It's been an exciting few days!
Wednesday night, I was sitting here at my desk moping over some sort of work, and Brian popped his head in the door. "What's at Val tonight?"
Still annoyed from earlier, I checked and told him. Since it was gross, he proposed that we go out for dinner. We went to Arigato, which is ridiculously expensive by the way, but we were really happy to finally have sushi again. We shared udon and a butterfly roll, so I got to eat tuna. It was really sweet of him.

On Thursday, our history professor decided that she felt bad for making us write an essay while reading a ridiculous amount, and so she scheduled a day in our Rare Books/Special Collections room in the library where we spent a whole hour and a half playing with books from the 17th and 18th centuries. It was AMAZING!!! Her eyes were all aglow every time she touched any of them and she scampered around trying to see if we found anything new that she hadn't seen before. It was so... moving... to touch books that once belonged to people that we study today, that were made by people long gone, and read by those who are not so different from ourselves. We had all of Diderot's Encyclopadie, as well as parts of Newton's writings. I myself was very much taken by a translation of Ovid's "The Art of Love" and stood there reading it for quite some time.

Friday evening, Camille and I went to the Newport (Spanish and French House) open house, where we hope to live next year. The rooms are RIDICULOUSLY nice and HUGE, and they have a huge kitchen, a piano, two working fireplaces, and a lovely common room. I love it!! The only rather traumatic thing was when Benjamin, the French TA, charged down the stairs in nothing but his boxers. I'm really conflicted though, for as much as I'd like to live there, I feel bad leaving Shannon and Brian, especially because everyone else in our group is also going to various theme houses, and so they're the only ones left, since Brian didn't get RC. And I really still do want to live with Shannon, so I feel bad.. :( We'll see what happens. Acceptances haven't been issued for theme housing yet, so we'll see!!

After the open house, the Spanish and French TAs held a party for Carnaval, which was lots of fun. Javier and Blanca threatened that they would "cut us" if we didn't return for the party and if we didn't dress up. They all dressed up in togas, Camille wanted to go Grecian as well, but failed and became a "ninja in disguise." Shannon and I didn't know what to do, but she was brilliantly inspired when she realized she was wearing all gray and black, and so she was pepper and I was salt!
They had piñatas, streamers, and lots of awesome food. Blanca and Javier made it loads of fun by being the insane and awesome people they are, especially when they broke out the really loud tooty horns that little kids blow at parties. They had contests to see who could annoy each other more. Benjamin also took to the silly string way too well, spraying EVERYONE, EVERYWHERE!! I got to hit the piñata, which was slightly disastrous because I'm not very good with the bat. I also won the costume contest for WORST costume because Shannon left about 30 minutes in. Therefore, salt without pepper is just sad and gets an awesome medal as a result. I love this picture.



As you can see, LOTS of silly string. Once a lot of people left, we all started being more silly and started dancing and being fun. Yay for parties with minimal alcohol!

It's Monday again, which means that the pull of stress and insanity is just being felt, but not quite at its peak. On Friday night, we had a housewarming party for Jaclyn and Camille in their new room! It was awesomely insane. The party was actually postponed an hour because Jaclyn, Camille, and Brian missed the bus to come back from the Hampshire Mall where they were getting all the food and had to call me to tell everyone. I made a sign that said something like, "Party postponed! Sorry! Come back at 10! Hosts are stuck at Hampshire Mall. GO SAVE THEM!!!!"

When the party did get started, Jorge, who almost never drinks, chose this occasion to, which, in essence, meant that he pre-gamed the sub-free party... wow. I still don't really understand what pre-gaming is.. or at least why people do it, but that's okay. Tim and Greg were nice enough to show up, which was fun. We all stood around and ate copious amounts of junk food while listening to a mix of Jaclyn, Brian, and Camille's music. After a couple hours, it basically became our normal group with a change of location and lots of food, which led to Robert sitting in Camille's comfy chair playing with all of Jaclyn's stuffed animals, which is quite an unusual collection, the Black Death, a giant lobster, a seahorse, and a sperm. I think the only normal one is a bear, but we won't mention it. Jorge, Jaclyn, and I danced our bad dances a lot, which was fun and led to lots of embarrassing photos on Facebook. Drunk Jorge was HILARIOUS and took to singing at pitches that rival Robert's falsetto and hurt all of our ears, and Robert and I decided to join in, much to everyone's chagrin. Drunk Jorge was also REALLY horny and kept telling me and Brian to grind and quite unnecessarily demonstrated many times. Hehe. He then sat on the floor and complained about how he wasn't getting laid. Poor guy.
Camille had assured me that she put "Jai Ho" on the mix, which meant that I refused to leave until I heard it out of the 72 songs. BUT NO! CAMILLE LIED TO ME!!! Which meant I had to go through all 72 to BITTER disappointment, at which point we just found it on her iPod and did the dance, which we had been practicing for the Oscars. :D
We then played Apples to Apples, Superlatives, and Never Have I Ever, which I am really bad at coming up with things for.

