I don't know about you, but I came to party.

Tonight was a great night. And I don't know why.

Classes were okay... I handed in my first paper for Cinema... I interpreted the very first shot from the first Godfather.... as I was typing my paper last night at midnight, I realized how much more I've learned about film after my first three weeks here at Augsburg... and then I realized that I am only 2 chapters into our text book... I guess you could call it a humbling experience... I'm not quite sure.... I know I've got a lot to learn. Oh, and today I took my first test for my film class.. which went okay. I know that i forgot a couple things (what are the three main aspect ratios used in film over the last century?), and some of the questions i had to B.S. my way through... but i did alright... a lot better than the 75 percent I got on my first spanish test (worst test of my LIFE... i NEED a tutor.. mostly for motivation)

Today I wanted to take a nap at every opportunity i had.. but i refused my instincts... i was both mad/proud at the same time.

And tonight I had play practice. Every honors student is required to take part in the "Scholars Citizen Theater Lab". Basically, all honors students work together to put together a play about the themes in our book "The Question of God," a book about the conflicting ideas of Sigmund Freud and CS Lewis. Most former honors kids say this is one of the best experiences in their college life so far.... tonight we started writing our one act play (The honor kids are split into 4 different groups and each group develops their own one act). We decided to have a somewhat connected theme by everyone creating a mock t.v. show type thing... My groups play (which I am the stage manager for) decided on the television show "Blue's Clues"... except our show deals with sex, violence, love, and death... ya know, basic Freudian principals... I'm liking the way things are going so far.

And the best part of the night....

Doing laundry. 

I did laundry. And I hate laundry. Fortunately, I have awesome friends who also do laundry with me.

We stayed in the laundry room for a couple hours... and all it took to make good out of a pretty boring situation was a couple cans of rockstar. Now I don't normally drink caffeine. I actually never drink pop, and i don't like coffee. So after 40 ounces of energy drinks, laundry is no longer as crappy as it may seem. Sitting down there with my best friends from Augsburg reminded me a lot of "Breakfast Club" but the laundry room version.  We easily entertained ourselves. 

By the time our laundry was finished, the caffeine fully kicked in... Luckily, Andy, who suffered a shoulder injury from flag-football, is on a prescription of vicodin... this makes for some high-fueled dance parties.... or just people laughing at us.

And now i've got another 100 pages of reading to do  :)

good night.

Any Given Sunday

None of us were in a party mood last night.

So we all went for a walk.

One of the best things about Augsburg's location is that it is sooo very close to the University of Minnesota. We're on West Bank (where downtown Minneapolis is) and the U of M is on East Bank (dinkytown) so it's only a short walk across Washington Bridge. Last night we met some of my friends that go to the U and they gave us the grand tour. After chilling in Blake's room for a while (which he said was "clean" because his parents visited him that day...), we got hungry and they suggested Mesa Pizza... so we went. Getting to Messa meant walking through Frat Row, which was an experience in itself, of course....

I've never been through Frat Row before... I've actually never seen it at night, so i was amazed at how many people there were. Some of the houses looked pretty crazy to. If you ever need a party to go too, there will always be one on Frat Row... It must be very hard for all those studious frat kids to ever get any homework done....

And finally we made it to Mesa Pizza. It was awesome... definitely a place for college kids. A huge slice of pizza only costs 2 dollars. And it's soo good. They even have macaroni and cheese pizza... which i heard is delicious (i wish i would have tried that... i got hawaiian instead).

And then we walked back.

And I went to bed.

And woke up at 11:45 AM. If the Vikings weren't on today, I probably would have slept a lot later than that.

Debate Time.

Oh, i love fridays.

3:30 every Friday is probably the best time of my week. At 3:30, it is officially the weekend for me. When my spanish class get's out, I feel free. The best thing is.... i dont have to worry about going home and doing chores, laundry, the dishes, babysitting, and all that jazz.... i can go in my room and take a nap... or watch some tv... or go to the Mall of America.

That is until Sunday night when I remember how much homework I have to do.

I also had a meeting for all Film Majors today... I found it very interesting... It's kind of weird to hear of all the movies that my proffessors and the uperclassmen enjoy. It's interesting to hear why "Transformers was the worst movie I have ever seen" and why the only time my proffessor walked out of a theater was doing the new King Kong movie... I definitely think I'll learn a lot.

And tonight's agenda:

Watch the debate at 8. I'm really looking forward to it. There are a couple spots on campus that are set up for "debate watching parties", and the entire financial crisis makes things even more intersting. I am glad that the debate did not get cancelled. I strongly believe that tonight's debate is an important event that does not need to get pushed back.....Most people here at Augsburg take politics pretty seriously.... It's pretty cool.

And then after that... I don't know what I'm going to do....

Not homework, that's for sure.

Spin

Some certain themes have become pretty apparent after my first few weeks here at Augsburg College. First of all...

Thursday nights are for Spin.

Spin is a night club in downtown Minneapolis. Thursday and Saturday nights are 18 plus, and a lot of people end up going down there together.

