Going Home.

Last year, I never went home. My parents live about 20 minutes away and I hardly every ventured across town, not even to do laundry. I paid $1.75 a load to do it in the crappy dorm washers. I just wanted the "college experience" or something. I liked pretending that I was somewhere far away at college instead of just being downtown. I liked feeling like I was somewhat on my own.

So I had my "independent college experience" last year (it's in quotes because dorm life isn't exactly independent--people feed you and clean for you and you don't really have to be responsible for anything). It was great.

I'm completely over all that this year.

I love going home. I really enjoy not paying for laundry and getting to eat real food. I still don't go home all that often, maybe every other weekend or so, and I don't usually stay overnight. I did last night though, it was wonderful sleeping in a bed that wasn't lofted.

It's not that I'm getting sick of college or anything. I just really like having some more space and freedom than I get in a dorm room. And real food is always wonderful.

I can't wait to live in an apartment next year.

The Housing Conundrum.

For the past year and a half, I've been living in the dorms at school. Freshman year I absolutely loved it. It was a ton of fun, things to do, people to see, the college experience ya know?

This is our room. It's a pretty good setup.
I didn't notice my photobombing roomie until
after I uploaded this, so sorry Jess! Love you!

This year I feel like I'm just tolerating it until I can upgrade. Don't get me wrong, it's not that bad. I like my roomie and we've got a cool room and it's still fun and all, I'm just a little bit sick of living in a 12 foot square. I'm tired of climbing a ladder to get to bed and sharing a bathroom with 30 people. I want my own bedroom and a kitchen.

So next year it's an apartment! Only I'm still not sure where I'll be living, or who I'll be living with. My current roommate is going to live in the on-campus apartments, which are really nice but really pricey. It'd also be nice because it's close so I wouldn't have to drive to class, and like I said, I like my roomie! Money isn't a huge issue, but I don't want to have to take out more loans just to pay for housing when I could live off-campus for way cheaper. Plus it'd be nice to have a little more freedom and not having to worry about moving back and forth between campus and home. And I'll be 21 next year, so....

The lottery for the on-campus apartments starts Monday, so I kind of need to figure it out soon.

Oh and another issue, my friend that I've talked about living with off-campus happens to be a guy. Not my boyfriend, but a guy that's a friend. I don't see this as an issue, but apparently a lot of people think it is. I talked to my mom about it and she actually seemed ok with it...at first. So now I'm waiting to hear back from my parents, because while I don't really need their permission to live anywhere, I don't want to make them mad. Plus they help me pay for stuff. It'd be really great if they would call me back in a timely fashion, since I do kind of have a deadline here.

Either place would turn out fine, but I'm just not sure what to do yet!

Duct Tape.

Ok, so first off, I love college.

I just got duct-taped to a wall. I stuck for 7 minutes.

Pretty impressive.

My building has for different wings, so there was a competition to see who could raise the money for kids in Honduras. The wing that won that got the most duct tape to stick a guy and a girl to the wall. Whoever sticks the longest gets their wing a pizza party.

For some reason, they picked me to get stuck to the wall. I'm still not sure how I feel about this. It was pretty entertaining though.

We won the fund raiser! But we got second in the duct-taping. Actually, I was the third longest sticking person, and the guy from my wing was the second. Not too shabby. I'm ok with that.

My arms are soo sore now though!