Posted by Miranda B.
I’m writing this from the comfort of my lovely extra long twin bed that’s covered in flannel sheets and fleece blankets. Why? There’s a partial snow day today! Hopkins is highly against cancelling classes or other university operations, so the fact that we start class today is pretty unusual/exciting. It’s my first snow day (partial or otherwise), so I’m planning on taking advantage of it!
I’m sure that when someone tells you to picture winter, most of you will think of snow. After seeing how beautiful everything looks covered in snow, I don’t know why you’d want to picture anything else. However, LA didn’t seem to get the winter message this year. Yes, I recognize that it doesn’t snow in LA. However, the temperature basically didn’t drop below 60 degrees for the month I was there. It was certainly a stark contrast to the snow here!
Me at the beach in December!
Winter break was an interesting experience. It was really nice to see family and friends again, and eat lots of home-cooked food. However, being back at home really emphasized the differences between college life and living at home. At college, you see your friends all the time – everyone eats in the same place, and you all live nearby. There’s a lot more spontaneity in getting together. Back at home, especially when we don’t have high school pulling us together, it’s a lot harder to see everyone all the time – there’s so much more organization and effort involved. There were also some smaller things – for the first few days, I kept wanting to wear flip flops to go shower, and I was taking my keychain everywhere!
Here’s a photo view of my winter break:
Hopping off the plane at LAX with my dream and a cardigan...
The AP Chemistry triplets reunion!
English desserts!
English desserts part 2 (experimenting with old plum pudding and custard)
3-d puzzle #1: Venice (1580 pieces)
We climbed LA! Check out the beautiful smog and downtown LA in the background.
As my friend put it: Scaling steps to see smog!
3-d puzzle part 2: Victorian House (750 pieces)
I was working on this with friends, and they decided that since it could be picked up, I should wear it as a hat (3-d puzzles have foam pieces, which makes them easier to work with).
I flew back to Baltimore on Saturday the 16th for the last week of intersession. I know most of us don’t have anything good to say about airlines, but what should have been an awful flight in a middle seat turned out to be wonderful. After being on hold for 15 minutes the day before and finding out all I could get was a middle seat, I asked at the airport for other seats, and was given an aisle seat. Not only that, no one was sitting in the middle seat next to me, and the flight attendants were the nicest I’ve ever met! I got back to campus all by myself via the light rail and taxi.
Me proving that I could fit in my suitcase (which is as big as you can use before you have to pay the airlines loads of money).
That Sunday, I went ice skating with three of my friends at Mt. Pleasant Ice Arena. This was more fun than usual ice skating for several reasons. 1) There was a huge, deep puddle in the parking lot, which rainboots allowed us to explore. 2) One of my friends, who’s from Baltimore, knew people in a birthday party going on, and they gave us their extra pizza and cake. 3) I only fell once!
Monday started the intense week of mock trial – we spent at least 30 hours on mock trial, plus about 5 hours of watching The Practice/Jersey Shore. During that time, we figured out new case theory, and rewrote practically everything. I still had free time, which is a lovely part of intersession! At the end of the week, there was the intersession comedy show, which is basically the final for people in the stand up comedy class. One of my friends was performing (and was VERY funny), so we went and clapped and yelled for her.
Stay tuned for my blog about mock trial in NYC!
-Miranda
Comments