Happy Thanksgiving!! Gobble gobble...

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

I hope everyone had a great holiday and ate lots and lots. I know I did. I made it back to Sagamore Beach on Tuesday night after classes and I'm so glad to be home. Although, I love everything and everyone at St. Mike's, its so nice to take a break from it all and eat delicious home cooked food. My dad is an awesome cook, and looks forward to preparing this meal all year. We had my aunt, uncle, and two cousins up from Maryland, as well as my two grandparents who are making the pilgrimage to Florida for the winter early tomorrow morning. The turkey was delish, and I had been craving my Dad's mashed potatoes for weeks now. Needless to say, my craving was more than satisfied. Here's a lovely pic of my Auntie, my cousin Sarah, and I in front of our dining room table. Which was personally decorated by Martha Stewart. Not really, just my Mom, but could have fooled me :).

Tomorrow, my mom and I are going to the Vineyard for the night. I'm so excited because Martha's Vineyard is literally my favorite place on earth. Yes, even in the winter. Most of the shops are closing, if not already closed, and they have really great deals at some of my favorite stores. I'd rather skip the black Friday madness and head off to an island. Just personal preference.

I know it's been a little while from my last post. So I'll try to recap. Last Friday, the girls and I stayed out in the homeless shack for an hour. And, of course, it was one of the coldest, snowiest days of the year. Excellent. But, none the less, it was fun and time well spent. We all look really great in this pic...not really... but it's still funny.

This weekend was so much fun because we didn't have a swim meet allllll weeekendd! Not to say swimming isn't fun, it was just so nice to actually experience a Saturday. I went to the Varsity and JV hockey games on Saturday with a few of my friends, and hit up Al's French Fries in between. Al's is amazing. You have to go. End of story. On Sunday, I relaxed and did some major homework. And Monday and Tuesday flew by and before I knew it, I was home. Last week, I also did a virtual open house for prospective students. It was so cool to talk to St. Mike's Class of 2013 hopefulls. Maybe I even chatted with some of my readers. Virtual open houses are really fun and all incoming freshman, no matter which colleges you are applying to, should definitely check them out!

Sorry for the lack in postage, I promise I'll let you know how the vineyard trip as well as our 3 day meet in Southern Connecticut next weekend goes. Hope everyone had a great holiday!! Talk to you soon!

Snowy Tuesday

So... as you can see I did in fact survive the 1650 on Saturday. And to be honest it wasn't that bad at all! We lost to Skidmore College, but the boys team won and I discovered the area of Saratoga, New York is really pretty.

In other news, today it snowed all day! Welcome to Vermont! It actually stuck on the ground too so the campus looks beautiful all snow covered and such.

This week is Homelessness and Hunger week. MOVE, the volunteer group here on campus, has a bunch of awesome activities to raise awareness about hunger around the world and right here in Vermont. On the library lawn, there's a small hut set up where students can sign up to spend an hour, or even overnight, to experience first hand what it feels like to have to sleep outside. My friends and I are staying for an hour on friday afternoon. I think its such a cool idea and it will really open up our eyes about the shelter that we take for granted. MOVE is such an awesome thing to get involved in. In alliot, our student center, there's a big decorated board on the right where they have different volunteer opportunities and activities. It's really informal and everyone and anyone can sign up. They have really fun and interesting things like attending a Senior Citizen Prom, running different road races, or different activites such as After School Games or Dream that help out with younger kids around the area. Next post, I'll definatley write about how shoving four girls in a small wooden hut for an hour outside will go...wish me luck.

Tomorrow, the swim team will have a meet at Norwich which isn't so far away. We only have classes Monday and Tuesday of next week then I'll be heading home for the Thanksgiving break :). It's amazing how fast this year is going by. Just today I realized how close the semester was to being over, and how Thanksgiving and Christmas are fast approaching.

