1. 18 credits is great. 18 credits is also a lot of work.

2. Be thankful for not having had Friday classes up til now. Starting next semester, I have an Arabic lab every Friday at 10 AM. Bah.

3. Springtime in DC = rain. Every day. Yes, the flowering trees and whatnot are all lovely. But they are also wet, because they are in the rain, which is not something that they tell you in touristy literature.

4. Turning work in early makes professors really, really happy for some odd reason. Happy professors write nice rec letters

5. Math doesn’t suck … at least, stat doesn’t suck. Calc and trig are still on the list of things I do not wish to do, ever, thanks very much.

6. Less than 6 hours of sleep makes me stupid. More than 8 may never happen again during a semester. Looks like 7 is about it.

7. DC housing is OMG EXPENSIVE. But so is living on campus, so yeah. Guess we can just change that to COLLEGE is OMG EXPENSIVE.

8. Holding down 1500 things at once is not something you do alone, it’s something that is only made possible by having awesome people supporting you and making you laugh and making sure that you know when stuff isn’t really as serious as you think it is. By the same token, the right people do not always just take you as you are, but push you and challenge you when you need that.

It’s been 4 days, 2 days of classes, and 2 Aikido classes since the Inauguration, so I’ve now had a chance to unwind a bit from the semi-madness that engulfed DC for the last week. A semi-madness which for me ended up involving 2 unofficial Inaugural Balls, the Lincoln Memorial Concert (Beyonce, Bono, Barack Obama, a bunch of other performers, and a ton of people, in case you were under a rock last weekend), and of course the Inauguration itself (final opinion: OMG CROWDED. But cool!). Oh, and somewhere in there I got to see Raina and Kavi, somehow It’s all been amazing (albeit cold … seriously, dresses should not be mixed with 10-degree weather, it’s just cruel), but I think pretty much everybody is happy that the tourists are beginning to disperse, the streets are re-opening, and we can all go back to looking at how cold it is outside and resolving to only go out to get between wherever we are and wherever the nearest Metro station is or whatever. Which is good, because I now have way too much homework to contemplate going out for anything anyways. Pictures on the Flickr, available by cell/email/etc, I’ll be home for the first week of March for Spring Break

Inauguration craziness has definitely hit DC, and we’re still a couple of days away from the actual event … I just spent all day out on the National Mall at the We Are One Inauguration concert, so I am dead tired, so suffice it to say that this is a truly awesome time to be in DC. Oh, and there are pictures up on my flickr A sample of the photos is below, and a complete overview blog post is forthcoming, sometime after it’s all over and things have settled down.

I kind of can’t believe it yet, but this semester is well and truly nearly over. Thanksgiving Break is next week—New York! Food! And … other stuff I guess, but mainly food!—followed (for me almost immediately, because I am a final-week-skipping schedule ninja) by Winter Break. Followed of course by another semester, but I am not going to be particularly enamored of being reminded of that fact during the next couple of months, thanks very much. I’ve been having a really good time in DC, but I am still definitely looking forward to heading home; 5 weeks of New Hampshire, my friends, my family, and nothing on my schedule but karate classes.

In the meantime, I’ve been fairly busy; my school workload has picked up a bit, as we’re coming up on finals, although it’s nothing unmanageable, plus I’ve been apartment-hunting with one of my friends (no, dorm life doesn’t suck here, but I’m irked by the food and the guest policies, so I’m looking at other options), plus people keep inviting me out to lunch and things … so I’m comfortably busy. I hope everybody’s doing well

I’m headed up to NYC for a visit with my dad and (some of) the rest of the family … leaving Thursday (the 11th) afternoon, coming back to DC on Sunday (14th) afternoon. I can taste the bagels already School is going pretty well, it’s super hot here but most of the classrooms are well air conditioned so we’re getting stuff done. Annnd that about covers everything!

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.

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!