Give us bread but give us roses....albeit a bit late
Time for a terribly overdue update - I know, I know, but there was senior week and packing and then graduation and MORE packing and then as soon as I got home I went and stuck my eyes under a laser and had to deal with that plus UNpacking so honestly there just hasn't been time.
May Day was simultaneously pretty excellent and super depressing. The day started bright and early, as part of tradition the seniors are supposed to go to the president's house, wake her, then process back to Rockefeller arch, climb onto the roof, and sing a hymn to the sun. What actually happened was a handful of seniors managed to drag themselves out of bed, we meandered to the President's house, did the Anass to call her out of the house (she was already awake), and meandered back to Rock arch.
Last year the arch was under construction. This year it wasn't, and we were indeed allowed to climb a super narrow and steep spiral staircase to get on the roof :D None of us knew the hymn, though, so we sang "here comes the sun" instead XD. It was a really awesome view, though I had, predictably, forgotten my camera, so the only pictures I have are on my phone. But it was a lot of fun :D
Breakfast was champagne, bagels and strawberries (around a chocolate fountain!) and far too little seating. I bought a hoop for the hoop race later on and then
grayscale and I headed back to Rock arch to get set up to be Maypole dancers. I ended up on the McBride pole, since I wasn't technically chosen to be a maypole dancer, but it meant I got to dance every year, so I didn't care :D
Also, omg, the seniors brought it this year - our pole was braided BEAUTIFULLY, the best I've ever seen. The McBride pole was a mess, of course, because our colors alternated by three instead of by two so no one knew where they were going.
After the maypole was speeches, and then the hoop race - during which I rolled my hoop, the whole way down, even though it took an age and I nearly dropped it a few times :D After that was may hole, loads of fun as usual, and my very last scottish demo ;~; It went wonderfully, and we had such adorably devoted frosh this year, it was really cute.
The rest of the day was spend lounging on the green, eating, drinking, and taking one short break to go see the fencing parody St. George and the Dragon play, which was, as always, hilarious. That was the good part of the day.
By dinnertime, I was feeling the effects of an early morning, long day out in the sun + drinking (though I had been careful to have water too) and a thrown-off eating schedule - which is to say I was tired and feeling nauseated. We were also fast approaching the part of the evening that I had been both looking forward to and dreading since several days before. At the end of the last step sing of the year, the juniors are finally allowed to climb the senior steps (a particular set of steps that, as the name implies, may only be used by members of the senior class - its also where seniors sit at step sings) and unofficially become seniors, allowed to lead the college cheer, walk down senior row, etc. Its also pretty much when the students say goodbye to the current seniors, even though there's still another two weeks of finals, and is generally incredibly emotional. Last year, I had been a sobbing wreck, since I was close to several people in the class above mine, which had extended into the next day - something I was not looking forward to repeating, made only worse by the fact that I would be the one leaving. Needless to say, I was overstimulated, tired, and generally nervewracked for the first half of step sing. I managed to relax and enjoy myself for the second half, thankfully, though true to form I was crying by the first few steps down the goodnight line, and had to go back and re-hug several underclasswomen who were having a particularly bad time of it. It was, in the end, not as bad as I'd thought it would be, though still damn depressing.
Then there were finals, which really sucked and hardly bear mentioning, and the Japanese language class potluck party, which was adorable and filled with good food and a lot of fun :D
Senior week was honestly pretty damn spectacular. I rang the bell Thursday after finishing my Japanese exam (and waiting a bit for the exam time block to finish so I wouldn't bother other people taking their exams) and so Friday was pretty chill. Saturday evening prompted the first of the official "senior week" activities, a dance in the planetarium of the Franklin Institute, with a cash bar and food.
