Life and its anomalies

Thursday March 13, 2008 (but 17 hrs earlier on the east coast with this new daylight savings time thing you guys in the US are participating in)

Well it's a calm mostly quiet morning. The sun hasn't quite made its full appearance high in the sky, but it's definitely light out. It stays light here extremely late. Certainly no more 4:45 OH nights. The first few nights we were here it was bright till about 9:30pm or even later.

So this post doesn't have much to say, just the little things of day to day life here (i.e. feel free to skim or skip.) First of all, after many wanderings and nearly two weeks of classes, I've learned that there is just a completely higher degree of dressing up for class than I'm used to. Granted, Oberlin is probably not a good representative sample of colleges, but even so, so many fancy shoes and heals. There are certainly the jean wearers, but there's usually something nice to spruce that up too. Furthermore, I don't ever wear jeans because it gets so hot. I suppose for them this is like fall...? It's about 70-75 F everyday so I don't know what that's all about, but I'll go with it.

So yesterday I went to the climbing club for the first time. They meet at the climbing wall in the gym at 6:00pm every wednesday. I had a good time, got in a few climbs despite the massive crowds, but had to leave eventually because it was so hot. There is probably more horizontal climbing space than Oberlin, but they don't have a bouldering cave (very sad) and the wall is even shorter. There are some cool under cling spaces but if you drop off, fall, or otherwise want to be lowered, you go flying out over the climbing space very quickly, and often hit your partner....yeah I didn't do it. The stupidest thing, is that if you want to keep going then someone almost has to push you back up to the wall. It's a bit crazy. Oh, and the ropes are so short that I couldn't even attempt the sit start for this green route I'm working on. In fact, to even get to the wall, Tom had to climb up the adjacent wall to give me a chance to run and grab the wall without being pulled back too hard. Don't know the purpose of this, maybe that's how they save money, but it's not practical in the slightest. Anywho, I did that for awhile and met two guys who go tramping and climbing some weeks and said they might have space for me. Could be cool depending on when they leave and come back. I have class monday mornings and they were thinking of coming back monday afternoon. So we'll see, perhaps in the future or for just a portion of that.

After this climbing adventure, my flate mate Liz ...and I suppose everyone's incessant name calling (mostly nerd) of me, convinced me to go out with them for a short bit yesterday evening. First of all, they wanted to go to the campus bar, Shadows. Liz put eye makeup on me for fun (mostly to see if I would end up looking like a hooker as any eye makeup tends to do,) and we went down the guys room to see when they wanted to go. When they opened the door there was a "Lauren you're wearing makeup...first time in your life eh?" It was pretty dark and funny. So we eventually went to shadows, but when I got there I realized that I had forgotten my 18 + card. Basically says I'm 18. Eitherway, even with makeup on I couldn't pass for 18 so I walked back to the flat thinking I would come back with the Alex's who were planning on coming in about a half hour. I did some engineering then went back out with them only to discover that the bouncer was claiming it was closing at 10 (though the bartender said 12) and so wouldn't let anyone in. Well so mostly I'll just stop trying to be even remotely less dorky and stick to bed. We went to Forde's, this quiet bar next to our apt building, and I talked to the bartender for a bit with Liz over a really good ginger beer. The rest of them eventually left around 11 while Alex F and I came back. So that was that...except that the eyeliner is still lingering today, though in much more subdued quantities.

I'm thinking I'm going to play field hockey here so that's cool. Practice this sunday hopefully!

Well, I hope you all are doing well. I have six hours of class today so I've got to be off.