Saturday was an extremely productive day, which made me rather proud, and then last night we watched.. the Oscars!! Ethan was happier than a child on Christmas morning. He dressed up, brought his "Oscar" (really a figurine of JFK wrapped in golden paper) out, got all the ballots and poster ready. Ethan every year runs a pool where every person picks their predictions and then he makes a poster with all the nominees written on it with pictures so we can keep track of each winner and who then bet on them. This year, he and I spent a long time making one, only to have it disappear. Ethan was SO sad that I had to make him another, but I didn't have time to by hand again so I just made it on InDesign and printed it out. It looked very pretty. But yes, Camille and I spent the night cheering for "Slumdog" and howling in victory every time they won and high-fiving, much to Jorge's disgust. MWAHHA BENJAMIN BUTTON LOST, JORGE! We also squealed every time they showed Dev Patel. Camille and Ethan ended up tying for first in the pool.

Must go to econ and then interview random people for lots of articles. We have NO writers this week, so Sarah and I are literally writing the entire section. GAH

Happy Sunday everyone!
Because I don't want to read my econ book but promised myself I wouldn't watch "Dangerous Liaisons" for class before I finished econ, I'm going to blog because I really should. It's been an eventful few days on everyone's fronts, particularly romantically speaking. I need to make a list before I leave anyone out: Jorge, Shayne, Shannon.

Friday night was Pratt Prom, thrown by the RCs for the first-years. It's basically an excuse for everyone to get dressed up and look pretty and take pictures in gorgeous Pratt. Salon Javier was in full operation, with a dozen girls queuing up hours beforehand. Javier demanded that Shannon and I be victims of his cosmetic magic, but I decided go to to the Williams-Amherst basketball game first. It was completely packed so that we spent the entire first half standing on the sidelines being constantly ushered back by the police and unable to see the score. We then went upstairs into this room with a glass wall that faced the basketball court and sat with Tim, Greg, and Greg's girlfriend from Yale, Lily. We kept texting people and making hand motions to people in the crowd to see what the score was, and at many points, yelled at Tony Marx, our College president, who also didn't have a seat, which made us feel better, to motion us the score. Williams had an Asian point guard who was one of their star players, whose first name was apparently Wang, which Andrew Kelly found hilarious, so I decided to defend my fellow Asian from their taunts.

I ran back to the dorm, showered quickly, and went over to Magdalena's room, AKA Salon Javier. Javier was sweating profusely, blow dryer in one hand, brush in the other, while he had employed Soo as the official hair straightener in the other half of the room. Javier went through girl after girl, doing their hair and their makeup, working his magic like only he can. It was so crazy. Shannon didn't want to come, having just gotten back from a race (in which she did really well!!) and didn't have a dress. Javier repeatedly had me text her and threaten that "she better get her ass over here in this chair or I will CUT HER." All of Shannon's promises that she would let him make her over another day and that she didn't have a dress were immediately cast aside by Javi, who immediately found her a dress, and even a matching flower for her hair that she thoroughly protested, but then gave in to. Finally, Javier had us all beautified and Shannon and I came back to the dorm, dropped our stuff of, and went to Pratt to meet the rest of our group that had impatiently ditched us. Upon seeing us, Simon pointed and said, "THAT took that long?" Ass. Javier would have eaten him alive. All of our efforts to get Tim and Shannon together, or at least dancing together, failed rather miserably, but I LOVE NORTH BOYS! They're so fun and ridiculous. Andrew, Ricky, Brian from North, Tim, and even Dash, were just all jumping in together and dancing ridiculously, even doing their little "unce" strut across the entire Pratt floor. By the end, there was almost no one else left on the dance floor except Northies and us, but it was so much fun. Finally, we all left, and Dede carried Magdalena back because she couldn't walk back in her stilettos. It was so adorable.

