Wet

The title pretty much says it all. We've had thunderstorms every day this week.

I love it!

During the day, the weather has always been fairly clear and pleasant to move about it. Each of the past few nights, on the other hand, has been full of lots of wet and the sky going boom every few seconds. I missed that for a long time when I lived in Oregon, so it's nice to have that back again.

Classes are finished for the week, and I'm as caught up on my homework as I can be right now. I'm still waiting on a couple of my textbooks to arrive and can't continue reading until they do, but my Prof said not to worry too much about it. So I won't.

Martel had an outdoor barbecue tonight prior to the t-storm, and it was very similar to what happened on the first night the upperclassmen arrived. Burgers, chips, beer, the works. However, despite the presence of beer, it was definitely not your stereotypical 'college party'. Everything was very casual and social, and the whole affair reminded me more of a night at Edgefield than a college social function. I like that. People would get one or two beers out of the goat (more on that in the next paragraph) and would just enjoy each other's company. Did I ever mention how impressed I am with everything this school does?

The beer goat.
It has a beer keg inside a plastic garbage can filled with ice inside it. A tube runs from the top of the keg to the mouth, where the beer flows out. The control for the tap is the goat's left horn, which is pulled down in a fashion similar to any draft beer tap.

This place is amazing.





The weekend's here now, and I plan on getting some much needed R&R in.

An Unusual Amount of Nothing

I only have two classes in the morning, and the homework from the two of them was minimal. As such, I happened upon a large block of nothingness this afternoon. I wandered about the area investigating some different things, and I realized that it may just be possible that I am going to have some free time during my time here. From this, I have drawn that I'm going to have time on my hands to rest when I need to and plenty of time to finish my work. I'm gonna make it!

One thing more from the massive study session of yesterday. Here's a picture of my study face:







Serious looking, huh?







I'm off to Parliament at 10 tonight. That's the governing body for Martel. They make sure that the college is running smoothly and helps to facilitate Martel events and traditions. Plus they have free food. Should be an interesting experience, especially since this is a student-run governing body that can actually make a significant difference in school life, unlike those of high school. (If you haven't heard my rants about the impracticality and uselessness of high school 'governments,' that's a whole other conversation ^_^)

The torrent of textbooks has started to land in my mailbox. One came yesterday, and four more arrived today. Hopefully I'll have them all by next Monday. Otherwise we may have some difficulties, but we'll cross that bridge only if we come to it.

I miss my cats. A lot. Thankfully, I have this lovely little website called icanhascheezburger.com, which is just a bunch of pictures of kitties doing goofy things. Check it out if you feel so inclined or need a laugh.

And Now the Work Starts

I've just come off of a four-hour reading period, so I don't know how long I can last blogging. Let's find out.

I had my three other new classes today - Archaeology, Japanese Media, and Sport Management. I enjoyed all three of them, but two of them re-introduced me to a phenomenon that I had not known for many moons: Homework. Two chapters out of two different archaeology books, and four separate articles for Japanese Media - two of which were only available on reserve at the library.

The library, by the way, is absolutely amazing here. Trust me, if Heaven is a library, it looks like the Fondren Library at Rice U. Wow. Books on everything, everywhere. The place was very quiet and had hundreds of great places to read and study. As I type this, it is now 11:32, and I only finished my homework reading about half an hour ago, after going since about five this evening. Granted, I did take about an hour off to get food and assemble my bicycle, but my point is still valid - this is a lot of work. Will it be worth it? Of course!

Will it still be long, hard, arduous, and at times tedious?






Duh.

And so it Begins

Sunday was busy in the morning, then gradually lazified as it went on. I found a church near to campus called South Main Baptist Church. I went to their early worship service and then stayed for Sunday School. They were a great group of people and very welcoming. I'm going to be going back most, if not all Sundays while I'm here.

I started classes today. Japanese in the morning and Group Fitness in the afternoon. Both classes were just focused around self introductions and becoming acquainted with the class formats. The real work will start either on Wednesday or soon afterward. I have a class about the history of the Kimono tonight, and I'm just waiting right now until I have to head out for that. We've had some periodic thunderstorms here today, making travel across campus a little miserable. However, with the shuttle service and the two umbrellas I brought with me, I was able to make it through fairly dryly.

The End of O-Week

Now that Saturday has come and (almost) gone, O-Week has drawn to a close. Only a couple of things to report.

First of all, we had Maptek - the top secret event that must be kept a secret from the public domain. As such, I cannot discuss it here on the blog. If you want specifics, we may be able to talk. Suffice to say it was amazing and super cool and epic and made of win and super happyful.

