My Last Day as a Teenager :(

I do not know how I feel about this. I have enjoyed being a teenager for the past seven years and I am not sure if I am ready to give that up yet. It just feels weird. I cannot believe that tomorrow I will be twenty years old.

And what will I be doing for my birthday tomorrow? Well, probably not much. I have my lovely entrepreneurship class from 6-10 tomorrow night and then I will be heading home. I guess I can cuddle with my puppies once I get home. That will be fun. I am hoping one of them will sleep with me. Last time I was home R.P. did not sleep with me and it made me sad. Granted I did not have to worry about getting bit in the middle of the night. Sometimes he gets cranky if I move and attacks my legs. He is a crazy dog.

Anyways, I will be spending my Saturday night with a bunch of my girlfriends eating sweets and chilling out in our pajamas. I love pajama parties. You do not have to worry about how your hair looks or what your wearing cause you are all wear pajamas. How awesome!!!

Work, Work, Work, Work, Work

All I have to say is that the next 10 weeks of my life are going to be a pain in the rear end. Every waking moment I will either be in class or doing homework. I am taking five classes, 16 credits, this term which is pretty usual for me. This term is just ridiculous though. Every class I have requires so much outside work.

I sat down yesterday and went through all of my syllabuses so that I could organize my planner. Here is a picture of it. Every little round sticker you see is either a test or paper or assignment due. I am not going to have a life for the next two months. I already can't wait until Christmas break and it is only week two of classes!

And then there are the papers. One of my classes is online and is called Culture and Gastronomy. It is a very intensive writing class about the history and culture of food. It requires a lot of reading and a one thousand word paper every week. Luckily the information for the papers are posted on Fridays and not due until Tuesdays, which gives me the whole weekend, but that means I am going to be spending a lot of my weekends reading and writing papers on top of all of the other homework I have to do.

The first paper for this class is due this Tuesday. I have to "make a case for cooking not fire as a 'revolution' in the progress towards civilization." I actually feel like I could write a lot about this. I just need to sit down with all the books and articles we had to read and go over them making sure that I use as much information as possible from these resources. I think that this is what Chef Bottone really wants. He wants to see that we read what we needed to and used the reading to guide our response papers. I think I am going to spend a few hours tonight getting all my thoughts together and actually writing them down on paper.

I think my dilemma for all of the papers that I will have to write this term is how to begin. I always feel like I need a good opening to my papers and sometimes it can take me a while to find the right words. I wish that I could write my academic papers like I write my blogs. For my blogs I just start writing. I don't really think about it, I just let my thoughts flow. Obviously for academic papers you have to be more careful about grammatical errors and all of that stuff, but I think I need to just start our writing my academic papers like I write my blogs. Maybe it will help all my ideas come out of my brain a little easier, and quicker.

And Classes Begin Once Again

Well, fall term started today. I know some people are probably thinking it is September 21st, why on earth am I starting my fall classes today. Well, that is how Drexel's schedule works. Gotta love being on the quarter system.

Anyways, even though it is already September 21st, I still feel like I should have more time before I have to go back to school. I had a full three weeks off, that was absolutely wonderful, and I should be ready to come back to school, but I am not.

I think it is because there has been so much confusion with the schedule of my classes and the instructors. Up until last Thursday, we had no idea who was teaching which classes and when the were definitely going to be. And then there were the last minute e-mails telling us what books we needed to order and that we needed to have them the first week of class. Not cool. Sometimes you just can't get books in three days. Well unless you want to spend millions of dollars and I definitely do not.

And for the first time in my college career, I am taking an online class. I have had classes where most of the work was submitted via the Internet or we had to post on discussion boards, but I have never had a true online class. One where there is not a scheduled class time and if for some reason you need to contact the instructor, the only way to do it is through e-mail. That kind of scares me. I like being able to go to school and talk to a professor face to face if I have a problem. Oh well. I guess it is just something I will have to get used to.

Anyways, my first day of classes went well. I really cannot complain, except for the fact that I wish I was still on vacation!!!

The Rest of the Week at the Beach

Luckily the weather cooperated for the second half of the week. Wednesday it was still a bit cloudy, but sunny. All of us ran straight out to the beach and stayed out there for hours. Well, except for Adam. He decided to walk to the lighthouse he could see in the distance. Two hours later he stumbles back and says that after an hour of walking the lighthouse did not look any closer. I think he was trying to walk to the lighthouse on a different island. Oops.

And of course we all got a bit burnt since why would any of us think to put sunscreen on when it is cloudy out. Bad idea. Adam looked like a lobster and I was constantly covering my whole body in aloe.

