First Impressions.

A girl on our team was googling rugby and photos, and found a bunch of pictures from our Serendipity Match last year with Guilford College.  There were a few of me, I like this one.  The girl sitting cross legged behind me is Em's cousin, Lara, who came to watch the game that day!  Also, notice the face of the other scrumhalf (top right corner).  That girl's facial expressions scare me.  She's also one of those girls who, when she goes to tackle you, she screams and "roars" at you, which just kind of makes you laugh instead of the intended purpose of scaring you.  I always think people who do that do it because they aren't intimidating at all physically, so they try to make up for it by sounding scary.  

So, it's been a long time!  I'm sorry, it's just been so crazy lately.  We are home, back in Greensboro now.  Classes have started, and practice starts tonight.  Tomorrow Sydney has a play-date with my neighbor/professor and her dog, Neo.  Neo is a Boston Terrier, but he loves big dogs, so Sydney should keep him busy and let Gwen get some work done at home without Neo bugging her out of boredom all day long!  It also takes some pressure off of Em and I, since we feel so guilty for leaving Sydney at home while we're at class.

Let's see..update on Syd - She's doing well.  Em and I are incredibly proud of her, because today we left for class at 10:30, and didn't get back until 3:30.  We cleaned up our bedroom and left Sydney in there, with her bed and chew toys.  When we got home, after spending 5 hours in our room she hadn't touched a THING.  She was sleeping on the bed when I walked in and was excited to see us.  I am so, so happy that we seemed to have found a solution to her being a little to anxious to be kept in a crate.  

Classes...  So far I've attended four of my five classes.  My other is a Thursday night class.  Of the four I've been to, I'm pretty much in love with them!  It's going to be A LOT of work, but I think that it will be worth it, because the topics are so interesting.  Yesterday I went to 'Families and Children Around the World'  which is my first 400 level class.  It actually doesn't seem that hard.  Next I went to 'Global Social Problems' which of course sounds awfully interesting, and a plus - the professor is awesome.  He seems very on top of things and reasonable.  He's younger - maybe 30 or so.  I also went to Cultural Anthropology after that, but within 10 minutes I decided that it was not going to work out, and mentally exited the class, spending the following hour and 5 minutes doodling pictures and recording important dates in my planner.  I got home and immediately dropped the class...whack job professor, horrible schedule & amount of work for a 200 level course.  No thanks!  Today I went to 'Abnormal Psychology' (SO INTERESTING!) and the professor is pretty much the coolest man in the world, I'm so impressed by him.  After that, I went to 'Gender, Crime, and Deviance' , a sociology course taught by my neighbor Gwen, who I also had last semester for Criminology.  She's a great professor, she's very eco-friendly, and loves animals.  She's also extremely friendly and I get the feeling she's a very positive person.  I added her class last minute, when I dropped my Cultural Anthro class, and when I went to her office yesterday to ask if she'd add me to her course, since it's full, she said OF COURSE she would add me!  She even brought extra copies of the books needed for class, because they send her extra books for her TA, but she doesn't have one, so she gave them to me to keep, to save me some money!  I found that so thoughtful!

Tomorrow is Em's 25th birthday!  She knows what I am getting her - we are adopting a kitten/young adult kitty.. she really misses Holden, and it would be great for Sydney to have something else to keep her busy around here.  We're going on Saturday to pick one out, there's one online, his name is Hemingway, that we both really like.  We'll see...

I'm off to our first practice of the season.  It's so cold out, it's like 35 right now, so I have to go pull out the Under Armour.  Which reminds me of Baltimore, which reminds me of University of Maryland, and Meredith, which reminds me that I need to send her sweatpants to her.  I promise I won't forget, Mer!

Wish us luck, this season's looking like it might be a rough one.  Our veteran players are dropping like flies.  Never a good thing.

Love everywhere,

Kristen

PS. I promise it won't be so long until next time!