Good Night and Good Luck.

Well loyal readers this is the last that you will be hearing from me for the next 4 months or perhaps even the next 14 months. If all goes well I will spending the next semester in China and the semester after that in Istanbul so keep your fingers crossed!

After working my butt off for the last 4 weeks on final papers, projects and presentations it is all almost and a week from now I will be half way done with my undergraduate career. Though I still have to take my Chinese final and turn in my take home(thank you Marion!) exam for Biology I really feel like I am done. This may be at least in part because neither of these are for a couple more days. It is hard now to figure out what to do with free time now that I am so used to working and going to classes all day that it is hard to get used to relaxing and not always looking at the clock, but it is a transition that I am also looking forward to very much.

It has been great blogging this semester and seeing that so many people are actually looking (however briefly) at my writing and what it is like to be at Beloit College.
Thanks to you all and have a great summer.

The Last Weekend of the Year

Its over! I can not believe it but we just had the last weekend of the year especially now because my time at Beloit is half over(Over half because will be abroad for at least one semester next year)! The real world is close and terrifying.

But it is not here yet! So we are still having a good time here!

Saturday night there was the bizzaro Beloit party where you dress as someone else and go party. It was really fun cause I got to wear a dress and legging which is a little different than my normal grab. It was crazy to because one of my friends dressed as my roommate and looked almost exactly like him which for a very interesting night.

Vusi Mahlasela at Beloit

This last Tuesday our fine establishment had the luck(well not really luck cause we paid him a ton of money) of having the African pop sensation Vusi Mahlasela come and preform at our campus.

Going into it I did not really know what to expect cause I had never heard of him before or heard any of his music but I was quite impressed. It was kinda of a mix of 50% reggae and 50% African folk music that was 100% enjoyable! Most all the songs were about some kind of struggle in Africa, be it aparthide or tribes getting kicked of their land. He and all the members of his band were quite talented and had a good stage presence. Another nice feature of the concert was all of my hippie got up and started dancing to the music to the side of the stage. It was great to see people getting into the music in different ways.

Afterwards he was handing out signed stickers and selling CD's so everyone who wanted to had a chance to meet him.

The TKE Formal

Last weekend my fraternity had its annual formal and they really went all out for it this year. Most of the other Greek organizations on campus will go to one of the campus buildings or one of the 4 restaurants around Beloit for their formals but not us we went to Chicago's Shed Aquarium.

It was quite the get from what I here. Apparently we beat out Toyota for that Saturday night. We left the campus around 5pm after a little pre-party at the house and our bus got down to the aquarium by about 7pm. First they herded us into the big amphitheater with the dolphins and beluga whales. It was soooooo cool, it was only us in there and we could walk right up to the sides of the tanks! After that we went into the main area of the museum where they had set up tables around the Caribbean reef exhibit. We had an amazing meal and got to listen to some very interesting senior's speeches. The rest of the time there we were allowed to walk around the aquarium and see the fish at our own pace.

It was an amazing night and I have certainly never been to such a classy place and event.

Spring Day!!

We at Beloit College believe that on the first warm day of the new year that students should be outside not in the classroom. In fact they administration believes this so much that they have created a special called spring day so students can be out there and enjoy the weather. All the frats and sorority have games and events outside in a carnival like atmosphere.

Some years they do not get it quite right. Like last year when it was 40 degrees and raining all day(though still very fun). But other year, like this one they get it right on.

We had beautiful sunny 70 degree weather and everyone was out enjoying it if only for a little while for some. I was one of the some who allowed myself an hour or two to hang out outside before going into the library to finish the 2 ten page paper and other odds and ends that are due in on Friday. As if this task was not hard enough at the peak of health the fates decided to strike he down the night before with a high fever, pounding head ache and joint pain. However, your hero was able to triumph over adversity and get some solid work done.

Weissberg Chair

Well we have just finished the coolest week of the year here at Beloit, Weissberg Week! It is where the college brings on some amazing person in the field of international relations and they come to classes and give lectures for a week. This time we had Jan Egeland who until last year was the undersecretary general of humanitarian relief for the UN which means he was in charge of all of the UN's relief missions as well as being the head of amnesty international at the age of 21. He was one of the most amazing people I have ever met.