Thursday it rained again, but I think after all the sun we got on Wednesday, we were fine with staying in the house all day. The guys played many games of Tiger Woods on the Xbox and I sat there and watched them, all day long.

Friday was beautiful. Adam and I took a long walk in the sand and then spent the rest of the day fishing for blue crabs at the nearby Whalehead Club. We caught a lot of crabs, but most of them were not big enough so we had to put them back in the water. The rule at the club was that the crabs had to be at least five inches wide if we were to keep them. At the end of the day we wound up with eight blue crabs in our styrofoam cooler. We decided that it would be too much work to cook just eight of them, so we just put them back in the water for the next person to catch.

Saturday was nice too. We spent the majority of the day at the beach, spraying sunscreen on almost every half an hour. We even played some football for a bit. I am officially horrible at football. Later that night we went out to a seafood buffet and ate a million crab legs. The place we went to had nine or ten different types of crab legs. I did not even know that that many existed.

Sunday was check out day, so we all got up early and cleaned out the whole house, mainly the kitchen. We left the house by ten and all went our separate ways. Adam and I stopped at Wings and then went to Jockey's Ridge to go play in the sand. It was so beautiful. Then we drove home, stopping at Pizza Inn along the way; another place I had never been to before. It was yummy, especially the pizzerts!!!!

Day 1 of the Beach Trip

I got the pleasure of waking up to the sound of rain drops this morning. If I was anywhere other than the beach I would be completely fine with it. Unfortunately, we are at the beach in a beautiful beach house with a direct pathway onto the sand and it is raining. Boohoo!

So instead of bathing in the sun all day, all eleven of us spent the day in our pajamas playing games on the Wii and the Xbox. We would have jumped into the hot tub, but it isn't working. Last night we turned it on and jumped in to find that it was more like a "warm" tub. None of the buttons worked and it was not very hot. And when we went to turn it on today, it did not turn on at all. Oops. We called the pool guy and hopefully it will be fixed tomorrow.

Deb and I jumped in the pool for a few minutes this afternoon with Ladybug. It was cold and I'm not sure how much she liked being thrown in the water. We did find a crab chilling out near the steps. He looked like he had been bleached which was probably from all of the chlorine in the pool. Adam took him back out to the ocean so he could swim free.

Adam and I took a walk on the beach a bit later, looking for sand dollars. They are so pretty. Unfortunately, we did not find any as of yet, but we are on a mission to find one.

Then Deb and I made dinner which was a yummy stir fry with chicken, broccoli, red bell peppers, onions, bean sprouts, and water chestnuts. And then we had hot fudge brownie sundaes for dessert. What could be better than that?

Vacation Time

I'm finally on my summer break. Yay!!!!

I know this is kind of deceiving because most people have already started back to school or are about to start in a few days. Technically I was supposed to have final exams up until yesterday for my summer term, but luckily I only had take-home finals and was done a week early.

I was very excited that I had three weeks off in between summer and fall terms. I even threw a dessert party for all of my fellow culinary and hospitality students at my apartment last Thursday night. I made more than seven different mini desserts and everyone had a blast. Unfortunately I had to send everyone home around midnight because I had a practical the next morning. Next time I'll make sure I will have a party on a Friday or Saturday night.

Anyways, about 7:30 the night of my party, I got a call from the security guard in my building telling me that I had a piece of certified mail that I needed to come down and sign for. As I got in the elevator to go downstairs, I was thinking to myself why on earth would I be getting a piece of "certified mail" at 7:30 at night. So, I finally get out of the elevator and Adam is standing there with a suitcase. I freaked out. I was so happy to see him that I was shaking. He drove all the way up from NC to surprise me and meet all of my friends. I was super excited.

We played Rock Band all weekend and drove back down to NC on Tuesday. I was so glad that I had someone to drive with. It is a long drive and it can get boring when you are all by yourself. We even stopped for Arby's on the way down. It was yummy.

Wednesday we relaxed and watched I Love You Man. It was a good movie. Then Thursday we went to N.C. State's opening football game. It was the first football game I had ever been to and it was a lot of fun. We spent most of the day tailgating with Adam, his roommate Beth, and a bunch of their friends, and then watched the game at night. Unfortunately State lost, but it was still fun. I was amazed at how many people were there. I think Adam said around 60,000 people were in the stadium.

Then Friday morning we drove to Adam's parents' house and spent the past two days moving furniture around so they could get their hardwood floors refinished. Moving a green couch up the stairs was the highlight of the night. It took four of us to get it upstairs and we even had to take the door off so we could squeeze it through the door.

We are off to the beach tomorrow for the week to relax. I can't wait.