Sorry I haven't written in over a week. Lots of things have been happening rapid-fire, and I am just now able to sit down and collect my thoughts and try to recall what has happened since my last post.
When we last left our story...
80s party was amazing. It's one of the two annual parties hosted by Sid Richardson College (Sid/Sid Rich/Richardson). The (optional) prerequisites for the party were to come with
clothing and hair in the style of the 80s. The party took place in the Sid Rich commons, which is the primary meeting/eating place for each of the colleges. For this party, the tables and chairs were arranged into three large islands that people were able to get up and stand/dance on. There was a live band there who played just about every great 80s song from, well, the 80s. The party officially started at 10 PM, but I was invited to a pre-party at the room of a friend of mine who lives at Sid. I brought some friends with me and we headed over. The pre-party was basically just a bunch of people chilling together and having root-beer floats. Amazingly, they were actually able to get their hands on a working keg of root beer (not real beer, I checked before partaking). The whole night lasted until 2 AM, when we all left Sid and went our separate ways. Tired, deaf, and horrendously dressed, we made our way back to Martel, where we went straight to bed.
The next day, Saturday, was another big day for me. A bunch of people from the Anime club are planning on going to a large Anime convention in downtown Houston later this month called OniCon. We've pre-registered as a group, netting each of us a handsome discount on admission for all three days. Part of attending a convention like this is dressing up as one's favorite Anime character(s). I had ordered a costume especially for the event, and I had just a couple more things to take care of before the con. Even though it was still a bit early, I decided to go out and pick up a couple of props/add-ons for the costume and to get my hair cut and colored. I took the weekend shuttle out into the Houston metro area and found a place where I got my hair done exactly the way I wanted. Once I got home, I tried on the whole ensemble, and it looks great, as you can see:
And this is the character I'm going as - Kyouya from Ouran High School Host Club:
Pretty good, huh?
Sunday rolled around and I was busy at church with two major events: we had a visiting director of music, Dr. Anton Armstrong, the director of St. Olaf College's choir and a legend in the choral community. As a matter of fact, he worked with students from Gresham High School who went to the Bach Festival. Small world, eh? He had spent a weekend working with the church choir, and they gave an amazing performance. They also had a concert later that night that I wanted to go to, but I had an orientation at the Rice Recreation center that I had to attend. Oh well, they have the webcast for it here, so I was able to listen to it anyway:
http://www.smbc.org/live/archive.htm
If you have some time, it's definitely worth watching/listening to.
The other big event was the new members' class at South Main, which is called Main Spring. It talks about the history of the church, their vision and goals for their church community, and the opportunities available to members to serve in the church's function. I've gone for the past two weeks, and the last class is this next Sunday.
Sunday night: Rec Center Student Worker Orientation Game Night
(Snazzy title, I know)
Essentially, on Sunday night, the Rec Center closed early to allow the student members of staff to come in and, instead of talking about customer service protocols and all that junk, we divided into teams and competed against each other in a barrage of physical challenges, including an obstacle course, capture the flag, several cardio room races, and a final dodgeball tournament. After the games were over, they served us all dinner and we wrapped up the night with an informal Q&A with the adult staff in case there was anything that we were confused or unclear about with the operations of the Rec Center. After that, we were free to go, and I headed of to Fast Warp!
In case I haven't mentioned it before, Fast Warp is the gaming club on campus, playing everything from board and card games to role-players like Dungeons and Dragons. We had one of our usual game nights, and I brought my game "Argue," which was a big hit with the group. It is very interesting to see a bunch of college students kicking each other and juggling fruit while arguing why it is better to be buried alive (because it's a non-committal form of death) or burned alive (you're going be buried anyway, get some variety). A few of us were still going at 1:30 AM with a heated (well, tepid) game of The Settlers of Catan.
