Last Firsts

Senior year means the year of "last firsts" (last first football game, last first test, etc) and this week they began. I had my last first day of undergrad, and my last first week of school. It's been good, and although my workload isn't any less burdensome than the past semesters I'm finally only taking classes I want to take. This is the first semester I actually really wanted to take all the classes I am taking and it's the first time I can drop most of my classes if the work looks too hard or if they seem boring. I don't think I'll be doing that but still, it's a nice feeling. I'm in a good place to graduate, I have two classes left to take in the spring and other than that I'm just taking things I wanted to take. It's a very good feeling, and although studying for the GRE will take up much of my time this semester I think Fall 2010 will be a good few months. I'm looking forward to building my last homecoming float, going to football games, fishbowl Fridays, scruffs, and spending time with my friends.
As for what classes I'm taking:
Learning and Behavior: This class also has a lab in which we train a rat to press a lever for food, and do other classical and operant conditioning exercises with them. The class is about well, learning and behavior. Dr. Riley is pretty cool and I think it will be a good class.
Renaissance and Reformation: Once again the name is self explanatory, the class is about the renaissance in Europe and the reformation. I like the time period,and we get to write a research paper on basically whatever we want so that is a plus.
Psychology of Personal Relationships: probably going to be my favorite class this semester. It's all about how we form relationships, why we are attracted to who we are, challenges relationships face, etc, etc. All of it is empirically driven, so we look at a lot of real life studies. I love the professor, she's hilarious and the material is really interesting.
Extreme Deviance: I'm really excited about this one too. It's about people who don't follow societies norms, the consequences, how norm are formed, etc. We got to learn about all the weirdo's out there, like the German Cannibal for example.
Adolescent Development: my first FCS class, so I'm a little out of my element in this one because it's not history or psychology but it should still be good. We get to mentor kids in the Waco school district which will be interesting.
It should be a pretty good semester, and hopefully along the way I'll figure out what I'm doing next May.

An End to a Summer

As summer draws to a close my senior year at Baylor gets closer every day, and while I'm excited to get back and excited at the idea of being almost done with college the real world gets closer and closer every day. This summer was amazing, traveling around Europe was fantastic and something I will never have the chance to do again (at least not for 5 weeks, with first class tickets and passes into basically every museum) but it all passed too fast. It's weird that BGB is no longer something to look forward to but something behind me. As senior year looms I realize that I have no idea what I'll be doing or where I'll be living a year from now. It's a strange feeling not knowing what the future holds, it's even weirder not having a plan for how I want things to work out. In high school I knew exactly what I wanted and where I wanted to be when I graduated, this year I have no idea. I've always been a planner so thats weird for me not to know, or even have an idea of what I might want to be doing.
Leave it to me to pick a major that is basically unmarketable without graduate school. I'm taking the GRE, so grad school is definitely an option, I'm not sure if I'm ready for the 6 years of work a PhD would take but a masters degree is doable. Honestly I'd love to just have a job when I graduate, I'm ready to work and have my own place and get life going I don't really want to be in school any longer but I don't really know how to make that happen, or even how to start looking for a job I'd enjoy. I also don't feel like I have much hope in the job market with the amount of post-graduate friends I have who are still unemployed, but we'll see. I move back to Waco on Saturday and classes start Monday and I'm ready to see what senior year has in store. I can't believe my life at Baylor is almost over, but I'm excited to figure out what's next.
Also, my cat is cute:

Day the last

Packed and ready for home, I hope my suitcases don't go over the weight limit! I can't believe this trip is over, although Sweden feels like forever ago it feels like we've only been in London a week or two. It's weird to think I'll be on a plane tomorrow morning headed home to 100 degree heat and 13 days till school starts again. Today was bittersweet, after my final (which I aced) I came back for a nap and to finish packing and then Ashley, Meggan and I headed out to get one last crepe. After stopping at Lillywhites Ashley and I headed to Euston station to find a Virgin train to a fun looking location. Virgin trains serve free food and drinks in first class and we wanted to get a few free meals today. So we ended up on a train to Manchester, of course it was raining when we got there so we didn't see much of the city but it was still a really fun and relaxing day. We've just been hanging out downstairs with everyone and now I'm finishing up my packing and getting ready for bed and tomorrow. I'ts been amazing, and I don't really want to leave. It's hard to believe I ate my last breakfast here this morning and took my last tube ride and first class train ride this afternoon. I've got to get up at 5am, Houston here I come!

Day 32

Only one more day here after today, it's almost time to go home. I'm ready, I don't have any regrets and I think I've seen everything/ been everywhere I wanted to go here so it will be nice to be home. Today is gonna be a really chill day, just studying and packing (I hope everything fits!). Last night we went to Fabric, a really cool club here. It has three dance floors all with different DJs and was a lot of fun. I'm using this post to upload a few videos from the Military Tattoo that I took.

