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!