I'm amazing! Bored, but amazing!

Ok, so I've figured out how to connect to the wireless network at the airport and am currently sitting at my gate surfing the web and updating all my loved ones!

The update is....I'm bored! My plane's been delayed for at least an hour and a half, so I've been sitting here surrounded by grumpy passengers waiting for my plane to come in so I can go home. And I REALLY want to go home, too! I can't believe I got up early for this.

But still...I'm cool. Because I'm wireless. I feel like I should be in a Microsoft commercial or something.

As promised:

(if you click on the picture, it will open up full-size...you can even zoom in on it once)

Ok, here are some pictures from our African Drumming concert (I got them from Sarah)...


Here's a nice wide shot of all the performers on the stage. I'm over on the left hand side (second one in in the row closer to the center of the stage), but you can't see me. Mwa ha!


This is my favorite picture I got from Sarah. That's one of the dancers from the Kawambe Omowale company and our professor, Dr. Sunkett. This is a PERFECT example of the energy of the whole concert.


Here's a picture of the Bifal group. The Bifal in Senegal are kinda the party goers. This beat is AMAZING! I wish I were Bifal! I'm not wild 'n' crazy enough. I should have a DVD of the concert by the time I come home for Christmas so anyone wanting to check it out can! :-D

Bloodshed and burgers...

I give you an exact copy of an e-mail I wrote to my mother this morning, sent at 2:48am:

2:30 am....some idiot decided to cook a burger downstairs. He decided it would be a good idea to leave it unattended in the microwave for 5 minutes. The entire building had to evacuate for a fire drill. He apologized for the fire alarms, completely blackened microwave, and acrid smell of smoke as we tromped down the stairs and headed outside. I thought the people with 7:40 finals later this morning we're going to kill him. I thought we'd have a massacre on our hands.

I'm going back to bed.


Around 11am, I went downstairs and found this sign in the kitchen.


Never a dull moment.

A Query

Has anyone else, when discussing movies, confused the names of the characters Indiana Jones and Crocodile Dundee? They're very similar. Not in the actual words, of course, but in structure.

Deceptively similar.

A Chance to Breathe

As Nathan so kindly reminded me, it's been a while since my last post here. To be honest, I have not had the time or energy lately. With things winding down for the end of the semester, I've been horrendously busy and it's only now, approaching reading day (yeah, that's right, not reading week or reading days...just day...singular) that I can sit down and fill you in on everything that's happened.

First of all, tooting my own horn! I rode the bus here in Tempe/Phoenix (The Valley Metro) for the first time ever on the way home from the airport! I was so proud of myself! I didn't get lost or anything! Now I've found the trip planner website (the Metro has a ridiculous number of routes and lines...the bus book is several hundred pages) and plan to take the bus to the airport when I return home for Christmas.

After getting back to my room (after a 3am wake up! Boo!) I had to write a rough draft for English and do all sorts of other homework. I somehow got through all my classes for the next few days (and promptly caught a cold) and turned in all sorts of work and took an Italian final. Friday rolls around...I leave my room about 11:30 to grab lunch, read some, and go to my art history class. After art history I go to drum tuning and after tuning I go with Sarah and Bill to buy ingredients for Ceebu Jen (a Senegalese dish of rice and fish). We went to a Sudanese market and a Nigerian market but still didn't find everything we needed. I got back to my room about 10:30pm. Looonnnggg day!

Saturday, I catch a ride with Sarah into downtown Phoenix to a park there for a drumming rehearsal with the Kawambe Omowale dancers. After rehearsal, Lydia, Sarah, and I grabbed lunch at this amazing sandwich shop called Sacks and took it back to Lydia's to eat. After lunch, Sarah and I went to the Mill Ave. Arts Festival to watch her brother (a senior in high school) perform (he's a guitarist). The Arts Festival was fun and I wish I could have spent more time just looking around, but it also made me very homesick. It was like a larger version of Art on the Green/Street Fair and I wished my Mom was there to see it with me. After the Arts Festival we once again went on the search for ingredients...we hit Leelee's (a Chinese market) and Food City (a grocery store that caters to the Hispanic population). After going back to Sarah's apartment to put the groceries away and split up the bill, Sarah ran me back to my room. I got back around 9:30pm....another 12 hour day!

Yesterday, I went with Sarah to the north side of Phoenix (about a 45 minute drive both ways) to pick up her dance outfit from a seamstress there. We got back to her apartment and started to cook the Ceebu Jen but seriously ran out of time. I don't know what we're going to do with all the stuff now, but Sarah was hoping for having it done for Tuesday (our last class meeting of the drumming class). We dashed over to campus for the potluck/set up at 4:30 and ate, carried the drums over to the playhouse we were performing in, ran through the show, and started the concert at 7:30.

The concert was great! It was so much better than I expected! For one, it was the least stressful concert I've ever been in (I think because I didn't have anyone there to watch me...no one to worry about disappointing!) and it was SO much fun! The dancers were amazing and brought a whole new level of energy to the concert. The house was pretty full and everyone seemed very excited to be there. The female lead dancers of the Kawambe Omowale company were so nice and encouraging to us, even though we were almost all novices to African drumming. I'm so amazed by how those women are so strong but overwhelmingly feminine at the same time. They're the best!

After cleaning up the stage and taking the drums back to the basement of the music building, I headed BACK to the dorm and promptly showered...it was about 10pm. Are you sensing a pattern?

Today has been mild so far: got up at 8 to go to a UPS store (Mommy and Daddy sent me a care package!) and have a review session for art history. After class, I go to the UPS store on the OTHER side of campus (yes, we have two) to pick up some pegs Dad made for our Sabar drums. Tonight, I am going to Sarah's African dance performance. That one'll probably be done about 9:30 too. *sigh* Yeah, no real work is getting done today.

Home in ten days, birthday in two weeks. I can make it! Hope you all are doing well! Here is a picture of a hat...that looks like a badger...I want one.