This week is the last week of classes before finals week! Most of my last minute stuff was crammed into this week and next week actually won't be too bad.

Next Monday my Advanced Poetry class is having a reading for the chapbooks we made. Chapbooks are just short collections of poetry.. mine has 18 poems. We had to design and produce the books ourselves.. and I am still in the process of printing mine! My chapbook has serious, funny and running themes throughout and is titled "Fate Can Wait" because it was my favorite line from any of my poems and the collection kind of has underlying tones of chance circumstances.

Other final projects and assignments in the works are the graphic design + media arts website created by those of us in the interactive design class. Right now we are in the process of coding the website and I am anxious to see how it all turns out! I also have a take-home test in my lit class, which I also had to do a literary analysis and oral report for, but thankfully that is all over with. For media studies, we had to keep a journal of all the media we came in contact with for five consecutive days and then write an essay about our average media consumption. I found that I use the internet the most, followed by radio/music, tv, movies and magazines and books. For my honors class, we had to give a presentation and my partner Brooke and I did ours on the topic of "H1N1: 1918 and 2009." We basically just showed the similarities and differences between the two influenzas viruses and why there was a cause for alarm in 2009 (because the virus was very similar in structure to the virus of 1918 which kills millions).

Track is in full swing these days and we actually have our first track meet on Saturday. I will be running the 60 meter hurdles and 4x400 relay. I have not done either of these events in a very LONG time, so I am both excited and nervous for them. Because it is just a pre-season meet, we are not expected to run exceptionally well.. the coaches just want to see where we are at fitness-wise. However, I do want to impress them, as well as excel during my senior year!

Since I have not blogged in such a long time I have not yet told of my last Vespers experience. Vespers was on November 29 and we had two performances that night. It went amazingly well! Singing with the orchestra is such a beautiful experience and I honestly cannot believe how beautiful we sounded at each performance! We all sang with such emotion and feeling.. you could really tell the audition was feeling everything right with us. I still sad that it was my Vespers performance, but I can always come back next year and watch!

Next weekend is graduation and I have a few friends graduating, which will be sad :( But I am hoping it prepares me for next semester when I and the rest of my friends graduate! I can't believe how fast this year is going.. I am not ready to say goodbye, but I am ready to start a new chapter of my life! Grad school here I come!

Tomorrow is the first day of Thanksgiving break. I need this break soo bad. I don't have many plans, and I will end up doing some homework, but it will be great to be in a different place for a while.

Yesterday was our band concert. It went really well, and I am still getting compliments on it. I had a few flute solos and I guess I made some good impressions. Sometimes, I wish I could play professional flute in an orchestra. That would be cool.

Yesterday, we also sang at First Presbyterian Church in Sioux Falls for choir. Since some of their church members are singing with us at Vespers (which is next Sunday!), so we returned the favor and sang with them at their Sunday Service. We sang two mixed choir songs and one chamber choir song and I was really surprised and impressed with how well we sang. It made me even more excited for Vespers. For this performance, we went up to Sioux Falls on Saturday afternoon and actually stayed with church members (homestays). It was actually a really cool experience and I really liked my hostmom. We went out to eat at this really cool restaurant called Grille 26 and then we went to her house. I helped her make some puppy chow and then we watched Ratatouille. Even better, I got to sleep in a HUGE bed! She even made us breakfast-puff pancakes with apples, sausage, fresh fruit, and tea :)

It seems like everyone went home tonight for break, or perhaps its just all of my friends besides Gina. I might not even have any classes tomorrow, but I stuck around so I could pick up my brother in Sioux Falls tomorrow afternoon and make the rest of the trip home with him.

Guess what? Only one and a half weeks until Thanksgiving Break and then only two weeks until finals! I am so ready for this semester to be over. There were times when I questioned my major, questioned my extracurriculars, and questioned myself, wondering if I could handle everything I put on my plate. But I can finally see the finish line! It's just a hop, skip and jump away!

Speaking of hopping, skipping and jumping, track officially starts next week. I started working out this week though.. I was getting restless and I also wanted to get a jump start on training. We have a new assistant coach this year who will be helping us with strength and conditioning. So far, I have done a few lifting workouts and I am super sore. But I know that weight training is something I need to do to be a stronger runner.. my little arms right now can't propel me!

