Last Week of Classes!

This week, my three best friends, Sully, Sarah, and Sam, in addition to all having names that start with 'S', are all celebrating their birthdays this week. They are turning 19, 20, and 21! Wow. I'll be 18 until November. So between working on final projects and papers and studying for finals, I’ve been buying lots of supplies to make baked goods and throwing together last minute presents.

Sarah’s birthday was today, so seven of us went to Shigezo together. Yes, I know, we can’t go anywhere else. I think I may have gone there eight times now. I ordered ahi poke-don, unagi nigiri, and miso soup, with vanilla and mango mochi ice cream to cap off the meal. Fantastic. And since it was Sarah’s birthday, she got a free dessert crepe! It was so big that we all got to try it. Then, Sully’s and Sam’s birthdays are this weekend, and I don’t know if we are going out to dinner, but I’m for sure baking them double-chocolate brownies with cream cheese frosting.

I’m honestly so sad to be leaving this place for four months. I have made such great friends here and I don’t want to go home and not see them all summer. Two of them I won’t see all fall semester either – Sarah is studying abroad in Osaka, Japan and Sam is studying abroad in St. Petersburg, Russia. I'm probably not going to study abroad until my junior year, and I am not sure where I'll go. Anyway, I’m still already excited for next term even though I still don’t know what classes I’m taking and lots of things will be different. I'll have the same roommate, but different neighbors, different professors, etc. etc. etc.

There’s always so much going on on-campus in the last couple weeks of the term. I went to two different theatre performances in the last few days – one staged reading of a play written by a theatre major, and one shorter performance from the Oresteia (a Classical Greek play). Both were incredible. The first was a comedy that made the audience roar with laughter, and the second was a hair-raisingly chilling and eerie tragedy in which a father sacrifices his daughter (who was played by Sam, which made it all the more chilling). I also started going to Yoga Club meetings, which for some reason I didn’t know about until now. Yoga is a great way to unwind during this stressful time of year.

Plans for the rest of the semester:
  • Attend awesome dance performance and a poetry reading
  • Edit two final papers for history and English
  • Finish logic take-home exam
  • Finish history reading
  • Finish all birthday festivities
  • Partake in school-sponsored reading day merriment (free massages! therapy dog petting! etc!)
  • Sell textbooks and pack many, many boxes for storage
  • Go to Salt N Straw ice cream and watch Anna Karenina with Sam
  • Take four finals L
  • Fly home to Northern California, where I'll hang out with some friends from high school, get a summer job, (hopefully) road trip to Santa Cruz, go camping, and catch up on reading!
Last minute questions? Email me at jessicakostka@lclark.edu.

Jess