Epiphany

Happy Feast of the Epiphany, everyone. As Fr. Clark said in Mass today, "Unless your Jewish this is your feast day, "and I was sitting there going, "Why, yes it is! Thank you for noticing." This year my birthday was duly celebrated many times over the last twelve days, so today was nice and low key.

The past year has been...strange, goofy, fun, and awesome, but still really, really strange. I was going to post pictures from my last birthday to illustrate how strange this year started off, but all of them were too strange for the internet. So I'm just going to skip that bit. Anyway, second semester of Freshman year was a whole lot better than first semester. Instead of bawling my way through finals, I laughed... hysterically from stress, but laughed none the less and breezed right through that week.

Then I got my first real job as a counselor at Camp Cheery, which I loved. Totally loved. But it was not exactly what I expected. I mean, even for an all girls' camp, it was awfully girly. I did not realize that one simply cannot over pack for a week at camp. I turned up with a backpack, the other counselors turned up with trunks, suitcases, boxes, and bags. I'm pretty sure I didn't have that much stuff in my dorm room, but okay. Although some of the counselors and I were rather different, I did bond with the two other counselors who were not in sororities, and we had a great time just being our dorky selves. But most importantly, I loved my campers! I had a cabin of ten, yes ten, second grade girls, and they were just the cutest things ever! We had so much fun dancing at the dance party, singing camp songs at dinner, keeping the cabin clean... Of course I had my favorite little camper (don't tell), but I thought each one of them was just terrific.

After that I worked as a nanny for a while, but that didn't work out, so I went to work at the bookstore which was the best thing ever. Basically I clean stuff and then I get to play around with stuff I don't own. And by play I mean creatively arrange in a way that makes other people want to buy it. It works too. I am a very good merchandise arranger. Of course, I always have to stop myself from spending my other paychecks in that store.

I spent just about all my free time in Goodwill with Joy. Talk about most fun ever. Goodwill is not only a clothing store- it's a way of life. That's why in Mass, during the Gloria we say, "peace to people of Goodwill." That's just Jesus' way of saying he loves Joy and me best. Just kidding. Anyway, Joy really encouraged me to expand my clothing horizons, to wear clothes that aren't blue and grey! She also got me into wearing dresses, which I still do, even though they're all blue and grey. Sorry, Joy. We spent the summer plotting to do all these cool things, but in the end we just went to goodwill, which was A-okay.

In August I went back to school. It was hard. Once all the novelty of Freshman year wears off, college really stinks. It also stinks when half of your class, including many of your best friends, are in Italy having fun and posting pictures on facebook. Call it jealousy, but you try concentrating on Moby Dick, while all your friends are drinking wine and chilling in Italy. Of course I still had a bunch of friends on campus, and we all had a lot of fun together. I really bonded with my new roommate, and we had a great time listening to country music, going dancing, and just hanging out with the remnant of our class.

My classes this semester were hard. Not just a little hard, like really, really hard, but I loved them all. Except biology. I still really hate biology, but other than that I was motivated to do well in all my classes because I loved them so much. Probably my favorite class was my Anglo-Saxon England class taught by the coolest professor ever. I must have talked about this class all the time because most of the books I got for Christmas are Anglo-Saxons related. I also enjoyed my German class very much. It wasn't as hard as my other classes, probably because my dad speaks fluent German and has been talking at me all my life, but it was great to learn a language that people still speak. I was super stressed all semester, but when grades came back, my hard work had paid off!

I've spent my Christmas holiday relaxing and looking forward to an amazing semester in Italy, which I haven't eve begun to pack for. And because it's not yet midnight where I am. I will wish you all a Merry Christmas one last time. Thank you everyone for making this a great, if slightly strange year!