Spring break, here I come!

   

Although I thought this week was going to be immensely stressful with my assignments, it actually turned out to be quite a good week, with only slight stress. As of now, I am only one class away from spring break, so i'm pretty excited for 11am tomorrow morning when I can actually declare the beginning of break.

As for this past week, Dunedin has had unusually warm weather. On Monday, I wore a t-shirt to class, and on Wednesday I wore shorts. Of course, on both days the weather changed by the hour and by the time I was walking home from the library on Wednesday it was cold and raining. But once again, Thursday was a brilliantly warm and sunny day, with less tempermental weather fluctuations. I have noticed a few interesting things as the weather has gotten warmer. To begin, when walking to my class on Monday, I saw numerous shoeless and shirtless men dancing on roofs. Then, on Thursday, I saw a girl prancing around in her bikini. I admit, it has been much warmer this past week but it is not THAT warm. To give all of you an idea of the temperature, it has been in the low 60's. So, pleasant but not beach weather.

Like I said though, this week was a rather good week. I went to Chinese class on Monday, rather stressed about the week ahead, and a little moody because we were having a test. Tests always stress me out in general but the Chinese ones have been more so since they are always reading passages and translating them. We also had an assignment due this Monday and I was not sure how I had done on it. However, after going over the assignment I felt much better, and surprisingly I felt pretty good about the test too! I'll have to wait until after spring break to see how I had actually done, but that was the first highlight to my week. I have also grown to like the class a whole lot more because the book we are reading is actually really interesting and well written, in both Chinese and English. Our class discussions have also been great and I have learned a lot of Chinese history.

Although I still had a lot of work after Monday, I was in a pretty good mood. Tuesday night was the last of the five ceramics classes and I finished a teapot during that class. I was incredibly excited about this teapot because I had never made on on a wheel, and the fact that the pot, spout, and lid were made on the wheel excited me even more. All throughout class I kept on saying that the teapot looked like Chip from Beauty and the Beast and it was not until I got home that I realized that Chip was a teacup. But the teapot does look a little like Mrs. Potts. 

My teapot!!!

Wednesday morning was pretty unique. As routine, I woke up (after snoozing a few times) and turned on my little space heater. For the few minutes that it takes to warm up my room I checked my Facebook, only to find over 30 statuses about an earthquake. I have Facebook friends from elementary school, high school, and college and rarely do I see similar statuses among these groups of people and so I was relatively confused. I also did not immediately think that there was actually an earthquake since they are so rare on the east coast. Anyways, I soon found out there actually was an earthquake and was pretty shocked. My sister told me that it was not too bad in New York and described it feeling like a herd of elephants moving in to the apartment above hers.

Later Wednesday afternoon, I presented my cultural food project on Polish food. Along with my helpers Emma and Maureen, I made six dishes; cucumber salad, pork and vegetable stew, mushrooms and sour cream, sole baked in sour cream, potato pancakes, and honey cake. I thought they tasted pretty good, and I still have some fish and some stew left over in the fridge. Food science must be one of the most intriguing classes I have ever taken. I especially love lab because we cook every week. The lab looks like any other science lab that i've been in, except it has stoves and ovens. It basically looks like a whole lot of kitchens put together with lab equiptment. The day before my presentation, I had gone to the food science library via the lab and there was a class in there taking a test. All the students had barriers up so they could not see the person beside them, and each person had pen and paper and a tray of cookies. They were all intently analyzing the cookies for their test. I hope they got to eat them afterwards. Food science is fascinating.

As for other exciting news, I received a package from my mom this week and it included some moon cakes! I love moon cake and am thrilled about Autumn Moon Festival, although I will be celebrating it in the spring. I also made a pretty spontaneous trip to the aviary at the botanic gardens on Thursday where I saw incredible birds, but I will write a separate post for that. Also, exam schedules have been posted and i'll be done with exams on October 31st! Yay!