wouldn't last a minute on the creek.

What a crazy couple of days. Not necessarily in a good way, either.

I'm trying to think of where I left off, and so much has happened in the past few days that I can't think straight. Friday night I just hung out at the apartment and tried relaxing. Saturday was date day. Jon and I walked over to 31st street beach to start off the day. The air and water show was this weekend, so there were planes flying over the beach to and from Navy Pier. It was really neat to see, especially since the beach really wasn't crowded AT ALL. We threw around a frisbee for a while and then we dug holes and buried our legs in them. When I got bored with that and was just laying in the sun, Jon decided to dig as deep of a hole he could with his hands. It was crazy because the way he dug it, it was almost perfectly round. It looked really cool!

After the beach, we walked back to my apartment. We made a frozen pizza (and it was actually REALLLLLY good) and just relaxed for a couple hours. I was having issues with my hair and I couldn't get it to do anything that looked decent, so Jon actually managed to put it into two little pig-tail bun things for me. It looked really cute! Around 4:30, we left for Navy Pier. On our way to the bus, he picked a flower and put it in my hair, which actually made my hair even CUTER! It was very sweet of him.

Forrest Gump is Jon's favorite movie, and he really wanted to go to Bubba Gump's, so we decided on it for dinner. When we got there, there was about a 2 hour wait, so we put our name on the list. Then we just walked around the Pier the whole time and went into all of the different shops. There was a juggler that we watched for a bit, and we sat in the garden for a little while, too. After the time passed we headed back to the restaurant. When we got there, neither of us could decide what to get. We decided to each order something and share it 50/50. He got a BBQ cheeseburger and I got a Cajun grilled chicken sandwich. We cut them in half and each took half. We also got a coupon for a free smoothie, and it was REALLY good. The picture I attached is of Jon attempting to finish dessert (it is literally called 'That Chocolate Thing'). Apparently it tasted just like this brownie dessert he used to get at Applebee's when he was younger that they stopped making. He was so full and I told him not to attempt to finish it because he would get sick, but he didn't listen and sure enough, he felt really nauseous for about 2 hours. The picture of the two of us was taken in the garden prior to dinner.

All in all, Saturday was a GREAT day!! I love spending time with Jon.

On Sunday we went to church, and after church, Jon, Shea, and I went to Subway. It was delicious. After lunch, Jon and I headed back to his place to hardcore clean. We moved all of his furniture in order to sweep, and once we swept we wet 'Swiffered' the entire floor. While I was doing some sweeping, Jon did his dishes, cleaned out all the moldy food from his refrigerator, organized all his shelves (and threw out a bunch of old papers), and took out the trash. We also washed all of his clothes. When I went to clean Lola's cage (our dwarf hamster) I realized there were bugs in her bag of fresh food, so after we threw it out, Jon walked over to Petsmart to get new food and I washed the bathroom. It probably took about 3 hours total to clean everything, but once it was clean the apartment looked GREAT. I felt very accomplished after.

I didn't come into work yesterday because my friend Tasha was coming from Ohio to drop off Marsala, her old/my new cat. I cleaned my room and some of the apartment, and Tasha and her mom got in around 2. We moved Marsala into my room and shut the door, then Jon, Tasha, Tasha's mom and I all left. We went to Jewel first to get the two of them a 1-day pass, then after Jewel we walked over to Millennium and Grant parks. Tasha took lots of pictures with this stuffed camel that her sister (and one of my best friends), Heather, got her. We went all over Chicago, to the Bean, Buckingham fountain, etc. After walking around for about 2 hours we went to Giordano's for dinner. After dinner we went up to the Magnificent Mile and just walked around for like 15 minutes. We left for Garret's popcorn and after that headed to Chinatown. Tasha looked at the little turtles there and bought a bubble tea, and we went back to the apartment.

It was a good and busy weekend. There were some sucky areas that I intentionally left out, but overall I can't complain.

Classes start Thursday, so we'll see how that goes. Sophomore Leadership Retreat for me is this weekend. I'm nervous about being gone all weekend, but it should be good.

Learn to live with it, long enough to take it day by day.

My head hurts so bad right now.

There are some issues happening with someone back in Ohio that are pushing me to my breaking point. It's so frustrating because I feel like I am doing everything humanly possible to resolve the issues, and no matter what I do or say, he refuses to accept me. He's more stubborn than I am, and I just don't know how to handle it anymore. All I know is that I'm tired of fighting, and I'm tired of constantly being put in a place where I feel like everything that goes wrong in the world is somehow my fault. I just really don't know what to do.

On a less upset/dark note, it's almost the weekend. Jon has this Saturday off, so we're going to hang out all day because next weekend I'll be gone on the Sophomore Leadership Retreat. We're either going to go to Navy Pier to watch the air and water show/eat at Bubba Gump's, go to the beach, go to Shedd Aquarium, go to the zoo, or we may even wander out into the suburbs. I'm really excited to have a whole day with him :) It will be date day!!

I talked to my mom today. We're hoping that sometime this fall she and Jon's mom can come out here for a visit. I sure hope so, because with the way my week has been steadily getting worse, all I want right now is my Mommy.

It's a shame to walk away from everything I want, and leave you here all alone.

Yesterday was a good day.

After work, I cleaned the living room and made dinner. Nikolai and Jon came over and we watched the Olympics. Nikolai left around 8, and Jon and I put on some Ace Enders and a Million Different People and danced around. It was actually a LOT of fun, and I didn't stop laughing the entire time. I love my boyfriend!

Today I went to the lab to get oriented, but the chemicals they ordered that they need to synthesize the proteins haven't come yet, so I decided to come into work instead. I'm going to try again tomorrow.

Our international students get into campus for orientation today and tomorrow, and it is excited because campus is quickly becoming a buzz of activity. It seems like only yesterday when I was a freshman...

Jon works all day today so I'm not going to see him :( After work I'm going to take a nap and veg around the apartment. It's supposed to storm this afternoon, so I might curl up on the couch with Echo and read a book (which will in turn put me to sleep).

I get my kitty on Monday! She was originally my friend, Tasha's, but Tasha is going to college in Iowa and her parents are moving to Florida, so she needs to get rid of Marsala. I'm excited because that means I get to see Tasha, not to mention Marsala is a total sweetheart..