My online portfolio project was due today. The theme was a flower garden outside, so I had a sky and clouds and grass as the background, and then I had flowers pop up when you rolled over the links. Its cute. And I like it more than the last portfolio I did because it actually has a theme. And I have more work to display on it now ;P

My toe injury is healing, slowly but surely. The nail hasn't shown any signs yet of falling off, but just give it time and I'm sure it will. It's still purple and gross, so I am glad that the weather has gotten cold so I can only wear shoes and no sandals.

This past weekend was Family Weekend and there were a bunch of activities going on. On Friday night there was bowling, but my friends and I got distracted and ended up going pretty late into it and didn't get a lane.. so we played DJ instead and it ended up still being a good time. Saturday was a super busy day for me. I helped at the GPAC cross country meet because it was held in Yankton this year and then I had to hurry back to the school to give tours for the campus visit day. I hadn't given a tour in over a month, but its just like riding a bike.. you never forget how to do it! Later that day, I had to play pep band for the two basketballs games and in the evening I went to the fall play. It was such a good play and I had a lot of friends in it, which I think made it even better! It was very cute and senitmental and everyone did a great job. On Sunday my mom came over because I was playing flute for the Family Mass. I played "The Prayer" which you may have heard before (by Celine Dion :)). We also went to the Family Weekend Brunch.

It will be nice to go home in about a week. It won't be much of a break, since I will have several papers due and much reading to accomplish for when I get back, but it will be nice to just get away from campus for a while. I am excited to see some friends too that I haven't seen all summer. Oh, and of course, do some Black Friday shopping!

This week, I thought my soccer career was going to end early. At our game on Wednesday against Dakota Wesleyan, with 40 seconds left in the second half, I went to kick a ball and I got it, but a DWU defender went to kick too, and got my big toe. I went down hard, but got up like a champ since there was no point in leaving the field for the last 40 seconds. Over the next two days, I had a very purple and swollen toe. The athletic trainer had to drill a hole in my toenail TWICE to drain the blood underneath and relieve the pressure from it. I sat out from practice those two days because my toe hurt too much to wear shoes. Yesterday, we had another game, and I wasn't sure if I would be able to play. So I went to the trainer again and since my toe still hurt to touch, he sent to the clinic to get an xray to see if it was broken. It was my first ever xray and I had to go by myself so I was nervous. But, it turns out my toe was not broken after all, just severly bruised. The doctor showed me the xray image and I saw all my little foot bones perfectly in a row. Except there was some pretty visible swelling too. She said I should not practice until it no longer hurts to put a shoe on... so hopefully I don't have to miss next Wednesday's game too! My mom and brother, and my friend Kelly are coming to that game, so I want to give them something good to watch! Also, what was funny and ironic about missing yesterday's game, was that it was against Concordia, and I missed that game last year too because I was severly sick with a stomach flu! Crazy!

I feel like I have spent the past month in two places: the classroom and a bus. We have travelled the Midwest up and down and over and under for soccer this year. We hit Iowa/Missouri/Illinois which equalled about 16-18 hours on a bus on our first big trip and Nebraska/North Dakota on the second one which equalled about 20 hours on a bus in one weekend. Unfortunately we have been having some bad luck and our record is only 1-10 for the season. We are at the midseason mark right now, so hopefully we can get over our slump and make some magic happen.



As for the classroom, I am still trying to find a routine to work out my 21 credits. The hardest part about it is that I have no morning classes.. they are all in the afternoon and evening. Most college kids would think that is the best situation ever because they can sleep in every day, but for me, I would just rather have my classes 8-12 every day and get them out of the way.



Outside of school and athletic news, I got a new phone! My Blackberry took a turn for the worst, so I finally got rid of it. I ended up getting the LG Ally.. its a droid and it runs soo much better than my Blackberry did. I can actually make and receive phone calls again! And its really cool because its a touch screen and it came with a 4gb memory card so I can take a ton of pictures and have a ton of music on it. I feel like such a kid just talking about it... :P

My favorite class right now is probably Calligraphy. Its so much fun and actually really relaxing to just write letters. We have learned all the lowercase letters in italics and started on the uppercase letters. We have written some quotes and have full pages of words.. I always feel so accomplished after I write a whole page of something!

