If you do, that's great. If you don't, that's great too. I'm not going to talk about any of those firsts anyways. Those are completely irrelevant. Instead, I'm going to talk about these:
The first couple weeks of class of junior year.
So I have 5 classes this semester, plus an honors contract, which is pretty manageable. This semester I'm taking a children's literacy course, a course about managing classroom environments, business Spanish, earth science for elementary teachers, and an economics course. I'm a big fan of most of my instructors and professors, although I do have one who legitimately looks like Benjamin Franklin. And for awhile, my Spanish course was kicking my butt. I'm absolutely terrified of speaking Spanish out loud for whatever reason, and, what do you know, this class relies heavily on speaking. Great. But this last week I had a 180 degree confidence flip and now I'm getting more comfortable. Hopefully I can improve my speaking skills a bit. The best part is that my field experience this semester is in a third grade classroom and I'm psyched! I met my class on Tuesday and I have two kids from the class that I will be tutoring for half an hour of the 2 hours we spend in the class each Tuesday and Thursday. We will work on literacy, and I'm stoked!
The first time I worked as a hostess.
No, not the cupcakes. You cray. Rather, I started as a hostess at Nine Irish Brothers, an Irish pub on campus. Though I just started on August 25, I've already worked about 30 hours. It's intense! And I have a whole new respect for those working in the restaurant business. I never realized just how picky and needy people are, haha. But it is quite the interesting job and though it can be exhausting at times, I do enjoy it and the people I work with. Although, I would be content with never rolling silverware ever again in my life.
The first time we hosted family dinner this year. And the first time I did other cooking.
So as you may or may not know, Annie, Jess, and I started a tradition called "Family Dinner" last year in which we cook a big meal for our friends on Sunday nights and all get together and eat and laugh and talk and hang out. We hosted our first one of the year last week and it was quite a success! I broke out the crock pot and we made pulled pork and pasta salad and (excuse my language) slutty brownies. It was so delicious, and it was great to see everyone again; even Elaine came up last weekend from Indy at her co-op to stay with us and help with dinner! I've also tried making a couple other things, like broccoli cheddar chicken breasts (way too thick for the 45 minute cooking time...try an hour and 20 minutes) and quinoa-stuffed bell peppers (way too much garlic). Hey, it's all a learning experience. This week's Family Dinner menu? Breakfast for dinner! Pancakes and eggs and sausage. Nomnomnom.
The first time we met our neighbors.
Yeah, we did the neighborly thing and made cookies for everyone in our apartment complex, hoping that there would be some cool people we might wanna chill with down the line. Everyone we met seemed pretty nice, but we honestly don't see anyone like ever. Oh well. At least our across the hall neighbors have a good taste in music. And yes, we did in fact twerk to their music outside their door in the hallway. #noshame. Except on Tuesday they were blasting music until 12:30 am and chanting, "USA! USA! USA!" for no apparent reason.
The first time we hung stuff on the walls, aka this is why we aren't interior decorators.
I bought these really cute black cube shelves to hang on my walls, right? Because nothing says college like online shopping. But anyways, you kind of have to be a carpenter or architect or interior designer or God or something, because these shelves are impossible to hang up. Okay, you actually just need a drill and that's it, but right, like us three 20 year old girls own a drill. So Annie tried to manually drill a hold into my wall to hang the first shelf. It wasn't big enough for the screw anchor. So she tries to hammer the anchor into the wall. It bends the anchor. So she tries a smaller anchor. That goes right through the wall. At this point we're just like, craaaaaaaap, there's a giant hole in the wall what do we do? But then Annie, miracle worker that she is, managed to shove the big anchor back in and it held and that's how we got one shelf up. We decided to wait for an actual drill for the other two before we accidentally knock the entire wall down.
The first time I went on a date with this guy.
So, there's a guy. And I'm gonna be honest: I'm really into him. Here are the quick facts: his name is Yashas, he's a senior at U of I, and he's basically amazing. I've visited him at school a couple times to go on dates and we've texted and/or Skyped every day for over two months. I've loved getting to know him, and even though it sucks that we are kinda sorta far away from each other, I can't wait to see how things progress. More updates to come on that front, I'm sure. :)
Oh, and PS, I am still in love with apartment life.
Apartment 4, wut wutttt
First Family Dinner!
The first breakfast in the new place
Our command center with cubbies below!
Andddd basically we just like to take mirror selfies...
...that are really weird.
And sometimes we like to look like dudes.
But mostly we love to snuggle.