The school week got off to a typical start, classes assigning a lot of reading, but an eerie shadow was looming right around the weekend corner and is now breathing down my neck - Mid-Terms. Ooh scary. More on that later. My usual schedule of classes, working, and activities was playing out like usual - teaching exercise on the MWF lunch hours, Anime on Tuesday nights, Aikido on Wednesdays (I ordered my uniform this week, so that's a good thing).
Things started to pick up the pace again on Thursday in my Japanese Media class. At the end of the lecture, our professor read us an invitation he had received from the Baker Institute for Public Policy. If any of the students were interested, they could RSVP to meet the US Ambassador to Japan, J. Thomas Schieffer, October 2 (tomorrow) at 4 PM. Needless to say, I signed up right away.
The other thing that's going on in Japanese Media is that we are going to work together and create a video question for the Republican YouTube debates, which are coming up in November. More on this story as it develops.
Friday was a busy day with me working for my usual 2-3 hours at the Web Services office. The previous week, I had designed a website for an upcoming inter-college Halo 2 tournament, and this week I helped to put together a template for a tutorial website for building other websites. That night, I just hung out with my friends, even though there were several events going on around campus. We played cards and video games and just took things easy.
Saturday, with the shadow of Mid-Terms now eclipsing my view of complacency in any way, shape, or form, was basically me running to the bank to deposit a check, and then back to Martel to grab my study materials, then I was off to top-secret off-campus sanctuary of study (and no, I'm not going to say where it is - that would ruin the secret ^_^). I spent the better part of four hours of that afternoon there, typing away and putting together a study guide for my Archaeology exam, which is the first one coming my way (tomorrow, AAAAHHHH!). That night, however, was a different story...
Screw Yer Roommate is one of the oldest traditions at Rice University. Each year, students set their roommates up on blind dates with people they (usually) don't know, get those two people to do something unique/strange/otherworldy in order to find each other at Willy's Statue in the middle of campus, and then the two go out for a fun evening, then everybody meets back at Willy's Pub on campus for an afterparty. The event is meant to be a strange and awkward night for all parties involved, but people usually leave with at least a new friend on Facebook. My roommate Steve happened to be out of the area that day at NASA, but he still went and set me up with somebody for that evening. Her name was Yolanda, and the two of us were both freshmen and big fans of Anime. My roommate and Yolanda's roommate decided that the way that the two of us were going to find each other in the crowd would be to dress up like the two main characters in the movie Roman Holiday - her as Audrey Hepburn and myself as Gregory Peck. I borrowed a grey suit from a friend of mine, and we were able to find each other pretty easily. Pictures may be forthcoming. We went out into the village for some Thai food at Patu (a place where I will definitely take any friends/family who come and visit me from afar), then back to Martel, where we watched Howl's Moving Castle, a great new Anime film, on Martel's big screen TV. We headed to the afterparty, where we both met up with other friends, and we ended the evening there. It was a great night and a very interesting experience.
Sunday saw me heading back to South Main for church and the Main Spring New Members' class, as well as lunch down in the fellowship hall. In the time between the worship service and the beginning of lunch, I went into the church library and met some of the people that work there. It's been years since I was at a church that had a library, and it took me right back to First Covenant when I walked inside. All the old videos I used to check out every week were there, and I did check out a devotional book called "Meet the Bible," as well as a dual book with two of my favorite stories in one book - "This Present Darkness" and "Piercing the Darkness" by Frank Peretti. I haven't been able to get a whole ton of reading in because of studying for mid-terms, but I have taken a little time for myself.
Sunday night was a lot like Friday - just hanging out with friends, playing cards and video games, and eating food from Sonic, which some of the people went out and brought back. Each of us has been teaching card games to the others, and I've brought Pinochle to the table, and it's really been a hit. It feels good to be playing that game again.
Well, I'm just sitting here working on my studying for tomorrow and beyond. It's interesting, tense, long-winded, and somewhat stressful, but thankfully they eventually will be over with. Wish me luck!