He gave a talk on Thursday about the state of the worlds refugees and about what is being done and what needs to be done to help them out. It was quite inspiring and I am very impressed that we were able to get him here. Also, since I work for the Poli Sci department in my other job, I helped coordinate part of his visit and arranged for him to have three lunches with small groups of students. I got to go to one of these and it was amazing to sit at the same table and have a conversation with a man who has been to 11o countries and saved more lives then almost anyone out there.

An International Party!

This weekend was fairly average here at Beloit, lots of fun parties lots of studying. However, I thought that some of you readers might be interested to hear about what a room party at Beloit is like.

One of my good friends Davis had his birthday over the weekend so he had a party in Brians room. Now I did not really think about it until after the fact but I have to say that outside of the study abroad programs I have done this was about the most diverse party I have ever been to. Brian, the host, is from Zimbabwe, Davis grew up in Thailand, his girl friend Delna is from India, the friend she brought Eva is from Hungary, my girl friend, Val, is from Malaysia and another guy there A.J is from Palenstine. Now of course there were about an equal number of American students there but I thought that it as pretty cool that there were so many international students there too. Especially since that is not considered strange and I did not think of it until I was trying to figure out what to write.

Snow Again!!

Well as soon as I thought that spring had spread her lovely wings over fair Beloit the foul tempest of winter came back! It was warm and sunny yesterday, so much so that I went on a run with nothing(but a t-shirt and shorts)! After a day like I was sure that it would not be long before it was getting up over 60 and we could start enjoying our lovely campus again. Boy was I wrong! I woke up today at 8 to heavy snow that didnt let up all day and is now starting to accumulate. Oh well, hope springs eternal.

What to do Next Year?

On Friday I finally heard back from the office of international education after a long drawn out appeal process and they still say that I am not allowed to go to China in the Fall next year. This is unfortunate but not all together unexpected. However, it leaves the bigger question of what to do next fall.

I think that I might take that semester off before going to Turkey in the Spring and that I still want to learn Chinese so as I see it I have several options. I could go to a school in China for the semester but that would cost money and I want to have some of that when I go to Turkey so that I can travel around a bit. The more attractive option that I am looking into now is teaching English in China so that I can make some good money while learning Chinese. I still have to research programs and find a good one but I am thinking that this would be the ideal way to spend next semester so that I can learn Chinese and at the very least pay for my plane ticket over there. The easiest option would be to stay here for the semester and get some more of major requirements done before going abroad but that just does not sound quite as exciting.

Saint Pattie's Day at Beloit!!!

As all of you I am sure know, yesterday was Saint Patrick's Day! Now from what I understand it was supposed to be on Monday but since the Popes realized the problem with having one of the biggest party days of the year on Lint he decided to let us celebrate on Saturday. This worked out well here at Beloit and I am sure will result in much higher class attendance on Monday and Tuesday.

Saturday started out with much like any other Saturday here at Beloit with most of the campus sleeping in until about mid day then staggering to commons to get some food before it closed for the day. After that I took advantage of some of the first warm weather of the year(isn't it sad that 45 degrees is considered warm here?) by sleeping for another 4 hours that afternoon. That night there were a couple campus wide parties but I spent most of the night in friends rooms and partying out at my frat. One of the bigger party nights this year for me, tons of fun!

Back From Break and Back at it!

Well we have all just gotten back from our spring break and are right back in the thick of things.



I went to California for the break with my girl friend and had a wonderful time roaming around the San Fransisco area and seeing my family out there. It was so nice and warm! About 70 for the whole time that we were out there which made it very hard to come back to the bitter cold of Wisconsin. We came back on Thursday so that we could have some time to relax before school started again. It was very nice to have some down time.

The beginning of this week was brutal. We had a supposed mid term in my Chinese Politics class on Tuesday(prof actually pushed it back a week the day of), then a 10 page lab write up for my Bio class and a Chinese exam on the same day! Things are definitely getting tougher for the second half of the semester.

