I haven’t died. I’ve just been “livin’ it up!” College is crazy busy! I’ll update one day… maybe this weekend. :)
Public Service Announcement
October 1st, 2009How I’m diggin’ dorm life.
September 24th, 2009I really like dorm life. I’m a fan of just sitting in my room and talking to random people as they come in. The people on my floor are super cool. There’s a couple of people who are almost always around so I talk to them. Some others are wandering around. If I have a question about our english class, I’ll just walk into their room and be like “Dude, what quote did you use for da-da-da-da-da?” It’s great.
I’m not very homesick. I don’t know if that’s okay or not. I love my mom and my brother (and my dad too but he doesn’t live with us. I mention my mom and brother because I used to see them all the time) but I’m not feeling super empty. It would feel empty if -they- were the ones that left, because I’d be living in a place that was once filled with their presence. I’m in a new environment in which I’ve never really shared with them so I don’t really feel like anything is missing. I do miss them both.
I miss my friends too but I don’t feel empty. I think it’s because our communication started slowing down a month before I left because they’re all (except one) on the semester system. When our floor went to an amusement park the other night, I kept wanting to say “Oh, Trevor would have loved this!” or “Do you remember what Jessica said?!” but nobody from home was there to share those thoughts with. It was weird. I think it hit me then more than anything else that I’m with a -completely- new group of people. But I’ve adjusted well so I’m proud of myself for that.
I went to the music center to play the piano the other day. I passed by the bulletin board and saw sign up sheets for auditions for different groups on campus. A woman passed by and we started talking. She said the wind ensemble needs percussionists so I signed up for an audition for later that day. I was worried because I didn’t have my drumsticks with me and I had nothing prepared -and- I hadn’t played seriously in a year. I ran out to buy drumsticks. I survived the bus system by myself! It was actually pretty easy. I figured out that the 15 and 16 get me to downtown. So that’s all good.
I told the woman that I hadn’t played in a long time and I asked her if I would be allowed to use the percussion equipment for practice. She said I need to be a percussion student and told me I should sign up for lessons with Willie. I signed up for Wednesday of next week. She said he LOVES mallet players, which is what I am. I’m super excited to play Marimba or Xylophone again. I miss playing mallets.
Anyway, I went to go to my audition for the wind ensemble later that day and I was 5 minutes late. I left way early but the shuttle took forever getting to the bus stop. I ran through the recital hall and all through the music center trying to find the audition room. Someone pointed me in the direction of the conductor. He was super friendly and told me not to worry about being late. They don’t audition percussionists. What I’m supposed to do is show up at rehearsal on Monday night and if there are too many percussionists, they’ll audition us. I told him I’ve been playing piano since I was 8 and he got super excited. He said that for their repretoire for this year, they need a pianist for some parts that’s also a percussionist. I don’t want to get too excited or over-confident because I don’t know the skill levels of everyone else that’s interested but I am confident that I would be able to play the music very well.
I think I’m going to go to the lounge to play the piano. Thank God there’s a piano near my dorm and I don’t have to go to the music center all the time!
First day at university!
September 20th, 2009Alright. So my day has been REALLY eventful. I’ll try not to ramble but it’s quite exciting.
I finished packing last night. Then I cleaned my room. It was weird cleaning my room because it felt like I was checking out of a hotel. But it doesn’t feel like I’m leaving home. I feel like I’ll come back (for breaks and stuff). My mom pointed out that after college, I’ll be going onto my graduate work and then ill get job and maybe get married so this really is kinda the end.
So we left the house at 7. I’ll spare you the little details like dropping my dog off, filling our tires and stopping at Wendys. We arrived at the campus and went up to my dorm. We got my ID and then was directed to my dorm building. We had 10 minutes to unload. My mom says I brought a lot more crap than everyone else and a lot more than needed but I beg to differ. I have everything I need and a lot of it was just my bedding and such. And I had organizational stuff. So I’m proud to say I am moved in and all my stuff is in it’s general area.