Today was really, really laid back. The first thing we had going on was a small group trip to the Super Target. I picked up some groceries and some dish rags for a friend. When we got back, the servery was closed for the day, so I cooked up some instant Pad Thai noodles. I found that the third floor kitchen is only a couple of doors down from our suite. As such, I realized that until such time as I have my own refrigerator in here, I can store cold food in there in the public kitchen. I went back to Target with my roommates later that day and picked up a George Foreman grill (only to be used in the kitchen, not the suites), and the ingredients for making panini sandwiches, so I'm set for whenever the servery closes.

I bought most of my books this morning on Amazon.com using their used book service. I got better deals on all of my needed books (about 12 of them in all) and they'll arrive here within the first week of class. At the end of the semester, I'll probably sell them at the bookstore and use the funds to buy the next set of books I need.

The big event of the day was my solo trip to Robertson Stadium at the University of Houston for the Houston Dynamo soccer match against the Columbus Crew. It was just like being back in Japan at Sapporo Dome. There were tons of fans, all clad in bright orange and screaming loud and proud. I picked up a replica jersey for myself and wore it during the game. The game was really exciting, and I enjoyed every second. I used the light rail and bus system to get to and from there, and it went really smoothly.

I'm planning on going out and checking out a church tomorrow morning, so that's what's up next for me. Tomorrow's probably going to be a restful day, because classes start the morning after. Wish me luck!

Victory = Mine!

The mad dash known simply as registration happened this morning at precisely 8:00 AM, and I was right there with codes and fingers at the ready. The air was electric, and you could almost hear the pounding hearts and heavy breathing of new students all over campus waiting for that hour to turn so that they could start punching the keys and hitting that submit button to try and get in faster than anyone else.

I won.

I got all five of the classroom-based classes that I was going after, and only one class that I was after - the Yoga LPAP - was already full up. Luckily for me, I had three alternative LPAP courses written down because I knew that they filled up quickly. It was a good thing that I did, because I ended up only being able to get in to the very last one I had written down - Group Fitness. Now I will be both a student and an instructor of this exercise format this semester - how's that for cool? The best part of the whole thing was the background music. I had Richard Cheese's album "Lounge Against the Machine" blasting from my speakers as I punched the keys with glorious fervor. First one LPAP class was full, then the second one, then the third one, leaving me with only one left. Amazingly, just at that moment, Cheese's cover of the song 'Last Resort' started playing - when I was about to attempt my last resort. Funny stuff!

Some other stuff has happened since I last made an entry. We had dinner on Wednesday at one of the Martel Associates' houses outside of campus. There were a couple of members of the Rice community there to eat with us, and it was a really fun, down-home style experience and helped once again to make Martel and Rice feel like a family and not just a super amazing school. That night, after we returned, we had the Roommate Challenge - a series of ten challenges that suite-mates attempted together. We played crab soccer, tried to assemble a puzzle with our eyes closed, dropped things off the fifth floor balcony, and all other sorts of crazy stuff. More good times!

Yesterday was definitely more laid-back than any other day we've had here so far. In the morning, we had an early breakfast of Einstein Bros. Bagels (which are amazing, for those of you who haven't experienced their wonderfulness), and then went out to the parking lot for a mock Beer-Bike. We had shopping carts instead of bikes, and we had a women's and men's race. After feeling the energy from just the mock Beer-Bike, and the wetness of the massive water balloon fight that took place just afterwards, I can't wait for the real thing.

The rest of that day was pretty lazy. Students met with their academic advisers, but I had already done that the previous day. There were a couple of short presentations in the afternoon, but the evening was when things kicked off. We had Houston Night Out, and we joined more than half of the freshman class in getting on the lightrail and heading down to Minute Maid Park and the Astros vs. DC Nationals game. Like most baseball games, our time there was just as much about socializing and being together as it was watching the actual game. Most of our team did get bored around the seventh inning, so we decided to head back to campus early, which was just fine. I wanted to have an early night so that I'd be bright and ready for registration this morning and, as you can see at the top of this entry, that paid off immensely.

Pictures!

Here's a couple of pictures of my room at Martel and one of my O-Week group at Lakewood Church during the scavenger hunt.

Martel College, Casting the first Jack!

We've been really busy 'round these parts.

I'll start with the scavenger hunt.

WOW!

