A Summary of the Past Semester (Holy Crap, It's Been Too Long)

So yeah, really sorry it's been so long. Work and then college kept me on my toes like crazy. I suppose I could have put in a couple of posts, but at the time I didn't think of it. I apologize.

I suppose the best thing at this particular moment would be to give some sort of summary of the past few months. I'll start at the beginning. Without any input of my own, I happened to get the room I was assigned back in freshman year, two years ago. Good ol' Medlin Third East, #322. Finally got a roomie from Kentucky, too. Stephen's pretty cool, with strong convictions and tastes similar to mine. It was great seeing my friends from the last couple of years, as well as meeting all the new freshmen. We have a surprisingly high concentration of awesome freshmen in Medlin this year, especially on third floor. Almost nightly we'll have a group of us hanging out in the lobby, chatting, Facebooking, or even playing chess. Granted, while every cloud has a silver lining, conversely some silver linings are inside clouds. There is a tiny contingent of a few freshmen who insist on being, in a word, unruly. I won't mention names... I'll just say that efforts have been taken to deal with these people both by students and dorm staff, and these efforts will continue next semester until the crap is stopped.

Classes have been pretty good. Those that I had are: anthropological thought and theory, physical anthropology, intercultural communication, human geography, benevolence, tae kwon do, and modern Western culture. I liked them all for the most part. Anthro theory was interesting; we read the essays of prominent writers in various schools of anthropological thought and then reflected upon them. On the two exams, we critically applied them to modern situations. TKD is new to me, since I have never taken steps to learn a martial art in the past. However, it's fun, and helping to keep me fit. I should be a green belt when I return to school. My favorite class overall was intercultural communication. It involved various aspects of communication between people and problems involved. Apart from the book and lecture, we learned also from the anecdotes of Dr. Kailing, who spent significant time overseas, and each other. I found out a bit into the break that I wound up with all A's. Thank goodness; this was the busiest semester of my life, lol.

I took up some new things outside of class as well this semester. Most significant is that I have begun to learn Arabic. My good friend Roseanna, a Christian Palestinian (no, pro-Israelis, this is NOT an oxymoron) from Ramallah, worked with me for most of the semester, and we've gotten through the alphabet, some grammar and vocabulary, and past tense verb forms. Unfortunately school got crazy at the end of October, and I was unable to continue. We'll resume next semester, though.

Another isn't entirely new, but I hadn't done it regularly... character sheet RPGs. Since my friend JD did a short-lived one last spring, I hadn't done anything more with it. However, my friend Shawn started a Star Wars RPG that went for a good few sessions. Shawn DMed (that is, he was the dungeon/game master); JD and two others, Caesar and Jonathan, and I actually played. I even went to Dicehead with them and got my own dice, d20 (20-sided die) and all! It went pretty well until JD had his RPG binder stolen with his supplies and Caesar was forced to leave due to idiocy on the part of certain... offices. However, our will to play wouldn't die. Shawn drew up a new Dungeons and Dragons campaign (my first time playing it) that has developed a party of about nine people spanning most of the D&D classes. JD started another Star Wars RPG soon after, and we began having our weekend p.m. hours packed with dice-rolling awesomeness. My current characters are a halfling rogue (D&D) and a Chiss scoundrel (Star Wars) with a huge emphasis on hacking. The backstory was just recently finished on the latter, but the game should be good when it really gets going.

Athletically, Lee's done well. The women's soccer team got their second consecutive NAIA national championship, and the volleyball team got to the Final Four, the furthest they'd ever been in the tournament, before falling to Georgetown College. And the few basketball games I saw before the semester was out were great and gave hope that we would do well this season.

I arrived home from Christmas break on the 9th of December, and got my wisdom teeth removed that Monday. It wasn't nearly as bad as I thought. They put me under and had everything done in an hour and a half or so. The first day out of surgery was awkward since the back of my jaw hurt every time I took a drink, and my lower lip felt an inch thick from the Novocaine. I was given Vicodin and penicillin to take; after about four days I barely needed any pain meds. Couldn't eat solid food for a while, but that just meant I could eat that much more yogurt (which I like, btw). I'm pretty much back to normal now though; just gotta keep the new vacancies in my mouth clean for a while, haha.

After all this, I'm pretty much ready to start work for a bit next week. The rest of this break should be good, followed by what looks like a great upcoming semester. I won't leave you hanging like I have the past few months... I'll actually keep you posted. :-P