The Study Abroad Epic

Well as I mentioned previously study abroad is key facet of what I see as a true Beloit College education and is in fact required for some majors(like international relations). This was one of the main reasons that I chose Beloit and so I wanted to take full advantage of the opportunity so I applied to go on Beloit's China program in Jinan and Beloit's program in Turkey.

After something of a grueling application process I was very pleased to find out that I had gotten into the Turkey program for the spring semester of next year. However I was disappointed in finding out that I did not get accepted into the China program due the fact that I have not taken enough Chinese or have not done well enough at it.

I am definitely planning to appeal this decision as I believe I have very good reasons to want to go so I have gone and talked to my teachers and gotten them to support me so long as I receive a B in Chinese this semester. Though I have not yet talked to the Office of International Education(as the lady I need to talk to is away) but I am confident that as Beloit is a learner-centered school they will be willing to listen to me and my professors and grant me admittance to the Jinan program.

This is something that I really like about Beloit; that most decisions are not final if you can show good reason that they should be overturned.

The Two V's(Vortex and the Vagina Monologues)

When it rains it pours when it comes to school sponsored events on the weekends.
And it was a flood on Saturday Night.

My frats retreat was this weekend and unfortunately because of the amount of studying and homework that I had to do for midterms I was unable to go.
This is as lame as it sounds but I figure that at some point in my life I will have to start prioritizing. So anyway most of the weekend was spent catching up on reading in my room or studying in the library but on Saturday night I decided to go out as there was a Vagina Monologues show as well as the second biggest school sponsored concert of the year, Vortex.

I had never seen the Vagina Monologues before so I was really not sure what to expect.
I was pleasantly surprised in some respects as it was not the stereotyped shrill feminist production that some has told me it would be.
However I did find it a bit graphic and intense to really say that I enjoyed it, but it was interesting and I thought all of the girls preforming the monologues did a good job.

After the VM's I went to a reunion party for my old dorm and had a great time chatting with some of of the people I used to live with in the 840 basement.
Following that we all headed out to Pearsons(our student union) to see Vortex. Vortex is big rock show with about 5 bands that play for around that many hours.
I missed the first few bands and a rock marching band that was supposed to be amazing but I did get to see the last band that preformed and they were fantastic.
They had two guitarists and two drummers and a great singer(though the levels were wrong so you couldn't really hear what he said) and their original song were pretty good.

All in all a good weekend.

I GOT TO SEE CHELSEY AND BARACK!!!!

It was so exciting! Yesterday we had both Barack Obama and Chelsey Clinton come to our little Wisconsin campus and I got to see both of them!

Chelsey came to DKs, our campus grill and sandwitch place, and did about an hour and half of just fielding questions from anyone who wanted to ask. Though she was half an hour late I thought she did a good job of answering every question that was asked. It was also great to see the number of people that turned out to hear what she had to say; I was expecting maybe fifty or so people from the campus and the communitity but instead DKs was packed and unless you got there about an hour early it was standing room only(lets just say I ended up sitting on the condiment bar). This was also one of the few times I have felt starstruck, I kept wondering what it would be like to her and have lived in the White House and be a face that most of the country would recognize. I concluded that it must feel pretty lonely, just like being really rich you never know if people are genuinly interested in you or they just want to be around someone powerful. Sorry for that digression, Chelsey answered questions about everything from economic reform to the what her mom would do to end the war in Iraq to questions about whether or not Chelsey thought she would ever be president, I felt that she did a very thorough job of answering all of these things.

Later that same day after waiting in the sports center's field house for 5 hours I got to see Barack Obama on a podium in our very own Flood Arena! It was definitly a long wait but well worth it to see the man who might be the next president of these United States. I had the fantastic oppurtunity of traveling to central Illinois to see him declare his canidacy for president about a year ago with the school so it was especially neat for me to see how far he had come in that time. His approach was certainly different from Chelsey's in that he did not answer questions(its a little bit harder with 3,000 people) but instead gave a rousing speech on how America needs change and how he will go about bringing us that change. I was struck by the security he had(metal dectors and a very large secret sevice exscort) while I did not see any kind of security for Chelsey.

