This past week Glar, our dinning hall, has been up to things… New things- Good things! While my recent favorite options have been Mrs. Bobby’s mixed-berry salad, the make-your own pasta station on Wednesdays and the Mongolian Grill on Thursdays, this week has been full of some pleasant surprises.

Monday’s lunch was one of Mrs. Bobby’s famous hand-mixed salad dressings- I always go for the fruity ones, so mixed berry sounded delightful, and it was. It wasn’t until Tuesday that things really started to get interesting though…

Where the wrap station normally is a line of colorful squeeze bottles lined the glass shelf. A bright sign nearby cheerfully announced: Crêpe Station! Crêpes? They only happen to be one of my favorite foods. How they set it up was simple: choose a hot or cold crêpe, then pick out your ingredients. I went for a hot crêpe, because that is always more delicious, and chose to fill it with strawberries and blueberries. Instead of just heating them in the nearby pan like I expected, things got all kinds of fancy with adding sugar and liquors and other mysterious ingredients. Once everything was combined and the berries were bubbling hot, my server folded two crêpes and ladled the berries on top, adding a sprinkle of almonds at my request. Remember those squeeze bottles? They held all different kinds of syrups from chocolate to caramel, mango, raspberry and more. I went for a drizzle of white chocolate. The result? A delicious dessert that I consumed faster than I should have.

My blueberry and strawberry crêpes! (half with white chocolate sauce)

My crêpes!

An example of what manicotti looks like

Glar’s second delicious surprise of the week was at Wednesday’s lunch hour. While that usually means I head over to the pasta station, I noticed they had swedish meatballs that looked and just sounded really good. Plus I got an inside tip from a friend that a professor said they were tasty. I got some with jasmine rice and roasted veggies to try for myself and noticed the usual pizza area was full of adorable, personal dishes of manicotti (stuffed pasta). Turns out, everything was delicious today! The meatballs were great, and the personal mini-manicotti was great.

Overall, kudos to Glar this week for brining in some new ideas and succeeding!

This Friday night was a blast. The college was hosting one of its Friday night movie screenings, and this time it was one that I really wanted to see: Skyfall, the new James Bond movie! I hadn’t seen it yet, and neither had some of my friends so a group of us decided to head over together. They were just getting out of a Dangersauce (campus improv group) show, so I met them walk over from my apartment. It also happened to be snowing the biggest snowflakes I’ve ever seen in my life on this particular walk across campus- it looked liked a winter wonderland.

Arriving to Decker Auditorium looking somewhat like a snowman, I saw my friends heading inside and went to meet them and get some good seats. The movie was fantastic. First of all because I didn’t have to pay anything to see it, and second because it was just such a quintessential James Bond movie with all the perfect lines, poses and characters (and gadgets) you could ask for. We had a ridiculous amount of fun- plus part of it was filmed in Scotland, which got me all excited having studied abroad in Glasgow, Scotland for a semester. I won’t spoil the movie for you, but suffice to say we had a great time and it was a perfect mix of bringing back old James Bond stuff and new adventures.

Cue the walk back to our apartments in North Village. We began to use the lessons learned from James Bond such as:

1. Trying not to be seen by others and ducking and running from tree to tree is cool.

2. While spinning in a circle with your weapon or amo of choice you WILL NOT be hit by your enemy: this resulted in a spectacular snow ball fight with lots of spinning and dodging.

3. Everything is better with theme music: leading one of my friends to pull out their iPhone and play the much-need 007 soundtrack to our epic fights.

Everyone else on campus may have thought we were crazy, but we had fun! Plus, back at the apartment we discovered an excellent nerf gun that had been someone’s Christmas present and realized that a whiteboard can become an excellent shooting range. We were so amused by all of our evening shenanigans that we’ve decided upon another 007-themed night/photoshoot. I happen to be in the Digital Photography class and I know I’d have a lot of fun shooting my friends all dressed up in suits and fancy dresses- with nerf guns and acting like spies.

Our friday night? We try to keep it classy. 007-style.

