Almost done!

My duty partner was teasing me about not having written a blog in awhile.. aka a week of not writing because I was busy and well, to be quite frank, I think I just spend too much time with Karl. I think I might need to remember to spend time with myself or my blog to have some time to process all the things that are happening. But it's kind of odd having a significant other, since I'm a verbal processor, I usually will write things out on here to express what is happening or what I'm going through, but since there is someone who actually listens and even asks about how my day is on a regular basis, I find there isn't as much of a need for an outlet. Alas, I should remember that I can't put all of my hope in the human race or in one person, lest they let me down, for even though they might not desire to do so, they will at some point.

So I'm sitting here at the front desk, slurping some yummy pork top ramen (classic college student right?) after having a pretty busy last few days. Thursday up until today has been quite the busy blur. Thursday was busy because it was the day for both my end of the year meeting and facilitation. Now this wouldn't be too bad but I had to go and pick up food before these events. I had class from 4-6 and then my meetings were at 6:30 and the facilitation was at 7pm. Oh boy was it a bit frightening all day. I had to call in and order all the pizza for the event in the early afternoon to make sure they had it on time rather than spur of the moment ordering 17 pizzas.. yeah that never works out too well. However, cool thing, my class got out a whole hour early!! That was amazing. I had also managed to finish my statics homework before Friday and my lab I finished in class on Wednesday evening. So, I was able to go and pick up the pizza and be ready to go on time for everything. I had my list of things to go over in the meeting all set up and ready to go as well. It all went so smoothly, I was kind of surprised. They ate all the pizza at both events. The wing meeting went by so fast. I was impressed at my ability to speak in front of them. Apparently my Public Speaking class is actually helping me.

The facilitation I was kind of nervous about. For we had people from Team Liberation come and run the 'Lenses' facilitation in a different manner than how the CRFs run it. CRFs are Community Relations Facilitators and our CRF was busy running a different facilitation that evening and asked Team Liberation to come in and do it. Originally, the way I remember the Lenses facilitation was we had hula hoops with different facets of one's identity, this would be something along the lines of gender, sexuality, religion, socio-economic status, relative ability, origin, ethnicity, and I think there was one that was labeled 'other'. But we would read off situations or scenarios and ask people to put a foot in the hula hoop where they felt that 'lens' was most salient to you at that point in time. I always use the example of 'you're walking around campus, what lens is most salient' to which I generally respond 'sexuality', because I find guys attractive while walking about campus. Or another one would be, 'you're sitting in class'.. for me my classes are definitely male dominant being in engineering, math and science courses and well, I'm generally the only female within a 4 or 5 seat radius, so my gender would be most salient. But I digress, this facilitation was different, but pretty good and had an awesome turn out for being a 'learning' event opposed to the typical 'show up eat food and have fun' event. It's always hard to get good turn out at these kinds of things, but it was cool to see so many people there. We talked about the 'tip of the iceberg' model, and the difference between derogatory and offensive words, how to make our words hospitable. It was pretty neat and I'm glad they were there to facilitate those discussions, because I personally wouldn't know how to even bring those things up. I am happy that some of the people were there, because I know that they needed to hear it.

After the facilitation, Karl asked me to go with him to South Side Prom. So we got all fancy and went over there. (He came to my facilitation too, which was nice. It's pretty cool to have a boyfriend who comes to the events you plan/put on. There is just something comforting in having someone who means a lot to you get to see all of your hard work opposed to just the regular interactions with residents.) So we went to South Side Prom that evening, and well, Karl isn't too big on dancing, so I got to 'teach' him how to dance. Granted, I'm no fancy dancer myself.. I just informed him that it is more about confidence and not caring what others think of you and just having fun. We had fun, and he got more comfortable. He did a lot of standing by and watching, while I went in and danced with my friends on RHA and my hall council friends.

Then Friday was lovely. All my homework was turned in, I just had to go to my classes and after that I came home and took a nap. Karl and I went out and bought all the things necessary for the End of the Year BBQ coming up on Saturday and I recall that evening I went and watched my friend Austin play in Battle of the Bands and they got 2nd, which was so awesome! They were phenomenal. And then Karl and I went out and bought some junk foods at Winco and bought Away We Go for $2 at Blockbuster and watched it.

