Tuesday, February 10, 2009

This is how I feel!


Right now things are warmer, the snow is melting, I can see grass, I can smell spring! But everyone tells me it's all a lie! They tell me this is some evil February thaw. I refuse to believe! If I close my eyes and believe I know the snow will all go away! Ugh, stupid winter. I'm so tired of this. I want to hear the whisper of the living grass beneath my feet! I want to hear the birds sing! I want to smell the smell of fresh mud, and unfrozen earth! Spring will come! I know it!

Sunday, February 08, 2009

I just did something amazing! Almost as amazing as room events!

Do you know what I just did? Something amazing? Yeah, that’s right! Way to go! You guessed it! I did something amazing! What did I do that was so amazing? I read a book! Why is that amazing you ask? I’m in college, I read books all the time, right? Well, yes, that’s true. But since this semester started I haven’t, not even once, been able to read just for pleasure. It’s been all schoolwork. And as you can probably tell I haven’t had much time to write for pleasure either. That means that I’ve been too busy for two of my favorite things! So now I’ve done something amazing. Today I finished reading Orson Scott Card’s “Speaker for the Dead” (and have decided I want to write something that a “Speaker” will read at my funeral) and now I’m writing this blog post! So I’m doing two awesome things in one day! And that’s just the beginning of why today is awesome! Today we’re also having a room event! What’s a room event? A room event is only the most awesome idea ever conceived! Derek and I are roommates in Roth, and Jenny (my girlfriend) and our friend Anya are roommates in Lambein. Something that Houghton does with the dorms is to have sister/brother floors that have events together and be all friendly. But since our floors never do anything with our sibling floors Jenny, Anya, Derek and I have started having room events! We are brother and sister rooms!

Today is our third room event, the four of us doing fun things together. The other times we did fun things like go sledding and watch movies and eat kohuke, (yes, we ate kohuke!) and now today we’ve gone on an adventure to Jamestown, New York for a Russian dinner! Aren’t we random? Kohuke and Russian dinners? Aren’t they, like, enemies? Well, despite my dislike of Russians I like our room events much more. Some Russians are visiting the area and are cooking a big Russian dinner here at a church in Jamestown, so we came over for some good Russian food! I like Russian food actually. We actually came earlier this morning, and the dinner isn’t until six, so we’ve been hanging out, reading, studying, writing, joking, exploring and having fun! And we even helped set up a little bit! We’ve been having a really good time. Overall, life is just pretty good. And tonight, to continue our room event, we have SPOT, Houghton’s big talent/comedy/awesomeness show. I can’t wait. Anyway, I haven’t blogged in a while, and I was having such a good day that I thought I would, just for the heck of it. Anyway, I need to get going now, Anya is playing piano, Jenny is reading her Bible and looking out the window, and Derek seems to have gone missing! For a second time! So, Cya!

…Or not? Well, I wrote that first half in Word and saved it, and now I’ll continue! We found Derek, and it turns out he was hiding in a stairwell because that’s the only place he could get WiFi. After finding him and hanging out a bit more we went to the amazing Russian dinner. We went down to the dining room half an hour and hung out until three other Houghton students came (Megan, Meredith and Andra) and then the dinner started. First we started with some REAL potato salad. Not this nasty American crap, but some delicious Russian winter salad! It was SO good! Then we moved on to Borsht! Real Borsht! That was AMAZING! Then the biggest and most wonderful surprise of all, something so wonderful, so amazing, that I was shocked beyond emotion! I was so happy! We had…Pelmeeni! First I need to tell you a story to help you understand why this was so amazingly special! When my family came to visit they brought me a few bags of frozen Pelmeeni, and of course it thawed on the trip over. Due to the thaw all the Pelmeeni was stuck together and was disgustingly doughy, and when I boiled it, it just didn’t come out right. It wasn’t at all as good as I usually make. And being all goopy and thawed as it was there was no way I could fry it. So I pretty much despaired of having Pelmeeni again until I went to Estonia this summer. But then, this Russian dinner! Yay! Pelmeeni! My life is wonderful! I was so excited to have Pelmeeni again!

So anyway, the final dish was some sort of honey cake desert, which was pretty good. But nothing beat the Pelmeeni. There was also some Blini, but I didn’t really like the stuff they had wrapped in it. After we finished eating all the Russian ladies put on a big program with Russian dance and song and culture-ness. It was pretty cool. Very Russian, but still pretty cool. I only understood two words from one song, Sabaka (dog) and Bobka (which I think is like hag) but it was still pretty cool. I was pretty disappointed that they didn’t sing “Kalinka,” but it couldn’t have been a perfect night. One other interesting thing happened was that a beautiful young lady named Masha sat at our table with us, and both Derek and I developed a HUGE crush on her. She was cute and reminded me of like a million girls I’ve had crushes on in Estonia, and she also had the whole cute accent going. It was pretty cool. So anyway, that was a pretty good night. Crushes, Russian dances and songs, excellent Russian food, quite the excellent room event. Well, now I really must go. Cya!

…For real this time…