Fall Break

It’s the Monday after our four-day fall break, and already things are back in full swing. Of course, they never really slowed down. Fall break was fun, but not exactly relaxing. As I mentioned in my last entry, a bunch of friends and I had planned to drive down to Silver Falls and camp there for a night. It was sort of stressful just because coordinating cars and food and supplies for eight people is no mean feat, but there were parts that were also a lot of fun. Here are some of the highlights:



Our lovely campsite. None of us were particularly good at putting tents up, but we managed all right.



The whole group at South Falls. Photo credit goes to random bystander. Thank you, good citizen!
P.S. I'm the one with the poofy blond dandelion hair and the red jacket.



Lower South Falls. Photo credit to my good friend Zoey.



So much spaghetti and meatballs.



How many college students can squeeze into a single jumbo sleeping bag? Apparently, four.

Besides camping, I did quite a bit of schoolwork. The biggest thing I’m working on right now is a 10-12 page short story for my fiction writing class. We’ve had the whole semester to work on it in between doing shorter assignments, but now it’s getting down to the deadline for the first draft and I’m not pleased with it at all. I normally don’t write fiction in first person, but I decided to experiment with it for this story, and it’s just really hard. Especially when the narrator is not that much like me. Oh well, it’ll come together. I’m also working on a scene for my acting class where my partner and I are having a fight. I come home late and she starts grilling me on what I’ve been up to. The implication is that I’ve been cheating on her. It’s hard to convey the emotional transition from withholding information and feeling really guilty to fessing up entirely and breaking down in shame. You can’t force that; you have to really experience it. It’s pretty intense. Our professor said that the situation had to be high-stakes, so I know we’ve at least succeeded in that! Between my creative writing class and the classes I take in the theatre department, I love that I get to do such many creative projects this semester. It's a lot of work, but it feels good to make art.

In other news, I spun fire at Fire Arts club for the first time today! It was pretty exhilarating and I can’t wait to do it again. I don’t have any pictures of it on my phone because it was out of battery, but I’m hoping my friends at the club will upload some to Facebook soon. I’ll try to post a photo next week.

Well, that’s all for now. If you have any questions about life at Lewis and Clark, feel free to email me at jessicakostka@lclark.edu!

Until next week,


Jess