So what have I been up to?

In college, I've been doing some pretty fun stuff. Don't worry -- I've been drinking milk, not alcohol (as recommended by that bookmark they handed out during Welcome Week), but I've been having an absolutely splendid time regardless (or perhaps because of it!)

What have I been doing, then?

Well... I live in Philadelphia, so there's lots to do. Beth and I went to Magic Gardens, which we got in for free with our student PEX passes.

I had lots of fun trying to take pictures with the mirror fragments in the walls.

There were also a ton of bottles that people had put notes in, and we spent probably an hour sticking pencils into the bottles to try to get the notes out to read them. I was looking for a love note, and it took me a surprisingly long time to find one! Finally I did :)

This picture has little to do with the bottles and notes. However, I have nowhere else to put it, so it's going here.

If you've never heard of the Magic Gardens, it's basically an enormous, tumultuous collage of stuff in the form of a house and maze-garden. There are bottles galore, there are pottery fragments, tiles, lines of text... no matter where you look, there's more and more stuff. I would have loved it as a kid, it was amazing. And, since it's all stuck in with concrete, everything is completely touchable!

Beth and I lucked out getting each other as room mates. Yeah, one of us stays up later than the other, and we like different music, and one of us is less messy than the other... but we get along so well that we're best friends anyway. It's wonderful.

This, by the way, is Beth and I both very sad a few weeks ago when we lost to Penn State in the last four minutes and forty two seconds of the game. We had been winning for the entire game until the last FOUR minutes. I hope you realize how emotionally devastating it was for us.

Other than the Magic Gardens, I've been to the Franklin Institute -- Gabe and I (he's my boyfriend -- we met in Linguistics class) went to see the mummy exhibit there. Which was interesting and really, really creepy. There's this one peruvian mummy who's cradling this child mummy and is resting her head on top of another child mummy... who happens to have neither feet nor hands nor HEAD. Creepy.

By the way, out my dorm window we have a fantastic view of the city.

Other than that, really what's been going on is.... Shenanigans. Lots and lots of shenanigans.

This is Gabe, indulging my mischievous shenanigans. See what wild college students we are?

Yay, Mom and Rick!

Wow, it’s sure been a while. Quite frankly, I’m starting this up again because I realized it would probably be easier to do blog posts than email all the pictures of my day-to-day to my mom.

Jenny, my step sister, also spent part of the Saturday with us.

This weekend, I visited my family at home for the first time since I left for college. It was my mom’s birthday. Happy birthday, Mom! Know that you’re appreciated and loved dearly.

I got to cook, which was a big, big relief after being kitchen-deprived for over a month. Everyone reassured me that there would be a communal kitchen, but there is nothing but communal microwaves. Very, very sad, I know.

I was also very, very lucky in that my brother had a track meet that Saturday! It was a lot of fun, and I really loved that I got to see him run!

Those runners work so hard, I was impressed. I’m so, so proud of him. I don’t know how far they run, but it’s a fair distance. This race included running through woods and going through thigh-deep water. You can see from his red face that he was working hard!

Happy Birthday, Mom, and congratulations, Rick!!