Settling In

I've been living in my new apartment two weeks now, and it's beginning to feel like home.  Aubrey and I finally got our living room furniture arranged - the first week, it was just all dumped anyhow, as we were still waiting on a few items from her parents' house - but now we have chairs and television placed, decorations hung, blankets draped on chairs.  I love how the apartment has come together; it is what my roommate's family likes to call "Early American Attic" - that is to say, mismatched, in a variety of styles and periods - but it all works together well enough.  And more importantly, it's comfortable.  We have big squashy armchairs, useful tables, lamps.  Nothing too fussy; nothing difficult to clean; nothing really unnecessary.

I took all these photos in the evening, so you don't see the incredible sunlight we get from that huge window in the mornings; I'll have to take a morning photo someday.  It's wonderful.

The kitchen is small, but useable.  And use it we do indeed!  We're both tea fanatics; we joke that half our electric bill will be due to our boiling of inordinate amounts of water.  I keep us supplied with fresh bread, and we both cook.  Last Sunday we sat down and planned out the menu for the week (and stuck to it, lol!) and we did the same again this afternoon.  We've found it seems to work best to cook about four times a week; Wednesday evening I eat at church and Aubrey fends for herself; the other nights (and some lunches) we eat leftovers.  We take turns cooking, and we like the same sort of things, so it works out really well.

Classes started again on Tuesday.  I'm going to have a very full semester, but I'm excited about most of my classes.  We started out with a rush in the music department, with the select choir performing twice by themselves (to dedicate a new classroom building and the new dorm quads) and again combined with the other choirs for Convocation yesterday.  That was a lot to prepare in just a few rehearsals!  But we carried it off well and I'm looking forward to the rest of the semester.

I'm taking a history class; my professor (who attends my church) is an elderly gentleman whose lectures seem at first look to be quite vague, rambling, and off-topic.  But when you think back you realise that not only did he actually cover his whole class outline, but you remember everything he said.  That takes talent!

Probably my favourite class is "Plays of Shakespeare", which I'm taking as part of my English minor.  The teacher is incredible - he is one of the main reasons I came to this school, actually; when I visited I was debating between majoring in English or music, and I set up a meeting with him, thinking we might talk for 5 or 10 minutes -- I spent nearly an hour in his office!  His class so far is living up to that; it's fascinating and well-taught.

I'm taking Vocal Literature, which is of course for my major, and I'm really excited about that one too.  There are only three of us in the class, and both the other girls are close friends of mine.  And the teacher is my voice teacher!  We meet in her office and we spend lots of time just listening to music, which in my mind is perfect :-)

About the only class I'm not thrilled about is psychology.  It's a required core class, so there's no way I can get out of it, but after only two meetings I'm frustrated.  I'm not convinced psychology is a necessary science; the useful parts of it just seem like common sense to me, and the rest is just nonsense.  I'm going to have to work hard at staying motivated, I think.

Oh!  Here is the bed from my last post, with my not-quite finished quilt at the foot :-)

All in all, I'm excited about this new semester.  I think it'll be crazy, but good!