It was unlike any activity I've done in my life - a mad dash not only around the campus, but around the Houston metro area as well. We had to find Cheese Balls, gelato, a kumquat, a special order from Amy's Ice Cream (any of you who come to visit me in Houston, I will take you there. It wins.). We also were looking out for anything from a picture of our group in front of Lakewood Church or the Water Wall to 50 points for each James Bond theme song we could sing as a group (how's twenty one of them sound?). The hunt was frantic, crazy, and everyone was trying to find Chuck Norris (worth two million points). Once all was said and done and counted up, our team finished in third, a very respectable result.

The next day started earlier than the previous days, and we had lectures to go to. Some were more exciting than others, but we made it through them all. That night was when the fun started. We had the Rice Rally, the Rice Carnival, and time with our Sister Group from Sid Richardson College (Death from Above! ^_^) The rally was, as you might guess, a big rally of all nine colleges cheering for their unity as one Rice U. We all got Popsicles and free t-shirts and were told the abridged history of Rice, which was really fun.

The Rice Carnival went on right after the rally, and was a frantic and crowded room where local business and school organizations were trying to grab everyone's attention. Chipotle and Papa John's did this very well (A free Chipotle burrito and a free small pizza - life is good!) I got a couple more ideas for jobs and diversions for my time here, and all of them sound like fun.

Our sister group from Sid Rich met up with us later that night and we went into downtown Houston to the Water Wall, which is a massive, black, curved monolith that has water running down the front side. We played a game of Mafia at the center of it and then went over to Amy's Ice Cream for a late-night snack.

Now, because the title of this post might cause one to wonder, I will briefly explain what a Jack is in Rice University life. Jacks are an institution almost as old as the residential college system itself, and involves all of the colleges pulling large, goofy pranks on each other. Martel had their first one go into operation last night. The target: Wiess College. Wiess has a nasty little habit of never creating a theme for their O-Week while all the other colleges do (our theme for this year is Dr. No-Week, a James Bond theme). As such, we decided that we would be generous and give Wiess a theme for this week: Wiessmen Blo-Week! (All members of Wiess College refer to themselves as Wiessmen, regardless of gender.) We painted a bunch of posters and printed off pictures of blowtorches, blow-dryers, blo-pops, and Bill Clinton, snuck over to the Wiess commons, and plastered the entire room with them, including a big sign that said "You're Welcome! Martel College" It was SO fun, and we pulled it off without a hitch.

Five hours of sleep later, we arrived at today. More lectures and talks in the morning, and then a relatively lazy day for O-Week. We had an academic lunch today where we dined with faculty members from our supposed areas of interest, and I went to the Asian Studies table. We had a great lunch and some great conversation. I'm really looking forward to getting these classes started! We then went over to the College Master's house and had a fun little meeting with Jerry and Michelle where we just chatted and got to know a little bit more about each other. Now I'm here on some down time before I go off to a one-on-one meeting with my academic adviser, and I'M TAKING A NAP!

Pictures are on the way, so don't worry.

Or ask me about them.

There's two kinds of people in the world...

Greeks, and everybody else who wish they were Greek.

Martel's Greek heritage came out in full force tonight. After a presentation in the computer building, we returned to Martel College to discover the upperclassmen and the college masters there awaiting us. There is a ceremony that has been a part of Martel life since its creation. Each student has passed through our sallyport and passed along a silver torch to signify their entrance into the Martel community. Afterwards, there was a huge party in our commons with food, drink, and festivity. It's good to be Greek!

I'm just here to change into something more comfortable and then I'm off to a massive scavenger hunt that apparently is a real scream. More on that later - bye for now!

Sweaty, but satisfied!

Just got back from a late-night game of Ultimate Disc - in my pajamas of all things. I never thought I'd get used to the late-night workings of this place, but apparently I don't know my own flexibility. Sleep will come eventually, but it's just kind of chill time now.

Here we go!

Well, I've finally arrived, after all the waiting and waiting, and more waiting still, here at the beautiful Rice University. This place is almost as much an 'intellectual resort' as it is a school. I've yet to really delve into the academic facets of the place (I've only been here about six hours as I type this). However, the facilities of the place are quickly showing how great they are.

I am staying in a place called Martel College, one of nine residential colleges here on campus. I have three roommates - Steve, William, and Chris, who share a four-person suite with me. The building is gorgeous and has been well furnished. I've unpacked and started to settle into my room, and I think I'm going to be very comfortable here for the next year.

We're just having a bit of down time between activities right now, so I figured that this would be a good time to kick off my chronicle of my time here. I have no idea how faithfully or consistently I'll be updating this thing, but I'll do my best. If you want to contact me, you either know my e-mail address already - otherwise feel free to post a comment here on the blog.

Tonight is matriculation and some different college activities, and a great week awaits. Let's see what happens...