Week 2 and Coming Out

Well, it is Saturday morning. I had a werid night last night. We all snuck down to the basement of my complex and we did what college kids do best. No – not get high and have an orgy – watch The Lion King with Ben & Jerry’s ice cream and gummy worms.

But Im getting ahead of myself, let’s go back to where I left off.

Wednesday was a fantastic day. I went to my classes, and they let me just sleep (I didn’t, but I could have and not missed a thing).

Diff E: We went over homework problems that people didn’t get very well (if I hadn’t gotten them right before the homework was due, I would have gotten help rather than turn in a wrong answer) and so I got to just sit there and listen to them talk about things I already knew because I had just done them.

Lin Alg: She taught in class some of the concepts that were in the homework that she hadn’t covered yet. I, of course (along with most of the class) knew all of this already, having had done the homework, we had just read it in the book. Yeah, that was enthralling…

Linguistics: amazing, as usual. We talked more about the IPA and phonetics. I can now read those crazy pronunciation guides in dictionaries!!! W00t! I wanna be a crazy old man like him when I get old. I am going to emphasize how cool this class is every time, because I know how boring I make it sound...

Chemistry: the first quiz! The dreaded first quiz! How will he decide which questions to use? How hard will it be? 3 questions in 10 minutes, will we have enough time? Aaahhhh!

That was, unfortunately, about 60% of the class, and that is why 60% of the class got two of the three questions wrong (I'm estimating that one, about two thirds of the class groaned when he put the answers on the board). I did not study or prepare in any way and I got 100% with 7 minutes left to go. Because I am a genius? No. Because as with all my classes, I have studied this crap before and cuz I'm bored. So I drew on my hand for the next 25 MINUTES while he talked about the quiz questions. Then I finished it and drew it on paper too… Came up with this:

It is a rough design for a tattoo that I am planning on getting. Now before you all jump on me with “you need time to make sure a tattoo is what you really want” and I know that. Otherwise I would have gotten it already. And in addition, I’ve been working on this design for a couple months now, and I’m very close to where I want it to end up. The basic idea is this – it is a contact ball on fire. The first 2-3 rows of flame are actual flame (you know, blue, yellow, red, orange flames) but after that, they fade into green. I’m talking leaves here.

Couple bits of symbols I’m working with here.

fire into a plant: circle of life, fire goes to life. Plus, how fire is a large part of my life.

The ball in the middle is shaded in as if it was lit, but it will not be burnt: standing in the fire and come out unscathed

The flames blowing to one side: people try to extinguish your fire, but no matter how hard they may blow, I will continue to burn.

So, then we move on to Wednesday night, which was hanging out with Alyssa, Kyle, and this kid James and havin a good time. I slept really well, and due to not having classes the next day till 1:00, slept in till 11:00, which was extremely nice.

So our discussion section for linguistics was awesome. We went into more depth about vowels and consonants, and straightened out all the confusion about certain symbols. I’m really not going to go into it – because if you wern’t there, it will bore you to death.

That was pretty much the end of Thursday, to be perfectly honest.

Friday… god – I don’t do anything these days. Got up and went to class, learned the official names for some logical arguments and proved a teacher wrong with her own logic – that was a great boost of confidence in my classes.

Saturday on the other hand was a fantastic day. I got up at 10:00 to a phone call from Kat, one of the people I met at the LGBTQA trans meeting the other day. She said we were going to go to the Valley River Center and Gateway Mall to get Rose some clothes. Rose is a very new transexual (for those who don’t know, transgender is when you believe you are a girl in a boy’s body or vice versa, whereas transexual, as far as I understand it, is when you actually take measures to correct that ex: hormones, surgery etc.) and she needed some clothes to match who she really was. Shopping for a transexual is hard – you have to find clothes that emphasize all the right parts of a body – no easy task. So we made it a day (literally, we left around noon and came back around 9) and had a blast. I got some new pants (fantastic skinny jeans with horizontal tears in them – with pink tights underneath – that are fabulous) and a nice hat. I also got some more practical clothes, got some wool fingerless gloves and a winter hat/beanie. I really love living in eugene, I cannot stress that enough. Back at home I was afraid to be who I really was most of the time, except around a few people. About 90% of people in my life don’t know that I am genderqueer. And I made it that was on purpose because I was living in a town where I was afraid to be who I was in public. Some people in my life don’t even know I am bisexual. I keep these things hidden a lot of the time. For those of you who want an explanation of genderqueer as it applies to me (it is a very broad category) which would be most of my family, feel free to e-mail me and I will tell you all about it. I told my mother about it because I was tired of hiding all the time. She asked me not to tell people, I am not sure why. But I don’t care anymore. This is who I am, and now I am surrounded by people who understand it and accept it. Even encourage it. I have never met another genderqueer person or met a trans person. And it was this that made me feel alone as I did in Tucson. I found a group of people like me, really like me, for the first time in my life. I cannot express how amazing that is.

