We've Got the Best Apartment Around!

Our apartment decided it would be nice to have a roomie dinner this week. Not only did we want to cook and chat, we also wanted to go over basic apartment rules and discuss cleaning jobs and schedules. Tuesday night was deemed "Apartment Dinner Night," and boy, did we have a good time.

When we all got back to the apartment after our various day activities, we headed to Target to pick up supplies. Anna and Hayleigh were in charge of the main dish and a small side dish while Millie and I were in charge of a salad and dessert. We split up, picked up our ingredients and then headed back to campus.

Dinner was delicious. We were all cute; laying out plates and drinking raspberry lemonade out of mason jars. Millie and I also made name tags, not because we don't know each other's name, but because we simply wanted to craft. After our make your own salad, we ate mozzarella sticks and stuffed peppers. Dessert was a sponge cake with chocolate pudding, a strawberry, and a piece of Dove dark chocolate. See photos below:

Salad 

Main course

Dessert

It was such a nice way to end Tuesday night. It was good to catch up with my roommates and to make a meal together. I'm looking forward to more meals like this and once again, I was reminded that this summer is going to be pretty fantastic!

Weekend Adventures

Officially, last weekend was my first summer weekend on campus. I turned in my final May Term projects on Friday night and my brother came down for a visit! Once the project was sent in, we cooked up a meal in the apartment and then kicked back and watched a movie.

Saturday was a bit of a lazy day. I finally slept in (I had stayed up pretty late working on my final May Term projects...whoops!) and then made breakfast. My brother and I headed to Clark Field for a workout and then returned to the apartment for lunch. In the afternoon, we played some sand volleyball (whoo!) and worked up an appetite for dinner.

Then a Saturday night adventure began. Myself and a bunch of friends were interested in the Kernels baseball game. But, we got there a little late and there weren't many good seats left. We made the tough but right decision to skip the game and instead, wound up at a high school softball game. Despite us not knowing anyone playing, we still stayed for two innings. The excitement had kind of worn out by then, and so we moved onto another adventure: a movie at our local theater. We saw Now You See Me, a magical adventure about four magicians who try to pull off these amazing tricks. It was so nice to relax in the theater and not worry about a homework assignment or meeting with a professor I had to prepare for.

My Saturday night ended with my brother and I hanging out with my roommates, watching TV, and playing some card games. Not a shabby Saturday if you ask me.

Sunday was definitely a cleaning day. I got some stuff in order and prepared for the week.

Overall, it was a fantastic weekend. If every weekend was like this: full of friends, being outside, and cooking in my apartment, I could stay in summer forever.

One CRAZY week!

I've now been back on campus for two full weeks. It is so great to be back and finally settling into a spot for more than a few months. This was also my first full week back in Admissions. In some ways, I felt like I never left the Nassif House staff; I just mixed right back in with everyone. I got to give a few tours to some pretty fantastic prospective students, and TJ and I have been busy reorganizing the student workroom and storeroom.

On top of my eight-hour day, I've also been hard at work at my final May Term paper and scrapbook. It's made for some pretty late nights but the end results are worth it! As I was paging through my scrapbook pages, I definitely miss Germany and Poland. I've also checked out several books on the Holocaust and will probably mix them in with my summer reading because I am still exploring so many different avenues and topics I learned about on my trip. For me, that signals this trip was widely successful because I'm invested in the topic and want to devour as much information as I can.

So everything is good. Really good. My summer apartment is absolutely FABULOUS. I'm rooming with Millie, Anna B., and Hayleigh. It's an excellent group of girls and currently we are in major planning mode. Boards have been envisioned and events are being made. I'm really looking forward to getting closer to these girls.

I now should be regularly blogging again. I still have some final wrap up for May Term I'd like to do and a few introductory summer posts. And then I'll be off and running. I've got lots of things on my own personal summer list agenda and I'm planning on accomplishing them all! (Or at least as many as I can cram in!) 

Ten? Do we have ten? The group.

It's always interesting to see what student sign up for what May Terms and how the group interacts abroad. Last May, I had an excellent group that bonded during our three weeks in the fells of the Lake District. This May, I had the joy of traveling with nine other students along with Professor Keenan. Now, I have had Professor Keenan before; my very first semester on campus when I took Western Civilization. We have kept in touch since that class and it was nice to be her student again. The rest of the group included:

Kallie and Kelsey, my roommates and the other girls on the trip. Both are history majors and will be seniors this upcoming year. I had so much fun rooming with them and near the end of the trip, we started having nightly tea before going to bed. 

