Final Days of Summer

I can't believe summer is coming to a close already. Although I feel as if I've been home from Europe for much more than 3 months, it seems as if I just moved up to St. Ben's to begin my summer. I moved in to my fall housing last Monday and oh how I love it! I'm in a 4-person apartment with 2 full bathrooms, a kitchen, living room, FOUR bedrooms and our very own laundry machines. It's amazing really. I'm very much looking forward to having my own bedroom and being able to study, read, go to bed whenever I want and not have to worry about when my roommate will be doing those things. I'm also excited to just have my own space. I've never minded having roommates but every now and then we all just needed a place to go that's our own... to shut the door and get away from everything. Looking ahead to the semester to come I think being able to do just that will be important to maintaining my sanity.

In other news... my host sister, Leticia, left for Cleveland on Thursday. She was here for about 3 1/2 weeks and as shy as she is, I think she had a great time. We had our moments of frustration, mainly with trying to find a calling card. In Spain I was able to find/buy a calling card for 5 euros which gave me about 6 to 7 hours of call time to the US while we couldn't find anything comparable for Leticia to use. She paid $20 for one that gave her 37 minutes, $10 for another that gave her 40-some minutes, and then $20 for one that gave her about 70 minutes. I felt terrible that our calling cards here are so terrible!

Here's a picture of Leticia and I on the bus for my sister's bachelorette party (she had a great time at it!) Oh... and the person creeping in the background is my beloved cousin, Sara.

After taking Leticia to the airport Thursday and seeing her through security I headed home to SC for a night at which point I got bored and received permission to clean my little sister's room. She agreed enthusiastically as she was told it had to be cleaned before my other sister's wedding in September and she will not be home before then. If you've ever been to my house it's pretty likely you know what my sister's room would have looked like before I got to it. I don't know that I've ever seen it clean before. All I told her is that I would clean it for her... I never said how much. Let's hope she's not planning to read my blog before September because I'm planning to let her find out for herself that I cleaned under the bed, rearranged her shelves/small furniture and also re-hung things on her walls. Everything she had in there is still there, but after about 8 hours of labor it looks a bit different. I really hope she likes it!

On Friday morning I mowed our lawn with the riding mower. I've used it before but I always forget how much fun it was. Growing up we only had a push-mower and my older sister and I were the ones that mowed the lawn when we were told we had to. By the time my little brother was old enough to start mowing my parents bought a riding lawn mower and my brother went to town on it leaving me happily not mowing the lawn. Besides for a few extra circles around trees every now and then I feel as if I did a fine job accomplishing that task!

Now that I'm back up at St. Ben's I've been a bit lonely in this apartment. 2 of my 3 roommates will move in for good on Wednesday but until then it's lonely days for me. Last night I bought a bottle of wine and drank a glass or two while trying to finish putting my room together. I also put my itunes on shuffle and despite the very eclectic collection I have, it only played classical, Norah Jones, and Nicklecreek in the 2 or so hours I had it on shuffle. I never knew itunes could read my mood. This evening I headed to the lake at SJU where I sat on my blanket in the grass and finished reading a great book. On my walk back to my car I ran in to a friend from my Spain trip, we had some good laughs, he showed me his new apartment, and then I came home only to cook supper for myself and sit alone eating it, drinking another glass of wine, and watching CNN. What a great night. I'm headed to bed soon as I'm planning to start my day early since that tends to help me be more productive. I can't wait to get back to studying for the GRE! Which reminds me of my last thing before I sign off... does anyone out there feel confident in their basic math skills and want to take the quantitative portion of the GRE for me? I loved math in high school but have since forgotten way too much.