School Again

Wow, that four-day weekend flew by!  In between cooking for my friends and Thucydides and buying yarn and knitting, I barely got anything done.
Being away from home for Thanksgiving was hard, harder than I expected.  I called home that day, and talked to everyone getting ready, and just missed home.  I imagined everyone in the kitchen with the woodstove lit, moving around each other and just being together.  That's generally the hardest part of college for me, being away from my family.
In other news, the Christmas season is coming up, so come December first, I'll post a gift guide and Christmas-ey things.  Be warned, however - exams come first, so the beginning of December might be a little light on posting.
Happy Monday, everyone!

I am ever so thankful...

... but for little things this year.  I am thankful for the rain on my roof, and the potted plants in my bedroom.  I am thankful for Sunday crossword Skype dates with my family, and lunches with Dave, and Tuesday afternoons with Willamae.  I am thankful for breakfast every morning with Emily, and the upright Steinway in the music building where I can sit for hours and play Chopin.
Mostly, though, I am thankful for my family and my friends.
You guys are incredible.

Thanksgiving Holiday

Are you excited for Thanksgiving?  I am, a little.  It's the first year that I'm not spending it with my family.  I'll miss the dinner at Anna's house, the butternut squash kibbe that Caleb makes and playing "Winter in America" with my father.  I love my home Thanksgiving, but in no way is it feasible for me to go home to Cambridge from the other side of the country when my vacation starts on Thanksgiving Day.
I thought about going to my uncle's in Seattle, but then my friends started talking about going camping or up to the ski cabin.  It would be nice, I thought to spend Thanksgiving with the people I live with, to give thanks for each other and our lives and think about how very lucky we are to be here, at Reed, learning and living and being happy.  At least, I'm happy.
Given the current weather (rain, more rain) perhaps camping isn't the best idea, but the ski cabin is still definitely a possibility and even if we can't get there, Thanksgiving in the Nog or Chittick would be lovely.
I'm glad to spend Thanksgiving with my friends - I just am worried about missing my family.  Family, I love you, and it will be so empty having the holiday without you.

Rain on the Roof

Today, at almost seven in the morning in Portland, it is raining.  This isn't new - we've talked about the rain before, and I knew coming here that it was going to rain almost all the time after fall break.  But my ceiling is quite thin (I think it's literally just the bottom of the roof) so there is lovely rain all the time.  When there isn't, the rainy mood website will substitute.
I love the sound of rain.  I love the way it almost sounds like music, crescendoing and then falling back into a diminuendo depending on how much there is.  I love the bruise-coloured sky outside my window (not quite that electric gorgeous wintertime blue of Boston, but greyer somehow, darker).  The cold and wet... I don't quite love it, I must admit, but I do appreciate it, if that makes sense.
I prefer to wake up early and do my work rather than to do it at night and sleep in, so this has been a lovely morning so far, cocooned in my lovely light-filled room, wrapped up in the soft and furry robe I stole from my brother ages ago, transparent curtains guarding against the outside world.
Have a lovely Monday, everyone.

Invest In An Umbrella

Today in Portland it is grey, and cold.  The big oak trees outside Bragdon are rust-coloured and losing all their leaves, and it has been drizzling on and off all day today.
I am okay with this.  It is bleak and gorgeous here - staying inside weather, yes, but I can sit in my lovely room (how I love my room!) with tea and Antigone and find myself staring out at the rusty leaves and the grey afternoon sky.  Sometimes I don't want to leave my dorm to go to capoeira or dinner or to visit my boyfriend (all of about 100 yards away) but stat feeling of standing in the wet grass with the drizzle and the hints of wind... it's beautiful.
Happy Wednesday, everyone.

A Cappella and Other Concerns

Yesterday in practice we had a lot of trouble.  It's always very frustrating when rehearsal doesn't turn out as well as you'd like it to - when you're trying but just doing it wrong, when no one is blending properly, when the song just doesn't sound right.
On the other hand, I love the feeling when that frustration and that hard work and that exhaustion comes together, when suddenly the sound meshes and you sound beautiful.  I love that feeling in music, and in essays, and in maths problems when you've been working for ages and then you just understand.
So the frustration is worth it.

The Armistice

At the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, the Great War ended.  Almost everyone I know knows that story - how the fighting stopped.  What's focused on next at my school, at least, is Woodrow Wilson and his Fourteen Points, but I had a teacher in seventh grade who insisted that Veterans Day was in fact Armistice Day for the rest of the world.  She explained to me that Armistice Day, the eleventh of November, wasn't a day to have off school but rather a day to remember the war dead.
This is by far a bigger thing in Britain and Europe.  This is a day when one remembers that an awful lot of people were lost in those trenches, people with families and lives, and people are still lost in war.
Happy Armistice Day, everyone.
Poppy from here.