grayscale and I got all dressed up (I let her do my makeup which is always a good decision :D) and chatted on the bus with some of our fellow EAS majors and their friends on the way. The dance was quite a bit of fun, as was the space exhibit leading into the planetarium which we were also allowed in. Cocktails were super expensive, unfortunately, (I don't really like beer or wine) but non-alcoholic drinks were free so I had a shirley temple for the first time in like...8 years after I hit my budget XD;; The DJ started playing a bunch of 90s music towards the end so we danced to Backstreet Boys and Britney and Hanson, and they played the macarena and electric slide as well which was a lot of fun XD (Pro tip: if you want to get people on a dance floor, do not play the current club music. Play the songs from their childhood.) We then headed out and attempted some of the joystick-game-activity things in the space exhibit, and largely failed miserably, which begs the question that if three (albeit somewhat tipsy) college students cannot succeed at these games, how the hell are children supposed to manage it?
All in all a quality evening :D
The next day was our trip to six flags, which dawned chilly and grey and far too early. We stumbled onto buses and eventually stumbled off them and headed for the park. Because we're super smart college students, no one in our little group grabbed a map at the entrance way, and so we just kind of meandered until we found the Green Lantern and Superman and decided to get our big roller coaster out of the way while the lines were still (relatively) short. So
grayscale and Jeanette and I got in line while Cara watched our bags (they insist you use lockers and then charge for them the bastards) and waited for other friends to find us. The ride was a lot of fun :DD though...it awkwardly had you positioned standing, with a little bar/bike cushion thing between your legs for you to rest on which can not have been comfortable for the male riders. But there were lots of loops and upside-down bits and we made our way off it somewhat dizzily which is always the mark of a good roller coaster :D From there, we headed for less popular and smaller rides, hoping to avoid the lines. We did the ferris wheel (since Cara and some others had never been) and the viking ship, which always makes me giggle, and some sky coaster things that dropped us on the other end of the park where we found a smaller wooden roller coaster that had....no line to speak of.
So we went on that one twice :DD
It was a really entertaining roller coaster! I don't know why more people weren't on it. After that we went on one more big roller coaster (another wooden one) which was excellent, and then grabbed some food and headed for the buses. Unfortunately, we had to leave pretty early in the afternoon, but we got a pretty decent amount of time nonetheless.
Those were actually the only two "official" events I signed up for.
I picked up my regalia Monday morning, and then in the evening, Jeanette and I stayed over at Lizz and Anne's apartment for an evening of really excellent food (french onion soup, brussel sprouts cooked with raisins and bacon, lemon chicken, and apple pie from scratch *~*) and drinks. Lizz got bartender training last fall, so that she could pick up extra work, and so mixed cocktails that we passed around as we ate and talked and watched a movie. The next morning they made crepe for breakfast, which we had with mimosa and some sparkling sake I'd brought that was left over from may day that we hadn't gotten to the evening before. Then Jeanette and I rolled ourselves onto a train back to school and headed for Tassel Toast, which is a little gathering-thing where they give you champagne and your official Bryn Mawr champagne glass and your tassel for graduation and have people from the alumni office make speeches at you.
There were also Bryn Mawr themed cupcakes :D
That evening was the EAS dinner, which is when all the professors take all the majors out for food, I presume to apologize to the hell they put us through as we were writing our theses. We ate family-style at an Asian fusion restaurant, with lots of yummy food and half the table talking in chinese and the other half in japanese XD I accidentally found myself on the wrong side, initially, and had to switch with the girl next to me so that I could at least attempt to join the conversation with my Japanese teachers. It was lots of fun, and pretty interesting to see the professors outside of class/meetings and relaxing :D
On Wednesday, Jeanette and I buckled down and finally finished Lucky Seven, which was amazing, though lacking in Nitta :l His and Shuntarou's banter-filled relationship continues to be my most favorite thing ever though my overall impression of the series remains all the team feelings give them to me also Kayano is a bamf and I love her dearly.
Thursday was pretty disorganized - helped my Garden party girls mark of our spot, got Jen further hooked on Arashi muwahaha, did most of my packing (aided by the open bottle of sparkling wine on the windowsill), etc, etc.