Before Fabric

Me and Meggan outside the bar downstairs

Citadel, the group from South Carolina

Army Physical Training Group

 Highland Dancers

UPDATE: Today I pet a squirrel. It was the highlight of my day. I do not have a picture of the petting event but one of my friends has a picture of me feeding the squirrel, for now you can this.

My squirrel friend eating the cracker I fed him. He was so cute, after eating a whole cracker sandwich he started burying pieces of the crackers under trees for later.

Day 30-31: Scotland!

Friday morning we hopped on a 10am train to Edinburgh Scotland for the night. When we got into town we checked in at Pollock Halls and went into town to eat and explore. We are Italian and wandered the Royal Mile watching street performers for awhile. We also visited The Elephant House where J.K Rowling started writing Harry Potter! We saw the field that inspired quidditch and a grave yard where a few of the characters came from. There was a McGonagall grave and even Tom Riddle!
That night we ate dinner at the Candy Bar, where you can get candy flavored drinks. It was good and we all had a jammy doughnut which was really good. We also had tickets to the Military Tattoo at Edinburgh Castle which was amazing! It's military bands from all over the world performing, there was even a motorcycle team and the army physical training corps doing gymnastics! It was really cold but the rain held out which was nice.
This morning we were going to go hiking but it was raining so we went into town instead and I climbed up Calton hill which had an amazing view all over Edinburgh.

View outside of our dorms

The Royal Mile of insanity. There are street performers everywhere

Outside St. Giles church

St. Giles

A cool performer who painted upside down!

The birthplace of Harry Potter

The cemetery J.K Rowling got inspiration from

List of important graves

Quidditch field

!

Tom Riddle's grave!

The Castle

Me with the castle in the rain

At Candy Bar

Walking up to the Tattoo

Me with Edinburgh Castle

Girl Guides flowers

Heading up the royal mile

The flags

Military Tattoo!

The Castle from our seats

Opening of the Tattoo

Drummers

Trumpets

The big bagpipe band, it was a mixture of people from all the groups

Bagpipes and drumlines

Poland, they had traditional instruments in their group

Axe fighting

The motorbike crew, these kids were like 16

Citadel from South Carolina

Highland Dancers from New Zealand

Jordanian rifle group

The army physical training group

British military band

Scotland at night

The cemetery near the Governors house

More gravestones, the cemeteries here are very different, lots of big above grounds plots

The governor's house in the background

Scottish-American soldier memorial and David Hume memorial behind it

Up on Calton Hill 

View of Edinburgh

Looking out to the sea, it started raining here

Another building on the hill

View from the train. The ride was very pretty when it wasn't raining.

Day 29

I know this post is a few days late, but I've been in Scotland (more about that in the next blog) and didn't have internet access. Well anyway today was the last day of class here in London! After class we headed to the Imperial War Museum which is located in the old Bedlam Psychiatric Hospital. The museum is very cool, lots of interactive stuff, real weapons, tanks, uniforms and all sorts of cool historical stuff. There is even a simulation for being in the trenches (very smelly) and living through the blitzkrieg in WWII. We started at the bottom and worked our way up so we walked through WWI, WWII, Modern warfare, crimes against humanity (genocide), and ended up in the Holocaust museum which takes up 2 1/2 floors and has a model of Auschwitz and a lot of other really cool stuff. After the museum Michael, Ashley and I went to Elephant and Castle for lunch. It was very good, I drank a cider and we all split calamari and I ate a chicken sandwich. The pub is a really chill place with a nice outside area.
After lunch we set off for Baker street to visit the Sherlock Holmes house, which is at 221B Baker street and is set up just like a Victorian flat. You can see Holmes's study and bedroom and Watson's study and there are wax figures of the characters and weapons and other things from the books. Next door to the Sherlock Holmes house is The Beatles Store, so we went in there also. They have all sorts of autographed pictures and albums you can buy, some of which was very expensive (we saw Revolver for 800 pounds and a signed picture for 1500). From there we set of in search of Abbey Road, which is actually a pretty busy street and it's difficult to stage a photo on.
That night we all went to Ice Bar, you reserve a table for 45 min and you get a free drink and a big parka to put on. It was really fun, and everything inside is made of ice!

Imperial War Museum

Part of the Berlin Wall

Inside the museum

To the Trench! 

Inside the trench, it was dark and smelly

WWII section

The famous Elephant and Castle!

At lunch

Outside the tube stop

Waiting to go inside.

Looking out from the upstairs study

Me dressed up

Watson's study

Wax figures

The Beatles Store!

Abbey Road

Awkward photos while dodging cars

Buckingham Palace

Ready to go out, trying the absinthe from Paris

The girls

New friends at Ice bar!

Me looking through the ice

With our awesome parkas