This past week was involved Valentine’s Day as I’m sure you’re all aware (painfully or happily so), but my club, Advocacy Team helped it to be done a little bit differently…

As multiple “Valentine’s Day” tables sprung up around Decker College center selling everything from carnations to lollypops and who knows what else but their sign was pink, we decided to give people another option. Fair Valentines, Slavery-free Valentines. Instead of people buying your typical Hershey’s chocolate, we offered them delicious Fair Trade Chocolate! We had four different types: dark chocolate, milk chocolate with a hint of hazelnut, dark chocolate carmel crunch with sea salt, and dark chocolate with espresso beans. They all sounded delicious.

It’s something several campus organizations have been doing for the past three years Advocacy Team, IVCF (InterVarsity Christian Fellowship) and CCM (Catholic Campus Ministries). The chocolate industry is a huge problem in terms of the global slave trade and forced labor. And since everybody wants chocolate around Valentine’s Day, why not give them the best chocolate around which doesn’t have a stain upon it? Enter Equal Exchange, the fair trade company we bought the chocolate from. They are a great organization bringing fair trade products to the market. Fair trade is a mark goods get when their workers and producers are being paid a fair wage, and certain healthy working conditions are met. As a consumer, we have the huge power and responsibility to influence the market by purchasing fair trade products instead of our norm to show large companies like Hershey’s that we care about what goes into our chocolate and the people that make it.

The idea for the Valentines was simple- people get to order the chocolate, and they can arraigned to either send it to a friend or themselves and decorate a note to send with it. Then we’d put it in the person’s campus mailbox, or deliver it in the case of professors. We sold all our chocolate- 108 bars total, and had a fun wrapping and cupcake party at my apartment to get everyone’s orders together and labeled before putting each red package in the mailboxes the next morning- Valentine’s Day.

For Advocacy Team’s next event we’re hosting a documentary screen on Fair Trade- the coffee industry in particular. Hopefully events like these will open students eyes to some global situations and get them to create change simply through their purchases.

It was the only way we could describe what we were seeing every day. “The Drop off!!” “The Big Blue!” Surrounded by schools of bright purple and black fish of all shapes and sizes, a day instantly became the best day ever when we spotted a sea turtle. Tropical beaches, palm trees and clear turquoise waters? Welcome to my Jan term course- were we felt like we were inside “Finding Nemo.”

The course was entitled, “Scuba Diving the World: Bonaire” and it was amazing! The first three days of the trip, the majority of our group (there were about 18 of us) had to complete our SCUBA training to be certified. Despite thoroughly hating taking off my mask underwater (because then I wanted to breathe in through my nose…a bad idea underwater), we managed to pass all of the tests and exercises underwater with some wonderful, extremely tan, dive instructors. Now we got to do the fun part: real dives!

Breathing underwater is incredible. We dove from the dive dock at the resort, and took boat dives every afternoon. Swimming along, gently drifting over the coral and sea fans I was entranced. Moray eels! An octopus! Squid! Lobsters! Dory! Can you see why this was fantastic?

I was usually among the last people in our group swimming along (with my dive buddy of course). Why? I was too busy looking at everything! I mean, there were seahorses and flounder and I was swimming among large groups of fish close enough to touch! I have two top dives though. One was diving the wreck. Descending 100 feet to find this huge ship in front of me was both the coolest and creepiest thing I’d ever seen. I suddenly became very aware of the incredible fact that I was breathing- 100 feet underwater… And I could help but start wondering what the ship’s last moments had been like. What had the people who were onboard been thinking as it went down? Nobody…nobody died on this right…? (not to my knowledge, no). But being able to swim, and hover, alongside and overtop of this wreck was incredible.

My other favorite dive happened right after the wreck. It was our last day-dive of the two-week trip, and we had a spectacular ending. Not only did we see seahorses, squid, flounder, eels and loads of coral and fish, we saw the prize: not one, but two sea turtles! Yeah. It was pretty epic. I couldn’t resist swimming along side one for several minutes- they’re just incredibly cool.