In other, not so happy news, Jorge finally confessed his feelings to Ben, and discovered that Ben was, in fact, not gay, much to our general surprise. :( But hopefully Jorge will be okay. In a similar vein, another one of my friends came out, so now I finally know a lesbian. Yay!

I spent the first half of the day yesterday working on Operation North Polar Bear with Shayne, which, sadly, has not had a happy ending just yet. GRR!!

Yesterday evening, Brian and I went out to dinner. We took the bus intending to go to Chili's, but realized too late that it actually didn't stop there, so we got out at Hampshire Mall, walked around, and then walked for about 20 minutes back to Chili's, where it was completely packed. We put our name down, and then I realized that the grocery store was right next to Chili's. Grocery shopping on Valentine's Day! How romantic! I was very excited haha because we never really get to go to the grocery store and I wanted actual fruit and cheaper food than you can get at CVS. But before we could actually get to the Stop & Shop, we had to go in about four circles, since this is Massachusetts and not California. Basically, the Chili's and the shopping complex were separated by this like... forest covered in snow that ranged across the whole parking lot. A thicket of trees in the middle of the parking lot. This is how I know I'm in Massachusetts. Finally, when we got there, we walked around and bought lots of strawberries and cookies and yogurt, which made me very happy. You know you love someone when going grocery shopping with them on Valentine's Day is fun.

Carrying our groceries back, we went to eat at Chili's, which was delicious! We ordered spinach and artichoke dip right before Brian realized that he wanted chips and salsa instead, and then spent the next 20 minutes staring at every single table around us, which all had chips and salsa. Nevertheless, the meal was delicious, with fajitas, boneless buffalo wings, fried chicken tenders, and spinach and artichoke dip. Yum!

We had to walk a ways to get to the closest bus station, and by the time we got there, we realized that it would probably take just as long to stand there in the cold waiting for it to come than it would be just to walk back, which was about a 20-30 minute walk. I, like the idiot I am, wasn't wearing warm enough clothing (since it's been "warm" here recently, in the 30s), so I was really cold. However, Brian is apparently never cold and always has a high enough body temperature to make you think he has a fever. So as we walked back, one pair hands linked and kept in his pocket to keep warm while the other pair held groceries. Every five minutes or so, the grocery-holding hand would get too cold, at which point we would switch sides. :)

We got back around 10, at which point we all started playing poker, which I FINALLY won, and then Egyptian rat screw. Lots of fun all around. They ordered wings around 1 AM, but for once, I wasn't hungry!! Yay for Chili's! But sadly, we decided today that we went through Pratt Prom and Valentine's Day without getting Shannon and Tim together, which must mean that we all fail at life.

On another random note that was inspired by Jaclyn and Ethan having identical musical tastes to the point where they even like the same random pop song on the radio that they are rather ashamed to like: I've never met anyone with really similar musical tastes as me. Sure, there are lots of people who like Broadway, people who love the Backstreet Boys, etc, but never my combination of all of them.. Oh and Gregory Lemarchal. :)

WOW I haven't blogged in a while. I just finished reading the next part of "Dangerous Liaisons" for class in 20 minutes. Such a good book!! So devious, so seductive! I was rather annoyed at having to get up early to finish that part, but of course, it was because of newspaper, which soaks up all my time on Mondays and especially Tuesdays. But it was especially tight this week because of my visitors. Family friends from China were taking a tour of the US, and their daughter is 16 and wants to go to college in America, so they came to visit us and I took her around and to class to show her what American colleges are. Or, at the last, small American colleges. I felt bad Monday afternoon though, because I had all this work to do and she had nothing to do and it's not very exciting here anyway, so there wasn't anywhere to take her. She never complained though; she was really nice overall. Very quiet and very mindful of other people's desires.

We played our first game of intramural basketball Monday, which, though it was a lot of fun, made me miss Connie a lot. Not only because we wouldn't have lost so badly had she been there, but just because basketball isn't really basketball without Con Con. Brian's really sick and thus couldn't play as well as usual. Poor boy. :( He was coughing so much last night coming back from newspaper that I didn't know if we were going to make it back to the dorm.

Alright. Must go to class now! My favourite one too, so it won't matter that I can't seem to get my hands on the right edition of this book!