Winter Quarter Blues

Seattle is notorious for its bleak winter months where rain is plentiful and sunshine is in very short supply. People buy artificial sun lamps to help boost their everyday mood and according to unreliable but apparently popular news sources, suicide attempt rates increase.
None of these things seem true in my experience except for the "happy light" part. Many people do indeed buy sun lamps and spend time sitting in front of them in the morning.
Sun or no sun, Seattle always brightens my day. There are some morning where I wake up and just think, "Do I really live here? This is so cool! I must be the luckiest person alive!" Seattle is beautiful all the time. Rain, snow, hail, and sun, each element brings a new and beautiful perspective to this green and wonderful place; and this winter quarter I have experienced all of them.

Winter quarter started out fairly normal with cloudy days that brought random misting rain and sporadic hours of sunshine. It wasn't until about the third week in that things got crazy. I am sure it was mentioned in the news all over the country, but Seattle reached freezing temperatures for about a week. With the freezing air came frozen rains and before I knew it Seattle had turned into a winter wonderland comparable to the earliest snow storms in Utah--meaning it snowed about three inches but only a half an inch actually stuck. Seattle, being the hilly city that it is, tends to not handle snow well. Any snow that does stick to the roads turns to ice around 4:30pm when it becomes dark and people on the road start abandoning their cars and walking rather then attempting to brave the ice on wheels. The greater Seattle area (which is bigger than the Salt Lake Valley) only has 30 snow plows to help clear the roads during the rare snowstorms and so anytime it does snow, the city essentially shuts down until it is warm enough for the ice to melt. This year it stayed frozen for an entire week. An entire week of no classes, no work, and a chance for everyone in Seattle to gawk at me as I walk around in my shorts and flip-flops in snow, wind, and freezing temperatures. Most people would love such a care free week. I however am not most people and except for the last part, the whole week made me rather frustrated. Call me a nerd, but I just don't like not having things to do. I like going to class and learning! I even like working. I do have to admit that having people stare at me and ask me if I was crazy was kind of entertaining, but it always gets a little old after the first few people.

Once the "Snowpocalypse" was over, life went back to normal for most of the quarter. Normal is of course a relative term, but it felt normal and it felt good. I have sincerely enjoyed all of my classes this quarter. I will be sad to see this quarter end, but I am also excited for the chance to witch up my schedule and begin a new routine. I realized that I like having routines, but not for much longer than 11weeks. I get bored quite easily so it is probably good that my schedules get to change more frequently than they would in a semester school.

My personal biggest accomplishment for this quarter was finally submitting my scholarship application. I applied for this scholarship that will hopefully give me enough money to help me do both a summer domestic language study program as well as an autumn study abroad in South Africa where I will be able to further my language skills and actually put them to use. I seriously picked the most obscure language to want to learn, but luckily the government thinks it is an important obscure language and wants to give money to people who want to study it.

The application process was truly rigorous and I feel so grateful to be done. However, I think the anxiety of waiting for an answer is even more painful than actually working on the application. I won't hear about whether or not I get it until late April or early May. The suspense may actually kill me, but I will try to stay alive to receive the news and tell everyone about it. I know the world will not actually come to an end if I don't get it, but sometimes it feels that way. I have been planning to go to South Africa to study for so long that the possibility of me actually going in the fall seems almost surreal; of course if I don't get the scholarship it really will be. I suppose I will then just have to resort to plan B, and maybe C, and D until I finally get there.

As I mentioned in a previous post, all my roommates left for study abroads and I therefore had three new roommates move in. It has been an interesting experience to adjust to strangers as living companions again. It feels like freshman year all over again, but so far it has not been bad. I haven't been as happy and comfortable as I was with my other roommates, but I guess that is to be expected because we were all such great friends and we were very similar.

Luckily, I got to say goodbye to two of my lovely roommates just before they left. In honor of our gold kitchen utensils, we had a farewell pirate dinner. We had fresh fish from Pike's Place and even turned the table cloth into our napkin in a true pirate style.

(We don't have a grill so we baked our fish with lots of butter and spices.)

(Our feast!)

(Rommie love!)

(Argh! We are Pirates!!)

Although the fish was delicious, I think the best part of the night was our very creative dessert. We had Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream--late night snack with Jimmy Fallon flavor--and potato chips. Judge us if you want, but I dare you to try it. The salty sweet combination is deadly good.

All in all it has been a good quarter. I am sad to see it go but I am excited for change. Finals are almost here and the time to kick my butt into high gear has come. I guess I will have to go running more to deal with the stress, but hey, hopefully that will just help motivate me even more to get a fast finish time in the half-marathon I am planning to run in May.
Such is life...