Graduation rehearsal was on Friday, which was a mix of horrifically surreal and boring (They tried to have us sing our college hymn without lyrics. Our college hymn is in greek. You can imagine how well this went.) My parents also arrived on Friday, for convocation, which basically consisted of some really creative music selections and speech-like things, though we did get to sing Bread and Roses one last time, so that made it worth it.
Graduation itself was Saturday afternoon. We had beautiful weather, and our speaker was I swear the real life, former Irish president version of superwoman, the Honorable Mary Robinson. So that was pretty awesome. After graduation was garden party, I wandered around and took pictures with people, Jen and Maddy amused my parents, we all went out to dinner afterwards.
This is where, forgive me, I need to wax poetic about my school. Leaving college is as a general rule depressing and scary but Bryn Mawr was honestly my home for four years, and in a way that I'm never going to be able to duplicate or get back. I'll never experience the traditions in the same way, have Parade Night or Lantern Night or Hell Week and even if I do go back for May Day at some point, alums don't participate in step sings or dances. For many people, I honestly don't know when I'll see them next, if ever. There's a lot of Bryn Mawr that is really wrapped up in the people and the rhythms of the year and the traditions and the place that I'm never going to have again and that is something that even now, even with my general habit of shifting gears and adjusting to changes the way most people flip a switch, can throw me. I think the last time I so powerfully didn't want to leave a place I was 10 years old and we were moving away from the home I'd lived in for seven years. And even then I didn't cry for two hours in the car as we drove away.
But anyway, moving right along, I mentioned some time ago how I was going to attempt to get lasik eye surgery this summer, because I'd been having issues with my contacts, etc, etc. Well, my evaluation was literally the day after we got back from graduation, so I had basically moved all my stuff from the car to my brother's room and unpacked...maybe one bag? before I was whisked off to the eye place to stare at various things and get lights shined in my eyes.
They eventually determined I was a candidate, and my surgery had been scheduled for the next day, in an effort to fit in all the follow-up appointments before I leave for Japan. So, the next day I went in, and they double and triple checked my prescription before putting some numbing drops in my eyes and sending me to lay under a laser.
I can't say it was the most comfortable thing I've ever experienced, but honestly the most irritating part was when they started shining really bright lights around my eyes to make sure everything had situated properly and I couldn't close my eyes :/ They didn't have to knock me out, it didn't hurt, I could already see like 1000x better right after surgery and spent the rest of the day lying down with my eyes closed, putting in special drops once an hour. I felt fine by late afternoon, just a bit of lingering soreness, and could see and was unpacking a bit that evening. The next day they tested my vision and lo and behold, 20/20 in my left eye and 20/15 in my right :DDD I'm banned from eye makeup for a week (mascara/liquid eyeliner for 2) and I have to keep putting drops in because since they cut some of the nerves in my cornea to do the surgery, my eyes won't be able to tell when they're getting dry, so I'm not tearing and blinking as often as normal. So I have to put in drops pretty regularly for the next month or so as those nerves grow back.
Other than that, seriously, the worst part is the medicinal taste in the back of my throat from the medicated drops I have to use for the first five days it tastes nasty okay but who cares because I CAN SEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE.
Aside from the eye surgery, nothing much exciting has been happening. Our yard has been taken over by weeds, which I am beginning to do battle with as per usual, and our grass is knee-high in some places but that's Dad's job. I'm mostly unpacked, but still have a few piles of stuff on my floor of shit that needs to go into memory boxes and shit that needs to go in the giveaways. I attempted to reorganize my closet with some success?
Next week is Ash's wedding and then visits with Lizz and Anne and the ever-so-lovely
grayscale (and hopefully
yomimashou?) and then my graduation party which should be an...adventure, given its the first time we're entertaining at our house since the construction, and given that our house is in a perpetual state of mid-project...yeah. >> should be fun. But at least there will be food?
tl;dr - I graduated and it was horrifically depressing. I got lasik which went fabulously and I can now see perfectly well without help which is something that has not happened since I was in the third grade. Kagiheya continues to be awesome, Mikeneko continues to be...not, and I have far more stuff than can fit in my room but that's nothing new.