So my roommate (I will call her K) and I were sitting in our room around 12:30ish and people came in and we all started talking. They sat down and we talked, then more people would pass by, introduce themselves, and I invited them to join us. We ended up partying on the floor of our room for 5 hours. Around 5:30 a group of guys and I went to go get dinner. As soon as we got there (we had to hike down a hill and go across a street), I realized I forgot my ID. So I hiked back up, (I’m going to have BEEFY calves) and found my roommate. I asked her if she wanted to eat dinner and so we went to the dining hall and ate dinner.
We went back to the dorms and waited around. We had a residence meeting at 7:30 where they did skits and they were really funny. It was their way of introducing general rules and explaining things. Then we had floor meetings. Our RA is kickass. He’s totally open to all sorts of lifestyles and he’s super comfortable with himself. I really like him.
My floormates and I have been having a lottt of fun. There is I and A at the end of the hall, they’re super cool. A was really hyper and I think he was cause he was tired haha. I is cool, I talked to him on Facebook before and was really excited to meet him. The guys across the hall are cool. They weren’t really in our group today. One of them is 6′ 8″. It’s amazing haha.
Thennnn there’s J who is flamboyantly gay and suuuuper funny. I love him so much. His roommate is KY and is a bit quiet but at the same time, not really. Then there’s a girl, D, who’s in a triple down the hall. She doesn’t really like her roommates so she was hanging out with us for a bit. She’s really cool too.
I don’t think I’ve laughed this much in a really long time. After the meetings, J, I, A, KY, K and I (Tara) were sitting in our floor lounge. We decided to write letters to floors 1, 3 and 4 asking for an alliance in case of a civil war in our community or any war. The letters were sooo silly and random, including a bunch of inside jokes we came up with during our 5 hour chat earlier in the day.
Ooh speaking of inside jokes. Our RA posted a large piece of white paper on the floor and the title is “Express Yourself” so people have been writing on it (not much has been written.) By the way, random fact, there are 14-15 people on our floor so it’s close knit to begin with. Anyway, I wrote 3 of our inside jokes on the wall already. Dude, you don’t even understand how much fun I’m having.
So after we wrote the letters, we all put on black jackets/sweatshirts, and went to deliver them to the floors. We just walked up to the first person we saw on the floor and handed it to them and walked away. I totally thought people would be like “The 2nd floor is hellllaaa weird!” but no they don’t and you’ll see why. We went back upstairs and goofed around some more (changed the sign on the bathroom from “The Bathroom” to “The Loo” (another joke from earlier)) and then we decided to go adventuring. By now, it’s 9:30/10pm. We walked outside and stood on the bridge (there’s a bride connecting the third floor to the center of te area. It’s confusing. I’ll explain later). Then these two girls were standing on the balcony of the 4th (I think) floor and were like “Did you guys write this?” and we talked and they said they wanted to join our alliance. We invited them to adventure with us
Then some kids from underneath the bridge were like “DO YOU WANT CAKE?!” and everyone of course was like “duuuude yeah!” so they ran up and we all talked and exchanged names. It was a girls birthday today so people were running around with cake. (Disclaimer for my dad: I know I shouldn’t take strange food from people but these are fellow residents who weren’t under the influence of anything so they seemed innocent (I know that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re not innocent but I decided they are (I’m probably going to get a large email from you about this, huh? :D)))
Then we walked and collected one more person so by now we were quite a large group. We stood around in the dark (by a lamp) talking and laughing hysterically and making random jokes when J decided he should sleep (11:15pm) cause he had to be somewhere tomorrow morning. I and Tara (me) were kinda tired so we all just eventually left.
I’m suuuuuper tired right now and I apologize if my blog wasn’t very detailed haha. And unprofessionally written. And all the typos: I’m using my keyboard protector and I’m not used to it.
Alright. I shall post pictures later.