All in all an amazing day and I so glad that we got to have speakers of this magnitude come to our quite campus!

Obama and Clinton come to Beloit!!!

Yes thats right right here at Beloit College we are having one and a half presidential canidates come to visit us tomorrow! I say one and a half because will Barak Obama is coming to campus Hilary Clinton is not BUT her daughter Chelsey is. Barak will be speaking in the flood arean(our big arean at the sports center were the basketball and volley ball teams have their games)after dinner and Chelsey will be giving an "informal presentation" with some question answering at the end. This is hugly exciting for everyone of campus(pretty much everyone is very into this presidential race)and i know I for one will be getting there early to make sure I can get into see them both.

The Sickness

Usually winter is when people get sick, you know sore throat, stuffy nose, maybe you skip your early morning class to get some extra sleep so you feel better, usual winter stuff. Not this winter. We have so far had two outbreaks of veracious viruses here at Beloit College just this semester!

The first wave broke about a week after we had all gotten back from winter break, bringing with us all microbes from every corner of the country which combined and mutated making super virus #1, knocking out about half of the campus. Everywhere you went were people with stuff noses and coughs infecting those around them. This passed after a week or so with no known casualties.

Next came the super bug #2 which hit late last week. This virus had a far smaller infected population(mostly just phi psi's) but was even more deadly(a figurative term as no way has died...yet...). A guy I know in that house was catatonic for about 3 days before just giving up and going home to be with his blanky and is bed to heal in good time. Meanwhile in his absence several of his frat brothers have gotten sick and this author believes it is possible that one of those phi psi's has infected me!

Now you may say that just because I am taking Marion Fass's Infectious Disease class that I have become paranoid(and you would probably be right) but when I was over at phi psi today and heard about this new super virus my throat almost immediately began to feel sore and I began to feel fatigued(coincidence? I think not). Now I have learned that there are some virus's that can kill you in less then 24 hours; you feel fine in the morning and by night- BAM! your dead. Now I can only wait and use your micro lab to help me search for a cure. God be with us...

French House, TKE and Gay/Straight Alliance House paries all in the same night AND its -50 degrees?!!!

Saturday night was the night for parties here at Beloit. We had three all campus parties and who knows how many smaller ones. And all this following of the heels of a huge party at the Spanish House on Friday night!

The Spanish House party was good fun, I got there around 12:30 after hanging out and chatting with for a few hours with some friends in my dorm room. All campus parties usually are from about 11pm-2 or 3am and most people do not really get there until about mid-night. When we got there it was packed with people dancing to Shakira and other Spanish artists. Danced there for about an hour two before I decided to call it a night so I would not be too tired to do some home work the next day.

Saturday night started out the same as Friday; hanging out with some people in the room until about 12:30. After that we all went out to the parties at TKE and the French House. We went pretty quickly between them as by this time it was about -20 degrees without the wind chill. During the night it got down to -50 with wind chill and even in the buildings it started getting cold(I have never had that happen before).

Sunday has been my productive day. Working out at on our brand new weight equipment(they finally got new stuff!) and getting some home work done for the coming week.

Study Abroad

Beloits emphasis on the International perspective is one of big reason that people choose Beloit, I know it was a big draw for me. Most of the people that come to Beloit(about 55% I think) end up studying abroad for at least one semester during their time here.

Last Friday was the deadline for the applications for any one who wants to study abroad next year and since I want to study abroad in China in the fall and Turkey in the spring I had to make sure that I had both my applications done and all the letters of recommendation in by that date. Now this may sound pretty easy but the application takes some serious time. It is about 10 questions and each needs about a 2 paragraph well thought out answer. Since I got those in on time (barely, only about an hour before the deadline!) now all I have is the interview which happens on Thursday, so wish me luck.

Presidential Weekend

This was a very busy weekend! It was the presidential scholarship weekend which meant that a ton of you prospective students made your way to old Beloit and go to stay and experience it first hand, and they definitely treated you guys well! We had a magician preform on Friday at Eaton Chapel, Chelonia(our yearly dance performance), and Voodoo Barbie(our student improv. group) all happening on Friday night!