Oh and I still don't have my JET placement
May Day was simultaneously pretty excellent and super depressing. The day started bright and early, as part of tradition the seniors are supposed to go to the president's house, wake her, then process back to Rockefeller arch, climb onto the roof, and sing a hymn to the sun. What actually happened was a handful of seniors managed to drag themselves out of bed, we meandered to the President's house, did the Anass to call her out of the house (she was already awake), and meandered back to Rock arch.
Last year the arch was under construction. This year it wasn't, and we were indeed allowed to climb a super narrow and steep spiral staircase to get on the roof :D None of us knew the hymn, though, so we sang "here comes the sun" instead XD. It was a really awesome view, though I had, predictably, forgotten my camera, so the only pictures I have are on my phone. But it was a lot of fun :D
Breakfast was champagne, bagels and strawberries (around a chocolate fountain!) and far too little seating. I bought a hoop for the hoop race later on and then
grayscale and I headed back to Rock arch to get set up to be Maypole dancers. I ended up on the McBride pole, since I wasn't technically chosen to be a maypole dancer, but it meant I got to dance every year, so I didn't care :D
Also, omg, the seniors brought it this year - our pole was braided BEAUTIFULLY, the best I've ever seen. The McBride pole was a mess, of course, because our colors alternated by three instead of by two so no one knew where they were going.
After the maypole was speeches, and then the hoop race - during which I rolled my hoop, the whole way down, even though it took an age and I nearly dropped it a few times :D After that was may hole, loads of fun as usual, and my very last scottish demo ;~; It went wonderfully, and we had such adorably devoted frosh this year, it was really cute.
The rest of the day was spend lounging on the green, eating, drinking, and taking one short break to go see the fencing parody St. George and the Dragon play, which was, as always, hilarious. That was the good part of the day.
By dinnertime, I was feeling the effects of an early morning, long day out in the sun + drinking (though I had been careful to have water too) and a thrown-off eating schedule - which is to say I was tired and feeling nauseated. We were also fast approaching the part of the evening that I had been both looking forward to and dreading since several days before. At the end of the last step sing of the year, the juniors are finally allowed to climb the senior steps (a particular set of steps that, as the name implies, may only be used by members of the senior class - its also where seniors sit at step sings) and unofficially become seniors, allowed to lead the college cheer, walk down senior row, etc. Its also pretty much when the students say goodbye to the current seniors, even though there's still another two weeks of finals, and is generally incredibly emotional. Last year, I had been a sobbing wreck, since I was close to several people in the class above mine, which had extended into the next day - something I was not looking forward to repeating, made only worse by the fact that I would be the one leaving. Needless to say, I was overstimulated, tired, and generally nervewracked for the first half of step sing. I managed to relax and enjoy myself for the second half, thankfully, though true to form I was crying by the first few steps down the goodnight line, and had to go back and re-hug several underclasswomen who were having a particularly bad time of it. It was, in the end, not as bad as I'd thought it would be, though still damn depressing.
Then there were finals, which really sucked and hardly bear mentioning, and the Japanese language class potluck party, which was adorable and filled with good food and a lot of fun :D
Senior week was honestly pretty damn spectacular. I rang the bell Thursday after finishing my Japanese exam (and waiting a bit for the exam time block to finish so I wouldn't bother other people taking their exams) and so Friday was pretty chill. Saturday evening prompted the first of the official "senior week" activities, a dance in the planetarium of the Franklin Institute, with a cash bar and food.
grayscale and I got all dressed up (I let her do my makeup which is always a good decision :D) and chatted on the bus with some of our fellow EAS majors and their friends on the way. The dance was quite a bit of fun, as was the space exhibit leading into the planetarium which we were also allowed in. Cocktails were super expensive, unfortunately, (I don't really like beer or wine) but non-alcoholic drinks were free so I had a shirley temple for the first time in like...8 years after I hit my budget XD;; The DJ started playing a bunch of 90s music towards the end so we danced to Backstreet Boys and Britney and Hanson, and they played the macarena and electric slide as well which was a lot of fun XD (Pro tip: if you want to get people on a dance floor, do not play the current club music. Play the songs from their childhood.) We then headed out and attempted some of the joystick-game-activity things in the space exhibit, and largely failed miserably, which begs the question that if three (albeit somewhat tipsy) college students cannot succeed at these games, how the hell are children supposed to manage it?