Power To The Peaceful
September 11th, 2009I’m definitely going to San Francisco in two hours. One of my best friends, Jasmine, is attending USF. I’m going to spend two nights in her dorm and tomorrow we’re going to Power To The Peaceful. I’m super duper excited. If you want updates (pictures included), check out my Twitter account here for the next couple of days.
I don’t really know what else to say so I’m going to peace out. :) I’ll blog on Sunday when I get home!
Waiting for college
September 8th, 2009I’m so anxious to leave for college. It’s 12:45am and OFFICIALLY, I have 11 more days. :D 10 if you don’t count the day I move in. I’m almost in the single digits, bay-bay!
I’ve got most of my dorm shopping done. I have little things like pads, ibuprofen, surge protector, etc. My family has a bunch of surge protectors but heres the story. The garage of the house we live in was never a garage. It was converted into a room. It was supposed to be a three car garage. Two cars of it is a giant living room, the second car is split up into two rooms of equal size. All that space is mine (yesssss!). The two smaller rooms are my bedroom and closet.
The thing is… there is officially ONE outlet in my room. So we bought one of those thingies that makes six plugs out of one. Then I’ve got one short extension cord with 3 plugs coming out of that. Then I’ve got a surge protector coming out of that. Then another one. Then another one. Then another one. Then one more JUST for the organ in my room. So that’s 5 plus the extension cord. It’s kind of insane. I can’t unplug any of them because everything electric in my room is needed. I’m going to list all the stuff connected to these surge protectors so skip the next paragraph if you really don’t feel like reading.
The first one has my fish tank, my tv, my dvd players (one of them I use for the VHS feature. I lost the remote to it so I use the other DVD player. Along with surge protectors, our family has a bajillion DVD players too.) I see a couple of other things plugged into it but I have no idea what they are. The next surge protector has all my game systems connected to it, plus my iPulse. Then my next surge protector has my Clavinova and a lamp connected to it and the next one has my organ attached to it. Damn.
Hm. So 345 words later, I’m getting to the point of my post. I’ve got all my dorm shopping done and now I just have to pack. I know if I pack now, I will be living on practically nothing for 10 days. But I’m so flippin’ excited to go through all my stuff to take with me. I have no idea what personals to take. I’m going to take my favorite books, maybe a couple of DVDs, a couple of board games… I don’t really know what else. To be honest, I think I could fit all my stuff into my closet and like, 3 under-the-bed storage containers. I don’t know why everyone is freaking out about dorm space. I feel like I’m missing out on something BIG that I’m supposed to take with me… What else should I take?
Oh, I intend on taking my flute with me. I want to get better at it so I’m proficient at a wind instrument. Then my options for ensembles definitely grow. Concert bands/orchestras/whatevers usually need only a small number of percussionists. You can’t have too many people standing around back there. So now I have my flute. I’m also going to take my violin and hopefully get some student to teach me how to play. I need to be somewhat proficient at the violin to take lessons from instructors at the university.
What else should I take that’s personal… Freaking, I have no idea. Of course I’m going to take picture frames… what all is everyone taking that they need SO much space for?!
Edit: By the way! I rushed out, an hour before they closed, to a Borders in a city 30 minutes away just so I could buy one of my $16 memoirs for my english class. My coupon expired tonight. Saved $6 with my 40% coupon. I rushed to the Borders near my house and I got there 8 minutes before they closed. I couldn’t find the last memoir that I needed even with their help. Apparently they had four copies and we looked in two different sections. Oh well. I had two 40% coupons (from two different accounts, mine and my mom’s) and I wanted to use her coupon. The book is $9 so I suppose I can just buy it retail whenever I can.
Editedit: I just got a 30% coupon in my email 14 minutes ago. Damn, son. These people are seriously lean-mean coupon sending machines! It’s like freaking JCPenney. There’s ALWAYS a sale!
Things I want to do as of this moment.
September 5th, 2009There are so many things I want to learn. If I could, I would just go to school forever. I’m not saying that I love school. I actually wasn’t a big fan of it in high school. Mainly because it was all general education and a lot of it I just wasn’t interested in.
