First full week...

Wow, I can't believe it has only been two weeks since the start of classes. Today ends the first full week of classes. And I feel like I've been here forever and not only a few weeks. I've finally figured out all my classes, started working, and began really settling in into all my classes. I'm not taking Chinese anymore. I've settled on taking 1 civil engineering class, a probability and statistics class, Linguistics, East Asia in the world 1500-2000, D-Lab, and Making Public Policy (as listener). So I'm registered for 66 units again, except it is technically more this time since I'm taking one class as a listener. And I'm also working 6-10 hours a week.

So my days are literally packed from 9:30-5pm everyday, usually with only a 30 minute break in there somewhere. I've been pretty on top of things though. I think it's mainly because I'm really interested in all my classes and therefore don't put off work or readings. I have enormous amounts of readings to do but I really look forward to reading them. They are really interesting stuff and I wish I had the time to read more. I think in another life, I would've been an historian.

Also I'm going to do a substantial amount of volunteering too. There's an AmeriCorps scholarship that awards money for time spent volunteering. I haven't gotten this scholarship yet but I think there's a good chance that I would get this scholarship. So tomorrow, I'm going to the Red Cross to make food bags. And next Saturday, Yalu and I will be volunteering for Habitat for Humanity. Habitat builds houses for low income families and sells these houses for only material and construction related costs (construction is done mostly by volunteers), so well below the market price. I think it will be a good experience. I also signed up to be a language exchange partner in order to help someone with their English skills. This is mostly to benefit spouses of graduate students who are often lacking some aspects of English. We haven't met yet but I think this will be a fun experience, especially since I'm taking linguistics.

I'm really glad it's the weekend. I felt especially hosed Thursday morning. But I'm really glad to be back.