All in all a quality evening :D
The next day was our trip to six flags, which dawned chilly and grey and far too early. We stumbled onto buses and eventually stumbled off them and headed for the park. Because we're super smart college students, no one in our little group grabbed a map at the entrance way, and so we just kind of meandered until we found the Green Lantern and Superman and decided to get our big roller coaster out of the way while the lines were still (relatively) short. So
grayscale and Jeanette and I got in line while Cara watched our bags (they insist you use lockers and then charge for them the bastards) and waited for other friends to find us. The ride was a lot of fun :DD though...it awkwardly had you positioned standing, with a little bar/bike cushion thing between your legs for you to rest on which can not have been comfortable for the male riders. But there were lots of loops and upside-down bits and we made our way off it somewhat dizzily which is always the mark of a good roller coaster :D From there, we headed for less popular and smaller rides, hoping to avoid the lines. We did the ferris wheel (since Cara and some others had never been) and the viking ship, which always makes me giggle, and some sky coaster things that dropped us on the other end of the park where we found a smaller wooden roller coaster that had....no line to speak of.
So we went on that one twice :DD
It was a really entertaining roller coaster! I don't know why more people weren't on it. After that we went on one more big roller coaster (another wooden one) which was excellent, and then grabbed some food and headed for the buses. Unfortunately, we had to leave pretty early in the afternoon, but we got a pretty decent amount of time nonetheless.
Those were actually the only two "official" events I signed up for.
I picked up my regalia Monday morning, and then in the evening, Jeanette and I stayed over at Lizz and Anne's apartment for an evening of really excellent food (french onion soup, brussel sprouts cooked with raisins and bacon, lemon chicken, and apple pie from scratch *~*) and drinks. Lizz got bartender training last fall, so that she could pick up extra work, and so mixed cocktails that we passed around as we ate and talked and watched a movie. The next morning they made crepe for breakfast, which we had with mimosa and some sparkling sake I'd brought that was left over from may day that we hadn't gotten to the evening before. Then Jeanette and I rolled ourselves onto a train back to school and headed for Tassel Toast, which is a little gathering-thing where they give you champagne and your official Bryn Mawr champagne glass and your tassel for graduation and have people from the alumni office make speeches at you.
There were also Bryn Mawr themed cupcakes :D
That evening was the EAS dinner, which is when all the professors take all the majors out for food, I presume to apologize to the hell they put us through as we were writing our theses. We ate family-style at an Asian fusion restaurant, with lots of yummy food and half the table talking in chinese and the other half in japanese XD I accidentally found myself on the wrong side, initially, and had to switch with the girl next to me so that I could at least attempt to join the conversation with my Japanese teachers. It was lots of fun, and pretty interesting to see the professors outside of class/meetings and relaxing :D
On Wednesday, Jeanette and I buckled down and finally finished Lucky Seven, which was amazing, though lacking in Nitta :l His and Shuntarou's banter-filled relationship continues to be my most favorite thing ever though my overall impression of the series remains all the team feelings give them to me also Kayano is a bamf and I love her dearly.
Thursday was pretty disorganized - helped my Garden party girls mark of our spot, got Jen further hooked on Arashi muwahaha, did most of my packing (aided by the open bottle of sparkling wine on the windowsill), etc, etc.
Graduation rehearsal was on Friday, which was a mix of horrifically surreal and boring (They tried to have us sing our college hymn without lyrics. Our college hymn is in greek. You can imagine how well this went.) My parents also arrived on Friday, for convocation, which basically consisted of some really creative music selections and speech-like things, though we did get to sing Bread and Roses one last time, so that made it worth it.