But there are a lot of things I want to study in college. I’ve settled with Psychology, but I really want to realistically triple major. In my wildest fantasies, I’d totally just stay in school and get degree after degree after degree.
One of my realistic triple majors is Psychology. The next is music which is pretty obvious. I also really want to learn how to speak Spanish. In high school, we were required to take at least two years of a language. When I was a freshman, I planned to put these off until my junior year so that I could take fun classes (choir, drama, etc) early on. So I took Spanish 1 two years ago and I loved it so much. If I had taken it my freshman year, I would have taken all of the Spanish classes my school offers. Although I don’t know a lot of Spanish, I still run around the house saying basic sentences. Just basic, present-tense conjugations.
While on the subject of languages, I would also love love love to learn Italian and Russian. I started to teach myself Italian a few years ago and I know very. very. very little now. Actually, in my beginning Spanish 1 class, I kept getting Italian words mixed up with Spanish words. The two languages are so close it’s ridiculous. Anyway, Italian because it is a beautiful sounding language and it sounds musical. Russian because for some reason, I love the sound of Slavic languages. So I guess I wouldn’t mind learning Ukrainian or Romanian. I think Russian would be more useful.
Now I bet you’re thinking: “Tara, why don’t you become a translator of sorts?”. (I say this because whenever I tell someone about my love for languages, they say that to me.) I don’t want to be a translator or an interpreter. I just want to know how to and to speak different languages. Of course, I don’t know what the job of a translator is actually like so I can’t completely rule it out. We’ll see where college takes me.
I’ve kind of rambled on a bit too much. I actually started to write this post so that I could talk about my sudden desire to learn how to paint. Maybe I’ll go into that.
I love to work with my hands. I think that’s one of the main reasons why I’m attracted to the piano. I’m not particularly crafty, but I love love love to craft. Just so that my hands are busy. That probably doesn’t make sense… pish posh. So I suddenly want to paint. Or draw in general. I’m not a horrible… what would the word for it be? Okay, let’s reword that sentence. I don’t draw horribly. But I’m also no good. I would really like to learn how to actually draw then eventually get on to painting. I tried to sign up for an introductory drawing class (designed specifically for non-art majors, yay!) but it was all full. Apparently, the first quarter of your freshman year at my university is the toughest because you basically get the scraps as far as classes are concerned. We’re on the quarter- let me start a new paragraph.
We’re on the quarter system (which explains why I’m not in school yet). So students usually take 3 to 4 classes. Freshman aren’t allowed to take more than 3 in their first quarter. They require you to take your english class, then recommend you take a class towards your major and one general ed. I chose Classical Music for my general ed. class. I really really really wanted to be in Psych 1 but it was all closed. It’s a very popular class. But when I went to orientation, the Psych advisor told us that at 10am the next day, she was opening more seats in the lecture. Guess who was at the computer ready at 9:45am? :) 167 seats filled up in 7 minutes. It was pretty crazy.
Okay. Rambled enough. There are a lot more things I want to learn how to do but I will save that for another time. Peace!
Testing iPhone app
September 4th, 2009I’m writing this post from my phone. I wonder if it’ll work. I’ll add a photo for fun too.
I went out to eat sushi with a couple friends. We didn’t eat the end of one of our rolls cause it was huge. I made a pile for it. Now it looks like a monnnnnster!
Ordinary days
September 3rd, 2009I was going to post yesterday but decided to hold it all in for today.
I honestly have NO idea what I did yesterday… I remember the latter part of my day. Oh! Oh!! I remember now.
For one of my classes, I need to buy 4 books (memoirs). One of them I already bought, read, and am beginning an essay on it. The other three I don’t have to read yet but will need them for class. Well I get a butt-load of coupons from Borders (because I’m a part of their rewards program) and I never use them (because I have no money because UA decided to hardly give anyone shifts (I haven’t worked in 2 and a half weeks (But legally I’m still an employee so… FREE MOVIES!!))) so they go to waste.
