It being a three-day weekend due to Labor Day, a lot of people have gone home, my roommate included. Having done most of my homework, and pretty much run out of intersting things to do in my dorm, I decided to head downtown and check out the Smithsonian this afternoon. I originally thought I’d end up going by myself, but I met another Trinity girl on our metro shuttle who was headed there as well, so we went together. It’s really a cool place, just huge, pretty buildings everywhere … I went to the National Museum of Art (gorgeous), very briefly into the Air and Space Museum (ridiculously overcrowded), and lastly to the Hirshorn (sculpture museum, very cool architecture). It’s a bit of a pain to get down there from here (shuttle, metro, Metro Center transfer, metro, and then back again), but certainly worth it, I’m sure I’ll be going back. Requisite touristy photos are below.

Yay me, I just had my first full day of college classes! My geography class is my earliest one (9 AM, oh joy), and looks like it’s going to be the most challenging to keep up with; that’s not a freshmen-level course per se, so the teacher really sort of jumped right into things (as in, we’ve got a 3-page paper due in two weeks). My other teachers are going much slower, being as we’re freshman. There was also a somewhat awkward moment in that class in which the teacher said offhandedly “hey, there’s an assignment for next week, find out what ‘desiccated’ means”. Me being me, I jumped in with “dehydrated blah blah” while he attempted to shush me. Oh, guess he meant that as an actual assignment, oops. It didn’t seem as serious next to the 3-page paper.

My second class (Communication) is taught by a really lovely professor from Dominica, who seems like she’s going to be a lot of fun. Her assignments are really varied and look like they’ll be interesting and fun as well, so I’m looking forward to that course.

My third is my Critical Reading Seminar with my advisor, who is very cool, and it seems like the coursework and whatnot is going to be very reasonable, so that should go fine.

Tomorrow I’ve got english and math (gah), and then I’ve got a 4-day weekend (with which to try and get started on all of these assignments and reading materials of course).

In mostly unrelated news, somehow all of the food people already know my name, and as soon as I show up they start pointing out which dishes are vegetarian; score one for small schools!

Apparently all of the school calendars got changed since the last time I really looked at them: I’ll be home for the summer starting May 2, not June 2. Which I’m happy about … I never thought I’d miss home the way I’m starting to. I’m of course hoping to be happy down here, but I’m starting to develop a new appreciation for where I grew up, so being at home for 4 months is fully welcome.

This week was interesting. We’ve had orientation all day, every day this week; that’s talks, meetings, field trips, practice classes, more meetings, and workshops, 8:30 AM to 4 PM or later, Monday to Thursday. We’re all pretty tired, we learned a lot and met a lot of people though.

I went on two field trips, both of which were very cool—one to the National Museum of Women in the Arts, and one to Capitol Hill, both with some of the awesome TU faculty. Photos are below, more are on Flickr (link in the sidebar)!

Convocation was today, which went fine. Classes start Wednesday, so I’ve got 4 days to freak myself out over college-level work and obsessively pore over my textbooks in an attempt to not be utterly lost when I get to class. And I’ve got a call in to my sensei at home to talk about the dojo down here and what I’m going to do about my training … I really hope that can get at least somewhat resolved, I’m not prepared to not be training in some way, to lose that much of myself. If you are in NH and got the email with my cell number in it, that means that I like you, like talking to you, and would therefor like you to call me if/when you feel like it!

I went to karate at the dojo here last night. And it wasn’t good. They do almost everything differently from the way we do things at my dojo, but I maybe could have adjusted to that. But teachers make or break a school, and suffice it to say that I don’t think I can stand to work with one of their teachers. Karate is so central to my life, so essential for me to be happy and do well. I do not want to adjust to a new dojo, lose all of my techniques from my old dojo, and have to work with teachers I can’t deal with. I do not want to not do karate. I do not want to be without my senseis. I do not want to adjust to life here, to try and find other things to fill this massive space. I want to go home.

Just went to my first floor meeting. Apparently because we’re freshmen, we don’t get visitation until the beginning of October. So, I can leave campus and see people who are in town, but I can’t have people in my room til October. And I’m kinda lonely and I know nobody here, so that sucks.

So, we got to TU all right. Long drive, but it did end, and campus looks really pretty! I haven’t really been out yet (just unpacking and hanging with my roommate), so I’m just posting photos, more verbiage later. There’s more photos up on my Flickr (link in the sidebar). Love you all, call/email/randomly visit/send me mail!

I just had my last training session at my dojo with two of my senseis. My dojo has just been the best possible place for me to grow up in, and my karate family is made up of the most awesome people you could find … I am so, so lucky to have had that, and I can only hope that the other places my life takes me will have people as amazing as the ones who are currently down the street from me, but who in a few days will become unbearably far away.

Trinity just posted all of the info regarding which ridiculously overpriced textbooks everybody has to buy for our various courses. Buying all of my textbooks new, from the TU bookstore: $333.44. Renting most of my textbooks online, and buying only two (that can’t be had anywhere else) directly from TU: $227.53 Woo!