Our main requirements for the trip were writing in a journal everyday and recording all of our dives in a dive log. But the experiences- and fun- we had were generally too great to completely convey in words. I met some people I never knew before on campus and made new friends, tried new food and learned how to scuba dive. Now that I’m certified for life… bring on the Great Barrier Reef!

Today is the last Sunday of my fall undergraduate career. It’s been pretty fun. After going to a local church with a group of friends and being serenaded with Christmas songs, I got to practice violin for an hour (which is exciting in my case because I actually feel like I’m getting pretty good), grab some lunch and then head off to my Gospel Choir concert! This year was a change in our normal concert routine- we were in the theater instead of Big Baker Chapel, but it was actually for a good reason: better acoustics. Off we went, by ones and two to the theater- easily identifiable on campus due to the long green and gold robes we were carrying to wear.

Warming up started late as usual, but finally we were on our way, laughing, clapping and singing- and of course, gradually getting a bit nervous. I’m also in a group called VOP (Voices of Praise), which is kind of like the Madrigals of Gospel Choir- we do more modern gospel music- and everybody was getting nervous about starting off the concert. But there was no need- we sang the best we have all semester in front of our audience in the theater, and got everybody swaying along with us! We had a great time, and then the whole gospel choir got to sing with the band. My parents got to come up to see the concert which was really fun- especially since I had a solo this year! It seemed like we had a pretty good crowd come out, and singing to a full audience is always more fun.

The rest of today has been mostly studying for finals, with a fun break and the end of the evening: hanging out with friends and watching “A Christmas Story” while studying and eating popcorn. A lovely end to a productive day before finals week officially starts tomorrow morning. Tomorrow is my busiest exam day of the week: I have my Intercultural Communications exam in the morning, then my violin jury (a kind of musical level performance, where we play the pieces we’ve been working on all semester and have three people judge us), and finally my Graphic Design exam. Our professors have been really good about letting us know what to expect for our exams, and thus how to prepare for them: what to study, finish, and look for in general.

I feel pretty well prepared for all of them, but a little bit more studying doesn’t hurt and makes me feel more prepared. Onto more studying before tomorrow’s exams!

Picture clear, blue waters, white sand and a tropical beach with lounge chairs waiting for you to relax under some shade and read a good book. Your only two activities for the day involve going on two dives beneath the warm waters to explore the colorful reef below ( maybe, today is the lucky day we get to go see a shipwreck), and to meet up with your team later that night to discuss what you saw. Now imagine that you get college credit for said trip. “What?”? you say? Welcome to my Jan term: Scuba Diving the World: Bonaire.

I’m a senior this year, and due to an interesting three first years of studying abroad twice in the spring, it was not possibly for me to take my required Jan term session- essentially a winter course over the break. All students are required to take one Jan term as part of the McDaniel plan, and I suddenly found myself having to take one this year, or not be able to graduate! Figured I would take one… There are two types of Jan terms you can take: ones on campus, and study tour trips that go abroad for around two weeks. The benefit of staying on campus is that your first Jan term is free (minus room and board), and you can just hang out with your friends all the time. The benefits of doing the study tour trips? You get to go abroad! I love traveling, so this is always appealing.

For me personally, none of the on-campus options intrigued me all that much, so I decided to check out the abroad options. Unfortunately…all of them sounded interesting! But for cost reasons, I decided on the least expensive option that would also fulfill a life-goal for me: learning to scuba dive! Our course is called “Scuba Diving the World: Bonaire,” and goes for two week to the island of Bonaire in the Dutch Antilles. Bonaire is in the Caribbean, just off the coast of Venezuela- a pretty tropical location that just happens to be listed as the best dive site in the Caribbean. Among the other awesome things about this trip (it’s in Caribbean for one), is that you get scuba-certified if you’re not already, as in my case. This means that once we complete the certification, we’ll have it for life and can go scuba-dive all over the world!