Saturday consisted of my hall's End of the Year BBQ and being in charge of activities for the entirety of the event. We did Tie-dying, 3-legged races, sack races, water balloons and henna. The food took a while to get started at noon, so most people picked up their hall t-shirt and came out to tie-dye. I only had enough for about 100 shirts, and well, some people like to use too much dye and therefore there wasn't enough and we started to run out and people were getting upset, so I asked Stephanie to run down to the basement to see if we had the extras from last year. (I did a bunch of tie-dying events my freshman year on hall council and I knew we had extra supplies from it.) So she was able to find it and it was a life saver! At one point during the event, all the supplies were out there, and I honestly got tired of people complaining about where colors were and that there weren't enough and I hadn't even dyed my own shirt yet because I was so busy helping others dye their's. So I finally just started mine, finished it, and then left to go get food because I was hungry, and when I'm hungry, I get cranky. They had all the supplies and directions, so they were fine. It was a really fun time once I stopped worrying about it. I got to hang out with Austin and Kate and do dorky dance moves to the music and tried to teach them dance moves too. (I think I have some crazy thought in my head that I can dance and think that I can teach others... haha) Then we eventually had to clean everything up, but we had this mischievous plan of pranking our boss the Resident Director; we wanted to take the cooler of ice and water and dump it on him, but we had to think of a way to get him outside and to take his phone and wallet out of his pockets.. So we came up with the brilliant idea of the three legged race but as a staff.  Hehehe.. So we were able to get him to compete.. Austin and I were the winners. We asked Saasha to take a staff picture, during which, Nick and Austin were grabbing the cooler... Franklin saw that they were grabbing the cooler and then started to run.. I saw this... and well, I grabbed his arm and made sure he didn't get very far..
Oh it was so funny.. I can't believe I did that. But he said we were all fired, of course he was kidding about it, but it was a good joke.

After all of these happenings, I hopped in my car and headed out to Dallas for my sister's Graduation open house. I missed the graduation itself sadly, but I was able to be there and visit with family and family friends which was awesome. I got to see my leadership teacher from high school (she was the reason I started blogging actually), my youth pastor from high school, my adopted mom, an ex-boyfriend's parents and sister (haha that's a funny story). It was just nice to chat with everyone.. seriously, my throat was so sore after talking with everyone and answering the same questions over and over again, 'what are you doing this summer', 'what does next year look like for you', 'how is school', 'new boyfriend? tell me about him', 'how is your walk with the Lord', etc. I got to hug my mom a lot, and my sister misses my weird qwirky moments, (I tend to be a dork at home and my sister loves me anyways and I make her laugh a lot), I got to hug my dad, and my brother willingly hugged me goodbye, and I even got to talk with my next door neighbor Phil who works in waste water treatment and I told him about my Technical writing paper where I'm researching different methods of tertiary treatment using recyclable materials or materials that can create byproducts that can be integrated back into society. I eventually came home and I honestly just went straight to bed practically. I went to bed at 11, which was the earliest I'd been to bed all week.

This morning I woke up around 9 and Karl and I went to church together. The services have been centering around relationships, so Karl and I had a really good theological/relationship discussion after church. My friend Julie (whom I worked with in the lab all summer) came and visited for the afternoon and we got to talk and catch up before she leaves for Portland for her summer internships. After this, Karl and I hung out again to finish our discussion until we both had duty/meetings to get to.

And that leaves me here, eating ice cream, drinking water, chatting with residents, checking out items, giving them their hall t-shirts, etc. I still have some letters to write, homework to do, paper to write, Canadians to call... haha. oh well. It wasn't a super productive evening, but I have a feeling tomorrow will be better. I think the past few days have just been me trying to get through all of the RA and social obligations and tomorrow I can start doing work and getting stuff ready for finals and such. It'll be good. I'll try and post more regularly about my day to day stuffs and take more time to myself and to writing. Sorry for not keeping up with things, but thanks for reading. :)
-M.E.