20!

I am 20 today! As always, I feel as though the year can't possibly have gone so fast...but it was a good one. Hopefully this coming year will be just as good.

sweet in the morning

I found this poem on a worksheet my english teacher handed out a while ago, and realized that it described how I write exactly. Here is the reason

Why I Am Not a Painter
by Frank O'Hara

I am not a painter, I am a poet.
Why? I think I would rather be
a painter, but I am not. Well,

for instance, Mike Goldberg
is starting a painting. I drop in.
"Sit down and have a drink" he
says. I drink; we drink. I look
up. "You have SARDINES in it."
"Yes, it needed something there."
"Oh." I go and the days go by
and I drop in again. The painting
is going on, and I go, and the days
go by. I drop in. The painting is
finished. "Where's SARDINES?"
All that's left is just
letters, "It was too much," Mike says.

But me? One day I am thinking of
a color: orange. I write a line
about orange. Pretty soon it is a
whole page of words, not lines.
Then another page. There should be
so much more, not of orange, of
words, of how terrible orange is
and life. Days go by. It is even in
prose. I am a real poet. My poem
is finished and I haven't mentioned
orange yet. It's twelve poems, I call
it ORANGES. And one day in a gallery
I see Mike's painting, called SARDINES.

all the days

Wow. My last update was way back in February, and here I am at the end of March! There are only three weeks left in the semester, which is just crazy if you ask me. Where did it all go? Waay back at the beginning of February, I felt like it was never going to end.

Of course, I was also in chemistry. Chem 130 was the bane of my existance, no joke. I spent about 10 hours a week on the homework, and 5 hours a week in class, which is 15 hours more than I actually wanted to be spending on chemistry. Then Kyle came up with the bright idea of dropping it, which I did. Now, I am a much happier person! My papers have improved immensely as well. It's amazing how much better I can write when I don't have CACH online homework hanging over my head.

I also have more time to think about Arabic now, which is all to the good, since it is my major and all. I really, really love it! It surprises me sometimes, because I have a lot of trouble with it, and I get frustrated with the complexity of the grammar. It's a much more specific language than English, so it's quite easy to get lost in it. My textbook is also fond of giving us odd, seemingly random vocabulary. For example, by the end of my first month of Arabic, I could say, "My father is a translator of Arabic at the United Nations," but I didn't know how to say "Excuse me, where is the bathroom?" or "Help!" or "I'm lost," which are usually pretty standard introductory things. Now, I know how to say those things too, thankfully. One of my classmates mentioned that we still don't know colors, however. My teacher said they don't actually pop up until lesson 20 in this book, but she's going to try to teach them to us shortly. Lesson 20? Who are these people? Regardless, I'm happy with my choice of languages. Coupled with my Arab Culture class, I'm learning a lot about the Middle East in general, and it's fun.

Michigan DanceSport Competition!

On Saturday, we hosted the biggest ballroom competition in the Midwest here at Michigan! My partner and I did really well; we placed in 6 events, coming in 3rd out of 70 couples twice. These are a couple of pictures; not everyone has posted them yet, so hopefully more will follow. When I'm in a red shirt, we are doing standard and smooth (waltz, tango, foxtrot, quickstep) and when I'm wearing pink we're doing Latin and rhythm (cha cha, rhumba, jive, swing).

after the storm

We in Ann Arbor were the happy recipients of that Mid-Western ice storm you may have heard about. It was pretty awful while it was happening, but it has been really beautiful the past two days with all the trees coated in ice. Today the sun came out, and I couldn't resist the temptation to run outside with my camera. Finally...winter weather!

Merry Chrismas (Eve)!

I am home!
Merry Christmas everyone!

studying...nothing but studying

I feel like I have been studying or taking tests for a very looooong time...even though it hasn't even been a week. I had a huge project for my Global Change class that I spent about 25 hours on during the previous two weeks, so I'm guessing that's why I'm so unenthusiastic now. My last final is on Tuesday, at 10:30 am, so I really need to be studying, but I can't get myself to focus. It's really annoying, and quite worrying as well, since there's so much to do. So what do I do?
I put pictures up on the internet. Yaaay, college!

I wanted to show everyone a little bit of Michigan...this is the Arb, behind my dorm.
These are of the Huron River, which runs through the Arb.