dreaming of ice

i'm getting excited about the semester, but it has been hard to get too excited - too much of anything, really. the reason is that it's been sooo hot! i feel like a slug, a sloth, a ... well, you get the picture. i have no energy. and i feel like i can't even sleep. its almost like a never ending fever. i don't even think camp was this bad. blech.

but in the interests of filling in my readers at home, i will go over a little of what has happened this last week.

Honors Colloquium: "Is this natural? Place, fit, and balance."
talking about invasive species; invasive cultures; what is natural? what do we mean by unnatural; what is synthetic vs natural in chemisty?
its going to be super cool, i think, for many reasons. not least of which is the fact that it is taught by one of my favorite professors, matt siderhurst. (he's the chemistry prof i talked about who has dreds and does research on invasive insects in hawaii).


Physics
blech. blech. i need to review calculus - i should have taken physics last year when calc was fresh in my mind.

Advanced Cell Biology
scariest class - tiny and in-depth and hard and self-directed and ... eeee.

Analytical Chemistry
i am going to love this! new thoughts, new ideas. again, a class that needs lots of internal drive. learning how analytical chemists think, learning how to solve problems; yeah, learning how to think. mmm.


Poetry
Yay! so awesome. the alternate name for the class is "80 works," as in I need to write 80 works of poetry by the time the class is over. and these are not lame kiddy works, but sonnets, anglo-saxon alliterative verse, lipograms, and other specific types of poetry. the teacher for this class is SO good. she is snarky and sarcastic and has such a strong voice in the things she writes. i am going to learn how to write better, to have more control over my writing, to learn how to condense my language and use specific, lovely, luminious words.


finally, i will write about my first weekend here.
it is cooler than it was during the week. there is a breeze outside and the sky is beautiful and blue. today i wanted to go to the early church, but my bike is messed up and i didn't realize until 10 minutes before church started. so instead of biking to church thia and i walked behind the science center and met meg and sat under a willow tree. we prayed and read the bible and wrote a psalm and loved God and i decided that i am very glad to be among friends who long to know God and to be still in the deathless truth of his presence.