Alex, Ryan, Deg, Braydon, Danny, Charlie, and Brian. The boys. It was weird to be outnumbered but they were fun. Brian and I were buddies for the trip, and we had a lot of fun roaming museums and checking out ice cream favors in Krakow. When you got all seven boys together, you could count on endless movie quotes and lots of laughter. 

And so 10 was our major number. This number became even more important because on the first day, we might have temporarily split up. 

It was myself and Brian and I swear, it wasn't out fault. We had gotten into Berlin and were obviously jet lagged. It was a beautiful sunny day in Berlin and we just wanted to check in at our hotel. We found the bus we needed to take and the group had slowly begun to load this bus. Since there were so many people, Brian and I decided to head to the back of the bus. We sat down and the next thing we knew, the rest of the group was off the bus due to space issues. As Brian and I got up to get off, the bus doors closed and started to drive off. Brian and I couldn't do anything except wave at Professor Keenan as we pulled away from the airport. 

As the bus drove away, Brian and I started to laugh and freak out a little bit. Thanks to a friendly German woman sitting next to us and Brian's phone having a few international minutes, we not only figured out how to get to the hotel but also that if we got off at the first stop, we could meet up with the rest of the group when they hopped on the next bus. In the end, we were happily reunited and it became a running inside joke for the 11 of us throughout the trip. Thank goodness we know how to travel!

I think the best example of our group bonding took place at our final dinner in Warsaw on Friday night and early Saturday morning as we left the hotel. We were getting along and having a good laugh. It will be weird not seeing them all day every day this upcoming week but we will still be together to watch movies and finish up our term.

Back in the States! Whirlwind Weekend!

My trip back to the United States began at 7:30 AM (Warsaw time, aka 12:30 AM Midwest time) on Friday, April 24th. Our group did our final museums and then our big group dinner. While Warsaw rained on us, it still didn't get us down.

Upon arriving back to the hotel, most of us stayed up. I showered and packed and returned to the lobby at 3:30 AM. It's now Saturday, April 25th in Warsaw (and only 8:30 PM on Friday in the Midwest). We were driven to the Warsaw airport and boarded a plane around 6:30 AM. I was so tired that I fell asleep before the flight attendant explained how your seat belt works and where the oxygen masks are located and woke up about half way through the flight to receive my complimentary glass of water and warm pretzel and then finally woke up as the door to the plane was opening and people were taking off their seatbelts. I didn't even feel us landing! Our group had a three hour layover in Berlin and then it was time to fly to Chicago.

I slept less on that flight; watched a few movies (can't go wrong with James Bond Skyfall) and started reading a part of Primo Levi's memoir (he was a survivor of Auschwitz).

So hello Chicago! It was about 12:30 and we had exactly an hour and a half to get through customs and security to make our flight to Cedar Rapids. Let's just say things got a little tight and I got to experience running through O'Hare and jumping most of the security line to get to our terminal.

The entire group made it on the flight and by 3 PM, I was safely back in Cedar Rapids. My good buddy Alison W. picked me up and drove me back to campus. I did a bit of unpacking, threw in a load of laundry, and caught up with my roommate, Millie. Alison and I went out to grab a frozen pizza and spent the night in my apartment catching up. We both got to bed early because we had a big Sunday.

If I wasn't crazy busy enough, after I return home from my international travels, I hopped into a car on Sunday to see Elise, my clarinet buddy and friend at Coe, get married in north western Iowa. Alison and I were buddies and made it there to see the ceremony and then eat and dance at the reception! It was a lovely time and we even snapped a photo of the Coe kids who were there:

Alison and I headed back to Coe on Sunday night. I got a few hours of sleep in and then went to class this morning. It was sort of weird seeing my group in Hickok Hall instead of the lobby of our hotel. We watched Downfall, a German made movie that shows the last days of Hitler and the Third Reich. It was a fascinating movie and after writing this blog post, I'm planning on doing some in-depth research about the movie and the criticism it received. I have the rest of this rainy Memorial Day off and hope to get some good work done. After a semester of working on NYPL's Veterans Oral History and after this May Term, Memorial Day looks a little different in my eyes. It becomes a more powerful day in my eyes and I thank all the veterans who gave their lives for our freedom.

I hope to crank out a few more blog posts this upcoming week. Keep reading!