So I had an absolutely briiiillliiiaant idea. Okay. It’s actually not that brilliant or ground-breaking… but I decided to buy my books with my coupons. Haha. Okay fine, I’m more excited than I should be but I’m saving a ton of money. I dug through my email and all but one of the coupons had expired. That one was due to expire last night. So yesterday I ran off to the bookstore and saved $5 with one of my books. I got another coupon (40% this time. Lasttime it was 30%) and I intend on running to the bookstore again and getting the second book. Seriously though, these savings will add up.
I’ve already done all my dorm shopping and I think I’ve saved a lottt of money so far. For everything that didn’t need to be cute or stylish (medicine, toothbrush, household items), I bought at Walmart. My friend Jasmine thinks Walmart is the devil. Random fact. Anyway, I saved a bunch there. Then my mom made me a duvet cover out of two flat sheets (Okay, the story of how I came across my comforter is one insane story and I shall tell it some other time.) I’m taking a few things from home, like storage containers and tools (I’m taking tools JUST IN CASE! I don’t want to find myself needing a screwdriver and thinking, “I -knew- I should have brought that!)
Alright this isn’t very exciting so I’ll blow through my day today.
I woke up, showered, ate breakfast then went to donate blood but they were overbooked and said “try again later” and I was like “yeahhh nope” because the blood drive was at a college nearby and most of the people there were students who were in the middle of classes so I didn’t think I’d have a chance. I might go another day though. Then I went to check my schedule at work. This is my last week I am legally an employee and the third week they didn’t give me a shift. It’s not that I’m a bad employee. Nobody is getting shifts. It’s really crazy.
I played Halo 3. Kicked ass and also got my ass kicked.
Aaaaand now I’m here.
Aaaaand now I’m gone!
First post!
September 1st, 2009Well. Allegro Vivo is back. I know I said that at least twice the past few years but this time I’m serious. As you can see, (if you used to be a lurker around these parts (haha I like how cool I think I am)) a lot of pages have been either deleted or rewritten. AV has gone down to the bare minimum and I will work to add more to the website. To be honest, I’m only really interested in the blog portion of my website but we’ll see where life takes me.
Let me briefly introduce myself. I am Tara. I live in California and am going to attend a UC (University of California. There are 9 campuses). I don’t plan on mentioning exactly which one I’m attending for privacy reasons. However, I think it will become quite obvious which one I go to after a few months. Oh well. I still won’t explicitly mention which one for privacy reasons. I understand this is a public blog. I just don’t want people typing in UC***** in Google and finding me. Oh whatever.
I’m leaving for college in 17 days (I’m not counting or anything!). I’m incredibly excited and cannot stop thinking about my new life. It’s not that I dislike my life in my current hometown (which is three hours away from school). I have quite a nice life, in a nice area, with a nice social and musical life. I’m just ready for a change and a huge jump in independence. I’m mostly super excited for the experience of being in college, living in the dorms, just being in a new environment, etc. I plan on studying Psychology. Psychology is just absolutely fascniating to me so I’m also excited to be focusing on that. For 12 years, all I (and everyone else in the class of 2009) have been studying is general education. Now is the time to plop down thousands of dollars to study exactly what -I- want to and something that will -greatly- impact the rest of my life. (Disclaimer: I totally understand that english, history, mathematics, etc also greatly impacted my life. I hope you all understand what I mean with college education though. (Should I have capitalized “english” “history” or “math”? I don’t think so but for some reason I’m questioning myself…))
This is a really long first post. It’s an introduction post really. Oh! I forgot to mention -why- I brought AV back.
I’m leaving home and a lot of close friends and family in the next few weeks. I may or may not have time to regularly contact them. I decided that I was going to update my Twitter a lot more with updates and pictures so my family and friends could get a glimpse of my new life. Then I decided I should blog to make it a more personal experience. I could say “I just got back from board game night!” or I could write a few paragraphs about how exactly my night went. I plan on littering my posts with pictures and videos (from my YouTube account) once I get settled in.
Well. Here we go!