Graduation itself was Saturday afternoon. We had beautiful weather, and our speaker was I swear the real life, former Irish president version of superwoman, the Honorable Mary Robinson. So that was pretty awesome. After graduation was garden party, I wandered around and took pictures with people, Jen and Maddy amused my parents, we all went out to dinner afterwards.
This is where, forgive me, I need to wax poetic about my school. Leaving college is as a general rule depressing and scary but Bryn Mawr was honestly my home for four years, and in a way that I'm never going to be able to duplicate or get back. I'll never experience the traditions in the same way, have Parade Night or Lantern Night or Hell Week and even if I do go back for May Day at some point, alums don't participate in step sings or dances. For many people, I honestly don't know when I'll see them next, if ever. There's a lot of Bryn Mawr that is really wrapped up in the people and the rhythms of the year and the traditions and the place that I'm never going to have again and that is something that even now, even with my general habit of shifting gears and adjusting to changes the way most people flip a switch, can throw me. I think the last time I so powerfully didn't want to leave a place I was 10 years old and we were moving away from the home I'd lived in for seven years. And even then I didn't cry for two hours in the car as we drove away.
But anyway, moving right along, I mentioned some time ago how I was going to attempt to get lasik eye surgery this summer, because I'd been having issues with my contacts, etc, etc. Well, my evaluation was literally the day after we got back from graduation, so I had basically moved all my stuff from the car to my brother's room and unpacked...maybe one bag? before I was whisked off to the eye place to stare at various things and get lights shined in my eyes.
They eventually determined I was a candidate, and my surgery had been scheduled for the next day, in an effort to fit in all the follow-up appointments before I leave for Japan. So, the next day I went in, and they double and triple checked my prescription before putting some numbing drops in my eyes and sending me to lay under a laser.
I can't say it was the most comfortable thing I've ever experienced, but honestly the most irritating part was when they started shining really bright lights around my eyes to make sure everything had situated properly and I couldn't close my eyes :/ They didn't have to knock me out, it didn't hurt, I could already see like 1000x better right after surgery and spent the rest of the day lying down with my eyes closed, putting in special drops once an hour. I felt fine by late afternoon, just a bit of lingering soreness, and could see and was unpacking a bit that evening. The next day they tested my vision and lo and behold, 20/20 in my left eye and 20/15 in my right :DDD I'm banned from eye makeup for a week (mascara/liquid eyeliner for 2) and I have to keep putting drops in because since they cut some of the nerves in my cornea to do the surgery, my eyes won't be able to tell when they're getting dry, so I'm not tearing and blinking as often as normal. So I have to put in drops pretty regularly for the next month or so as those nerves grow back.
Other than that, seriously, the worst part is the medicinal taste in the back of my throat from the medicated drops I have to use for the first five days it tastes nasty okay but who cares because I CAN SEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE.
Aside from the eye surgery, nothing much exciting has been happening. Our yard has been taken over by weeds, which I am beginning to do battle with as per usual, and our grass is knee-high in some places but that's Dad's job. I'm mostly unpacked, but still have a few piles of stuff on my floor of shit that needs to go into memory boxes and shit that needs to go in the giveaways. I attempted to reorganize my closet with some success?
Next week is Ash's wedding and then visits with Lizz and Anne and the ever-so-lovely
grayscale (and hopefully
yomimashou?) and then my graduation party which should be an...adventure, given its the first time we're entertaining at our house since the construction, and given that our house is in a perpetual state of mid-project...yeah. >> should be fun. But at least there will be food?
tl;dr - I graduated and it was horrifically depressing. I got lasik which went fabulously and I can now see perfectly well without help which is something that has not happened since I was in the third grade. Kagiheya continues to be awesome, Mikeneko continues to be...not, and I have far more stuff than can fit in my room but that's nothing new.
Oh and I still don't have my JET placement