We’ve been going through some of the training materials before we go- reading through a book and taking quizzes as well as watching the training videos on our own time. Now I’m just getting really excited to go and actually try out everything that I’m learning! I can’t wait for January 8th!

This whole week I thought it was Thursday. Literally every single day. Just a minute ago I was also convinced that tomorrow was going to be Thursday, until I realized that it will be a glorious Friday, and the end of classes before exam week! All that to say that these last two weeks of the semester have been a little bit crazy, and the days have all blurred into one giant sleepless mess. The good news? It’s almost over!

This week I finished out two of my classes: Ceramics and Jazz Dance, which are two things off my plate. I loved doing Jazz Dance- our instructor is really fun and we always learn something new in class and try to improve our flexibility. We were also given a fun challenge for extra credit: do a dance leap in a public place and record it on camera. I did it at our pool at McDaniel- which was hilarious as several people were in the water swimming laps and there I was spinning and leaping on the side of the pool. Totally worth it though. For our last class, we were all instructed to choreograph a brief section of “Don’t Wake Me Up” by Chris Brown and be able to teach it to the rest of the class. I loved getting the excuse to do some extra dancing, and it was interesting to see how different the dances were that everyone came up with to the same song. After a few last dances, we took our version of a final, which was a sort of mini-essay on dance: what we liked about it, what moves were definitely not our favorite and what kind of dancers we enjoyed watching. A fun end to a great few weeks!

The other class that wrapped up this week for me was Ceramics, although finals also continue into next week. It’s been a fun class, though a lot of work, and it’s pretty rewarding to see your pieces improve over the semester. As in a lot of art classes, our final was primarily a critique of the work we had done this semester, and the written notebook on our pieces we’d been working on. I went to my cabinet to gather up all my various pots, bowls and mugs to show to our professor and realized I made a lot of things! …not all necessarily good things, but a lot of things all the same. The things I’ve been making in the past few weeks: mugs, a teapot, a woven basket and a bowl all turned out really nice, so I’m happy to have a good end to the semester and be able to use what I’ve learned later on if I want to! Plus, all these pots will make excellent Christmas presents!

At the end of every class, you have to fill out a teacher evaluation, a process that you can just rush through, or genuinely take your time to give good feedback, which the administration and professors all genuinely read (they are anonymous). It’s a great way to let the school know about how amazing your professor was, or…how they may have missed the mark a bit and what could have been better with the course. I love that students are able to directly provide feedback, and so I usually take my time writing my teacher evaluations.

Despite being done with two classes, I still have five more to worry about for next week- almost there!

This semester has been crazy. But I guess you could say that about pretty much every semester after freshman year in my case… The fact that we only have two weeks of school left before winter break is both really exciting, and intimidating. Exciting for the obvious fact that I can not WAIT to be done with end of the year exams, compositions and evaluations. Terrifying and intimidating because that is such a small amount of time to get everything done that I need to. Plus, there that’s added factor of being a senior, which means that this is my final fall semester at McDaniel-ever. Eek.

Luckily I have some great friends reminding me to take breaks- whether by going into Baltimore on a Friday night, or having a Harry-Potter themed party (See Clara’s post!). It’s nice to be able to take a break, as long as you don’t take too many! Let’s see whether or not I actually follow that advice…

In other fun news, today was a baking day with members of Advocacy Team! I’ve mentioned my club before- we do events on human justice issues like hunger, poverty, AIDS and malaria. Next Monday through Wednesday we’re holding a bake sale to continue raising money to fund the entrepreneur we’re sponsoring in Cambodia- a woman named Rath. The micro loan is $350, and will let her hire more laborers for her farm and purchase fertilizers and pesticides to increase her income and thus raise her standard of living and allow her to send her children to school! So far, we have $275, so we’re really close- only $75 left!

So, after fundraising through an open-mic night, film screenings, and an improv show, our next go is a bake sale! Today four of us got together in my kitchen and made a bunch of delicious goodies to sell: peanut-butter chocolate chip cookies, snickerdoodles, brownies and butterscotch chews. They smell so good that if other people don’t buy them, we may have to! Here’s to next week. As long as I can survive the workload of the weekend, the bake sale will be a fun event that our club can do together for a good cause. If you want some tasty desserts, come visit us outside the dinning hall Monday through Wednesday around lunch time!