But thats not all..

This weekend was also the date of me and my roommates room warming party(lesser known but non-the-less just as important a date as the presidential weekend) and it was amazing! Never mind the fact that we have been living in the room for a semester and change already or that we came up with the idea for a party on Thursday when the party was going to be on Friday. This kind of thing is what I love about going to college at Beloit; that everyone lives so close together and you see people often enough that you can just decide to throw a party out of the blue and still have it be a packed house. We had to more our wonderful new couch and create an old school dance playlist but other then that it was just leave the door open.

Saturday was spent recovering from Friday, just hanging out and watching a movie. Saturday night was fairly low key as well until we decide that it would be a good idea to shave my head.

All in all a good weekend at Beloit College!

Crazy Weather

Well over the last two days we have had some of the strangest weather I have ever experienced. Wisconsin already experiences major extemes in temperatures from the summer to winter but this week we have experienced both extremes.

On Monday morning I walked outside with my usual huge down coat on only to find that rather then an icy breeze hitting my face and snow all over there were big puddles of melted snow and it as about 45 degree temperatures. Today it was even warmer in the morning and almost all of the 3 inches of snow on the ground had melted and it was in the high 40's. However, as I am writing this blog the winds are at about 20mph and its about -5 degrees. So even in the middle of winter at Beloit you can get some warm days(even though they may end it cold)!

The Dictator Party

Well once again we have reached the end of another lovely weekend here at Beloit College and the temperature actually got into the double digits too! It has been freezing cold here for the past week or so and last weekend the high was only 4 degrees so there was not much traffic on College street Friday or Saturday night(Usually you get a lot of people walking from party to party out there and it is a great spot to recognize friends and head to a party with them).

One of the social highlights of the weekend would probably have to have been the Dictator Party that was thrown at the Russian House. It was hosted by the model U.N club as well as the Russian house and it was pretty packed. It is a sweet spot to throw a party in the summer cause they have a very nice porch where people can hang out when its warm out. It was a big dance party this time and lots of people dressed up as dictators, I wore my Mao shirt and my communist hat and saw every one from Kim jong Il there to Saddam to Tiberius there. My friends and I started the night after dinner with watching a movie then went over to the French House and chilled there for about an hour with some more friends before heading over to the Russian House, it was a fun night.

Another amazing thing that happened over the weekend that I hope most you know and appreciate was the release of Rambo part 7 or something. As those of you who are regular readers know I went to this cinematic master piece with my frat brothers on Friday night. We had a great time and it was real cool experience going out with my frat brothers as I just joined last semester and have not had much time to chill with them yet.

RAMBO!!!!

For any of you out there that love terrible but amazing action movies I know you will join in celebrating the release of JOHN RAMBO!!!! comes out tomorrow and my frat is taking all the brothers there to a showing! I am so excited! I saw the youtube trailer(not the weak one they showed in theaters) and I cannot believe the movie is not NC-17. I will report back on Sunday as to how it goes.

Social Life During the Week

In high school all I ever heard about college as far as people getting together and partying was that it happens on the weekend, of course during high school you do get out and chill at some friends houses during the week but at least for me most of socializing during the week happened at school, during after school sports and clubs or on at parties on the weekend. This happened to me as well when I was looking at and visiting schools, all I ever heard about were weekend parties and I always wondered what people did other then homework during the rest of the week. For any of you that may have had similar experiences and are curious as to what happens at Beloit as far as life the other five days of the week hopefully this will give you some insight.