Third week of school done. Those three weeks went by so fast, and yet they didn't go by fast enough to be stress-free. Since I am taking 21 credits this semester, I am swamped with stuff to do. But what makes it more difficult is that all of my classes are from 1-4pm and then in the evening. So I don't have any classes in the mornings. So either, I have to get up early and do homework in the morning for hours on end (which is weird and contrary to the routine of every other college student) or stay up really late to do homework after my evening classes get over. Its hard to manage my time, but I have been doing my best :)

Soccer has been quite the adventure this year as well. Right now our record is 1-5. We played in a tournament in Canton, Missouri. It was actually alot of fun because we got to stay in a hotel for three days, play two games, go shopping in Quincy, Illinois (we hit so many states on the trip!), and get some quality team bonding time in. We lost out first game we played, but won the second.

Since then, we lost the next three games we played. We have definitely had our share of injuries, which makes it frustrating during games because we barely have any subs and we have players playing positions on the field that they aren't used to.

I am also getting used to my new job with the school newspaper, The Moderator. In previous years I have been a writer and the ad designer, but these year I am also the ad manager. That means I have to call area businesses and see if they want to advertise with us. I have five so far, but would like to get more. I hope my public relations skills work well for me! Tonight I worked on designing a few of the ads that I got.

This week I found out I was picked to be a "Hometown Hero of Character" for Mount Marty Athletics, as well as a male athlete from here. I had never heard of this award before, but apparently area high school and college athletes who show good character are given this award. On Monday, a spokesperson for the award is coming to Mount Marty to take professional pictures of us for a poster that we are going to be on. We had to write a statement about one of five character values, and that will also be on the poster. I chose to write about respect. Anyways, I think its a pretty cool honor and really appreciate being chosen for it.

This weekend is going to be an R and R weekend. We don't have any soccer games, which is totally unheard of! We usually have one (if not two) games every weekend, so I am definitely going to take advantage of all the extra time to get majorly caught up on homework!

Schools starts tomorrow! It will be my last first day of school.. bittersweet, I guess. I AM excited to be done with school but have no idea where I will end up afterwards. The world is my canvas, I guess!

The past two weeks we have had two-a-days for soccer, and as a team we have had ups and downs. We have a lot of talented new players (3 freshmen and 2 transfers), but we have also had a lot of injuries to deal with. BUT, as of right now we only have two players out with injuries and one should be good to go by the weekend, which is a huge sigh of relief. However, the other player out right now is my roommate April.. she fractured her wrist at practice last week and is out until as least September 13th. And of course, it was on her right hand, so she is getting used to doing everything (or at least everything I don't do for her ;P) with her left hand. She is a very valuable player on our team and one of the best (if not THE best) defensive player on our team. So she will be missed dearly during our first part of the season.

I have actually been learning a new position this year, outside back. I have never played a defensive position before.. I have always been an outside mid or forward, so its a lot to learn. Some days I feel like I'm progressing really well, while other days I feel like I can't grasp anything. Its been frustrating but as soon as I can play in a game and get a real feel for the position I think I will improve.

Our first games are next weekend. We are playing in a tournament called the Culver-Stockton Classic in Canton, Missouri. I am excited to go and excited to play! It will be nice to take a trip and sight-see, as well as hopefully win some games! The winner of the tournament gets a trophy, so we definitely have our eyes on it!

My class schedule this semester is pretty odd. I only have one morning class, 11am MWF. All my other classes are in the afternoon 1-4pm. And I have two night classes as well. Its going to be a struggle with soccer to get to all these classes and make up work, but I've done it before and can do it again.

Besides tomorrow being the first day of school, its my 22nd birthday. I don't think I will do much for it since I will have class and practice. My mom and youngest brother came to visit yesterday and my other brother just got back from Montana yesterday and met us here in Yankton, so he had pretty perfect timing. I may go out to eat with Isaac or something, but who knows!