Breaks while you’re at college are like a breath of fresh air, and most importantly- a chance to sleep! But all breaks must come to an end- and here’s a typical run-down of your last day before classes resume:

1. Wake-up, somewhat nostalgic that this is the last morning you get to wake up in your bedroom. That is, before you remember that your bed at school is far more comfy with its extra mattress pads and fuzzy body pillow.

2. Enjoy having an actual kitchen- the kind that actually has food and utensils in it.

3. Panic, as you realize that you have a million things to do before you go back to school and before class tomorrow morning.

-Proceed to finish that laundry you meant to do earlier

-Beg your parents to help you run errands (Target and the grocery store most likely)

-Frantically look through your planner and syllabi (yes, that is the plural of syllabus) in an effort to see if you got everything done, realize you probably haven’t and PANIC! Or, you simply start doing it with the full knowledge it will be a late night

4. Remember you should be enjoying your last few moments of home and freedom before finals consume your life.

-Go read a book, play video games with your brother and have some left-over pumpkin pie

5. PANIC: Realize you just wasted valuable time when you could have been doing more work. And so go do more work.

6. Pack your possessions that magically scattered themselves around your house

7. Put things in your car and feel like every time you come back to campus, you bring more stuff.

8. Drive back to campus, singing along loudly to music in the car

9. Arrive in Westminster, discover you do still have your apartment key, and proceed to unpack way more stuff than you thought you brought…

10. Done putting away clean laundry (which was done in an attempt to procrastinate on starting your homework), it’s finally time to keep going on that homework!

Don’t panic too much – everybody else on a college campus is probably doing the exact same thing. Who knows, maybe you’ll end up in my situation where you discover that 6-page paper you thought was due tomorrow is actually due Wednesday! And so ends yet another break- a big gulp of air before the plunge into end of the year exams, papers and presentations. Thank goodness for breaks!

At last I get a break from the never-ending craziness of senior year! I’ve been looking forward to Thanksgiving Break for quite literally the past month. While I’ve kept true to my promise of spending lots more quality time in our dear college library, I’ve now turned in both my Honors Thesis/Translation topic and my Senior Seminar dissertation topic- a huge weight off my chest! Most people tend to go home if they can at McDaniel for break, and I’m no exception.

I live about an hour away from McDaniel, but I have no car so I really only go home on big breaks like Thanksgiving, winter break and Spring Break. It makes for a nice change- not to have to pay to do laundry, a fully-stocked kitchen, and those things you love about home. In my case- the comics! I don’t get the paper at school, and so don’t get to read my Sunday morning comics (yes, we all do it, just admit it). One of my very favorite comic strips though, is Calvin and Hobbes, about a wise, yet trouble-making six-year-old and his stuffed tiger Hobbes. It is quite possibly one of the most amusing things you will ever read.

On breaks, especially as it gets colder, one of my very favorite things to do is curl up on the couch with a pillow and blankets and read some of our family’s collections of Calvin and Hobbes books. The result is often me laughing hysterically to myself pretty frequently and chasing down family members to read them a particularly amusing line.

Breaks are the time to re-charge your batteries so to speak, and do some of the things you enjoy but just don’t have time for during the regular semester. That being said, I also have plenty of real work to be getting on with over break… including starting that dissertation for my Paris course (Senior Seminar). Luckily for me, I’m comparing the image of Paris in 21st century french films versus american films! That means I get to work on my dissertation and watch a lot of movies at the same time-taking notes of course.

There’s also work for my Intercultural Comm class…but that entails interviewing one of my international friends through Skype which is also pretty fun. I guess this means I picked the right classes this fall- I actually don’t mind some of the work! In the meantime, excuse me while I go have some more pumpkin pie to eat while reading Calvin & Hobbes…