So that's all for now! I've noticed there have a been a ton of great questions on the SMC Bloggers facebook group! Let me know if there's anything I can help you with!

(Also, quick shoutout to Bob and Cathy Watt, my roommates parents who seem to be the only ones who read this! love you guys!)

sdjhjdsgh Is it friday yet?

Hi again everyone!

I hope everyone is having a marvelous Tuesday. I'm currently sitting at my computer, obviously procrastinating, and listening to some of the songs on the new Taylor Swift cd. It came out today and I cannot wait to get it this weekend. I highly suggest "love story" or "fearless".

But anyway, yesterday I had dreaded 5:30 am morning practice and then I came back to my room for registration for classes at 7am! At St. Mike's we use a program called "KnightVision" that helps us register for all our classes online, view our gpa and transcript, and it also helps us keep track of the classes we've taken. It's a really cool thing to use and its super convient that its online. So luckily, I got into all of the classes I wanted for next spring semester. I'm taking:

Second Semester Spanish
New Media I
British Literature II
Comparitive Vertebrate Anatomy
Drawing I

So overall, I don't have a class before 9:30, (always a plus) and only one class on Thursdays. This semester I was spoiled with only one class on Fridays, but in the spring I'll have three, but I'll be done by 1 pm. I'm pretty happy with my schedule and spring semester is my favorite by far. The weather starts to get warm and once swimming is over, I have a lot more free time on my hands. Which reminds me! It totally snowed today! Like legitmate flurrys for more than two seconds. It snowed almost all morning... It was crazy, but I started to get excited for the beautiful Vermont winter that's ahead of us :)

This weekend, the swim team will be traveling to Skidmore on Saturday for a meet. I'll be swimming the 1650 yard freestyle. Yes. 1650 = 1 mile= 66 laps of pure death. No, I'm just kidding. Kinda. I haven't done it in a while so I'm a little nervous, but hopefully everything will turn out just fine. haha.

Anyway, I'll be sure to let you know how it all turns out! Have a great rest of the week! :)

yay Monday.

Hi again everyone!

Last week was quite a busy week filled with meetings about the upcoming course selection and also, I've recently decided on going abroad next fall! If everything works out, I'd really like to go to Ireland. Hopefully, either Galway or Dublin. Last week, I met with Peggy Imai our study abroad director and we discussed different options, what I could study while in Ireland, and the overall process of applying. It will be a lot of work and a really big change but I'm really excited and it will totally be worth it. :)

Also, last week we had a day off from swim practice (A rarity in itself) so the other sophomore swimmer girls and I went to see High School Musical 3. Okay, so it might sound a little lame but it was an honestly awesome movie and it was sweet to have a day off from practice.

And, of course, it was halloween weekend! Halloween weekend is one of the most anticipated, fun weekends here on campus. On Friday was the halloween dance, which I was only able to go to for a little while because of my swim meet the next day, but it was really funny to see everyone having a good time and dressed up in some incredibly interesting costumes. On Saturday, the swim team got together and dressed up in our costumes one more time. My roommate and I were 80's excercise girls. One of our friends has work study in an alumni office, so we got to wear some highly coveted "Saint Michael's College Class of 1986" pins complete with spandex, a sweatband and a light up jump rope.

On Saturday afternoon, the swim team had their first home meet at the Ross pool against Potsdam. I was really excited to see how many fans we had! It was our only home meet this semester so a ton of family, friends, and swim fans packed the stands to help cheer us on to our first win. Before the meet, the girls team made posters for eachother and we hung them up around our pool (see picture). Home meets are always my favorite because our friends from school come to watch and the team overall is just really excited and positive. Little things like being able to see your own poster hung on the wall, or being able to play pump up music during warmup, and having all your friends come watch puts everyone in a great mood to swim well. It was a tough week for us practice-wise, but all our hard work is definatley paying off.

But as always, I'd love to hear some of your comments or questions so feel free to say hi! Talk to you all soon!!