Birthday Weekend

Hello, readers!

Yesterday was my birthday, which meant a weekend full of celebrating! People are pretty busy with homework and other things, so it was hard to find a time to hang out with more than a few people at a time. Luckily, because my homework was on the lighter side this weekend, I was able to spend a large portion of my weekend downtown!

Saturday morning my roommates and I all slept in. I have 8 AM classes every day, and I've been going on College Outdoor trips on the weekends, so this was my first chance to sleep in in a while. If I've learned one thing since coming to college, it's that sleep is very important. After brunch we went downtown and walked to Saturday Market. It's this really cool artistry market-type place that happens every weekend between March and Christmas. I went a lot last year, but this was my first time going this year- I guess I've just been too busy to go before now! We wandered around for a while then stopped at a thrift store before returning home.

That night I went downtown again with my friend Gaby. We went out for dinner (which was very exciting- Bon food is generally pretty good, but eating off campus feels pretty adventurous), then went to TartBerry (the best frozen yogurt place ever).

I tried to make a cake-like frozen yogurt with cake flavored fro-yo and whipped cream and sprinkles (and gummy worm candles). It was mildly successful.

Sunday morning I got up early with one of my roommates and with Gaby and went downtown again. This time, we ventured into Southeast Portland. Portland is split into five sections- Northeast, Northwest, North, Southeast, and Southwest. Lewis & Clark is on the edge of Southwest, and the Pio (the shuttle from campus to downtown) drops you off in the heart of Southwest, downtown. It's pretty easy to get between the sections, because public transportation is really accessible here. However, I haven't explored that much outside of Southwest, so going to Southeast was really exciting for me. I was amazed at how different the area felt, even though it still definitely felt like Portland. We took a bus across the river, and found a delicious brunch place.

This food was so exciting!

Then we wandered around around the Hawthorne neigherborhood a bit. It's a really cool neighborhood in Southeast with lots of fun stores and cafes. We even found this one store that had a cat wandering around in it, which was amazing.

Me with the cat. It was a very chill cat.

Gaby had to leave after that, but Annabel and I decided to venture to a mall in Happy Valley (which is right next to Portland). We took a series of buses and eventually ended up at the mall, where we went holiday shopping and I got my glasses adjusted. On our way home from the mall we had dinner downtown at a Chinese restaurant. It was a really busy day, but very fun.

Classes are winding up very quickly. I had a Spanish test next week, and I only have one more test and one more paper before our final in that class. My environmental studies group is starting our final stage of analysis for our final project. We only have one more test in climate science before our final. And I only have six more class periods of intro to international relations! The bio lab I TA is also wrapping up- the students are starting to analyze the data they've been collecting all semester. My workload is definitely a lot smaller right now than it was even two weeks ago, so my stress levels have gone down a lot. I'm in the process of registering for next semester, and I realized that I'm going to go from having two labs this semester (plus a third that I TA) to having no labs next semester. It's crazy!

Please email me with any questions about Lewis & Clark! My email is rekidder@lclark.edu.

-Rebecca