Ill give a run through of my day yesterday which was a fairly normal day for me at school. It started out with me first waking up at about 7:30am because both of my roommates are sciences majors which means they always have early morning class, I went back to sleep and got up around 10:10am and ran over to DK's grill since Commons closed at 9:30 so that I don't miss their breakfast which ends at 10:30(if you go after that you will use up your lunch swipe on your id and that is no good). So once I finished my Beloit Bagel(rip of egg mcmuffin) I went over to my international Econ class then right after that to The World Affairs Center for my Chinese class. After Chinese I had an hour break so I met up at Commons with about 8 of my friends for lunch. Lunch always seems to last the whole hour so I did not have a chance to catch up on the homework I didn't do the night before. My last class of the day was Emerging Infectious Disease and that lasted until 4 pm. After that I went back and chilled with my roommates for about half an hour then went over to the French house to see my girl friend. We headed over to dinner around 6 and ate with our usual crew for about an hour and a half. After that I had to run to a rowing meeting in the Java Joint(our campus coffee shop) which was for any new people that were interested in the club(we got three new rowers!) after the meeting I had a nice chat catching up with some of the other rowers who I hadn't seen since before the break. Since my roommate had gotten a new monitor for his computer the day before so we decided to screw homework(this is pretty rare occurrence for those who want to pass their classes but we didnt have too much) and give it and our new couch a test drive so we had about 5 other people over and watched the film "The Way of the Gun," a really cool but little know movie with some big names. It was about 1:30am when we finished and I was pretty tired so decided to hit the hay since I had a 9 o'clock class the next day.


Also if any of you that read this blog have any questions about anything regarding life at Beloit that I can help with please don't hesitate to contact me or any one of the other SOI's. All you have to do is fill out a simple online form with how you want us to reach you and we will get in touch with you either by phone or email.

and heres a picture of me chasing a sea turtle

The Second Week: Reality Hits, and The New Room Improvments

Well now that we here at Beloit have entered our second week of classes, I for an starting to feel reality closing in. My first Chinese quiz is tomorrow and following last years tradition I will probably stay up late tonight trying to cram in characters and tones. Though we do have about one quiz a week they end up counting for a substantial portion of your overall grade so I am really going to try to start off with a bang. Along with Chinese to study for I am going to get down to reading about emerging infection diseases along with Chinese Politics to help balance out my night. That is one thing that I really like about Beloit; that I can take a cool Bio class to fulfill my div 1 requirements even though I am an IR major, though the class is quite big for Beloit(about 30 people) we still get to do cool labs.



the new couch(actual couch varies from pic)!

Also my roommate Ethan just a got a new 22inch monitor today which is going to be amazing for watching movies. The fact that we were getting the monitor actually acted as the catalyst for moving our entire room around. It has worked out beautifully and the rooms are much more livable with the help of a couch we picked up down the street from salvation army (a common place to see dollar conscience Beloit College students). Coupled with some cheap surround speakers that we got at the beginning of the year, our new beautiful couch, and the fact that my bed is lofted so high I am now sleeping about 1ft from the ceiling this monitor has helped turn our room into a sweet hangout spot to chill, party, watch movies and listen to some tunes. So as you can see this is a very exciting time to be living in room 215 in 810 college street.

The First Post!

Hi everyone! This is my first post ever on a blog so it is a very exciting time me and I am sure for you too. We are on the tail end of the first weekend back from our winter break and I think everyone is thankful that we had those two days to relax after the first week of classes.


It was great to get back and see everyone after being away for almost a month; it seems like most people start to get antsy to come back after new years and of course it is always great for those first few days to see everyone and hear what they got to do over the break.

The first few days of class back at Beloit are always great because you get to hear all the reasons that this class will be great without having to do any labs or any of the other hard stuff that comes later in the semester. For this semester I tried to take 5 classes because they all either sounded really interesting or I need them as requirments for my major (actually it worked out pretty well that most classes fit both catagories) but I realized after the first day I would either have to stop sleeping or socializing if I wanted to get through the semester with good grades( and I feel that the college experience is about much more then just academics) so I had to drop my education class.

It was a bit of a ruff start getting used to doing work agian after a month of pure recreation but I feel like I am getting back into the swing of college life agian witout too much trouble. I was able to host a little party with my two roomates this weekend with about 15 of our friends, go out on saterday night, sleep in alot and still have enought time to finish some of my homework(it may be a late night tonight) so for all of you looking to go hear dont get too scared you can do well in school and still have a great socials like.

Also we just had the Beloit International Film Festival over the weekend which unfortunatly I did not get to go to but some of the movies looked quite good.