Saturday, December 13, 2008

Flurries, Finals, and Fun

Hey everybody!

So it’s a busy busy time here on campus with finals starting on Monday. The last week of classes was packed with work and papers and tests and such, but we’ve got one more stretch until Christmas break.

Last weekend was the NE-10 championships for swimming. The meet started Friday afternoon and went until Sunday night, so on Thursday we had practice, gorged ourselves at a pasta party, and trucked on down to Southern Connecticut. It was a long and tiring weekend, but we had a lot of fun. Sleepover meets are always the best. In fact, here's a video of some dancing on the bus after one morning session:



Both the men’s and women’s teams finished in 5th place overall, and we broke tons of records. We’ve got a break from meets now until we come back to school. We go down to Florida on the 28th and come back to school early on the 6th to swim doubles until everyone comes back for second semester.

Meanwhile, it’s getting very Christmas-y here on campus. We just had a snowstorm and got tons of snow. Campus is also decorated for the holidays. There are lights on a bunch of the trees and other decorations all over. We also have a tradition here called Christmas dinner, and it was Thursday night. It was so delicious. There were potatoes, roast beef, ham, egg nog, hot cider, and of course delicious desserts. There were also some professors there helping to serve us the food. Later that night my friends and I also had our annual Christmas party, complete with secret Santa, cookies, and merriment. I got earmuffs, peanut butter cups, and candy canes from my Santa, and I love them! A few weeks ago some friends and I went to a honors program activity where we made Christmas cards to send to seniors in a nursing home. Basically, we’ve really been getting into the Christmas spirit.

But of course we can’t get carried away with holiday festivities when finals are coming up. The way they work here is there are two time slots for exams each day: 9-11:30 and 1-3:30. Your exam time depends on when your class meets, so there’s never an overlap issue. If you don’t have an actual written test, your paper or project or whatever it is will probably be due during that time too. To help with the stress, the school has a lot of stress-free activities over the weekend, like music and relaxation. They also have a bunch of masseuses come in and give 15 minute massages to us when we sign up. I got one last night and it was so nice.

Anyway that's all for now. I'm sure I'll update this week about our progress with finals (usually we start with group studying and end up taking group naps in the lounge, so who knows). Until then, stay warm everyone.

-Christine

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Christine!
I love reading your blog and I can't wait for florida!!
By the way, the video is hilarious...
Love,Catie

Mairead said...

someone totally name dropped jake the dog in the there...

also my word verification is tysts... interesting