I have yet to go... I'm not really the clubin' type (even though I've never gone to one... but I've got a pretty good imagination). I probably will end up going one of these nights... just for the heck of it.

And while a few of my friends went out to dance (i was feeling pretty tired/had homework), I took Katie out to eat at Dinkytown. Luckily i have a loving aunt that lives in Minnetonka and she dropped off some food for me then drove us to Dinkytown. 

We ate at Loring's Pasta Bar. It was delicious. I don't know if it's quite at a college kid's income level (just our two meals cost 30 bucks), but you can only eat taco-bell so often (there's also a jimmy-johns pretty much directly on campus... it's my new favorite place). And after we got done with our meal, we decided to walk home because it was a beautiful night. 

Then we watched a movie (Rocket Science... great indie flick. i def. recommend it) and ate ice-cream (i swear i've bought out the Winner Gas Station of ice-cream already.. i don't know what i'd do without a freezer/fridge combo). And I was just about to go to bed when Claire came home, looking very sad.

She forgot her ID, they wouldn't let her into Spin,  and so she had to come back home. Rough night, huh?

And now Katie and I have to console her until her roommate gets back from the club... hopefully soon so i can get some shut-eye.

Spontaneity

You wanna know the best part of going to Augsburg College?

Yeah, it's a private school and i have small classes.

Yeah, people are surprisingly nice.

Yeah, the school is tiny enough to recognize everyone's face but still be able to meet new people.

Yeah, there are a million other reasons, but my favorite one is....

Spontaneity is entirely possible.

Tonight, at 5:30, my friends and I decided to go to a twins game. It was random. I just felt like going.

Not only are tickets only 4 dollars (if you show your student id) but there are also dollar dome dogs (which taste heavenly when they only cost a dollar). AND, i love the Twins. AND, they are sooo close to winning the division and we played the white sox tonight.

It was sweet. And it was only a 4 minute lightrail ride away. :)

On the downside, all my professors are giving out the most homework i've gotten all semester. I feel like they all got together and said "hey. lets give out some homework right now because we love our students and we want them to get smarter so we'll give them sooo much homework because we know they love it."

but really. it's piling up. and i need to do it right now  :) it will be another late night.

So Here We Are

So i promised that i'd talk a little bit about my movie night...

Requiem for a Dream: one of the most depressing movies i have ever watched. Technically speaking, it was very well made. It had a well defined (formalist) style that was amazingly maintained throughout the entire movie. The best part of the movie was the acting, especially by the older mother. The characters were REAL... that's the best way to describe it... Did I like the way they ended up? well... no, not really... but could it have been done any other way? definitely not. I would recommend not watching this movie at 2:00 in the morning either... it might make you to sad to go to sleep... seriously. This movie is the definition of pain.... the journey for pleasure... (insert other deep themes here). It was good. I would recommend it for the sole reason of finding out exactly how you don't want your life to end up.

Last night I was going to write a blog about my day... unfortunately, my day was way to busy... i had class... i had sooo much homework.. and then we had our pepfest.

The pepfest was ok... nothing too special.

They lit fireworks off in the middle of murphy park, which was awesome.

Tonight they had a campus-wide game of capture the flag. I was sooo pumped for that...

Unfortunately, Tuesday nights are "First Year Experience" meetings.. two members from each res. hall floor are selected to represent the first year class and decide what things need to be changed on campus...so yeah... no capture the flag for me... oh well, I've gotta make sacrifices.

And last night i stayed up till 2:30 reading... so sacrificing sleep seems to be a recurring theme. But my body's used to it by now.

Requiem for a Dream

Yeah.... it's 4:00 in the morning.

D' and I just finished watching Requiem for a dream.

And before that, a whole bunch of people chilled in my room and talked.

And before that we had a dance party on floor 2.

And before that, I did the normal, college, saturday thing and relaxed, homework-free.

It was an eventful day......

A lot of people went home this weekend... I got some people together though and we put on a little dance party. Alex supplied the AWESOME speaker system, Lewis was the DJ, Katie and Hannah were in charge of decorations, and Brad let us use his strobe light. It was pretty sweet. There weren't that many people here at Augsburg this weekend (I guess the three week mark is when everyone goes home to visit), but we still had a lot of fun...

And afterwards, a lot of people went to the U for parties and all that jazz... I decided that i was tired (even though I'm still not sleeping), and that i would stay home tonight... despite my decision, people still ended up coming in my room and talking....

Eventually, it was just D' and I. It was pretty in depth... you know, God, life, and politics... all that jazz... and then at 1 in the morning we decided to watch Requiem for a Dream. Being a film major, I am ashamed to see that I have never seen this movie before... but D has... and he said he hated it, even though he said he considered it as one of the top 5 movies he's seen... so he made me watch it.

And i've never seen anything so depressing.

In fact, I don't even want to talk about it right now. I'm going to bed, and hopefully, I'll wake up to sunshine :)

Oh, and you'll get my critique soon.