So, we got Rose a killer jacket (I found it, I am proud to say) and some shirts, a pair of jeans and we spent 8 hours laughing our asses off. Then we spent most of the night with Raven (someone else I met at the meeting) in my dorm’s lounge, just laughing and eating dinner.

A note to the three of you – I am so glad I met you. Raven, I am sorry I messed up your pronouns, it won’t happen again I promise. I know I just met you, but already you are such a positive force in my life, being able to talk to you about these things, and knowing you will understand.

Well, it is Sunday, and I just got back from breakfast a couple hours ago. Had a lovely breakfast with Kat (she stayed with me because she didn’t want to deal with her roommate last night) and then she went home to play catch up on homework.

I realize that this blog may upset some people, and I am sorry for that. There are a lot of people I know who are not as accepting as I would like them to be, and before, when I lived in Tucson, I was content just to hide those parts of myself from them in order to stay close to them.

But as the saying goes

“Those who care don’t matter, and those who matter won’t care”

I love you all, no matter how you may react to this

Peace out, have a great Sunday,

~Connor

Week 1, complete. Week 2, bring it on!

A quick note - I write these stream of consciousness, so there are several things that this blog will have that it should not - and those are spelling and grammar mistakes. It will also not have something it should, and that is linear structure. I say things as I remember them, and it's my blog, so there...

Well, the world continues to move on, day by day, no matter how much fun I may be having. Classes still are boring, but everything else I am doing is fantabulous! I made some new friends (who are roomies, even though I met them on two different occasions) and their names are Jessica and Alyssa. I pretty much see these two on a daily basis and we have such a good time. More people who will be good friends in college I think. I had a good juggling club last night, got sick last week and had a great movie night. Had an LGBTQA meeting and wasted an entire day without noticing. All in all, a good weekend.

Friday. Friday was filled with some classes (snooze) and the crazy old man known as Proffessor DeLancy, who I believe is the coolest teacher ever.

Chemistry was kinda funny though. But first, the back story. I do my best to stand out in any situation, especially the classroom. It is a good idea to have your teachers know who you are. However, in this chemistry class of about 400 people, I had decided not to even try. But on Friday, he had asked a question of how a pi bond was possible in ethene because according to the lewis structure, the 2p orbitals do not match up. And we were getting all sorts of crazy answers. Now usually, after 2 wrong answers, he answers it for us and we move on. But after four incorrect answers he was still taking hands, at which point I got bored, raised my hand and said “Molecular groups can rotate around a sigma bond”

“Perfect, couldn’t have said it better myself!”

So I saved us some time, but if I went up to him the next day, he would not even know I was in his class. Which sucks, so now I intend on going back to sitting in my seat drawing on my hand and designing my next tattoo until he says something interesting or something I didn’t learn is 9^th grade.

Well, I got out of chemistry and OMG! FREE HUGGERS!!! Yeah, 3 girls with free hugs signs (for those of you who do not know what that is, go to Free Hugs Youtube Video) and I am going to join them this Friday. So that pretty much made my day. This was followed by a 3 hour juggling practice on my part, which was cold, and I got a little sick. Which sucks. Im almost recovered now though. Later that night: movie night with Allison, Graham and Jeff. Holly stopped by for a little bit too (for those of you who know who Holly is, fantastic – if not, oh well) and everyone loved her, we all had a blast together. I slept like a rock on top of it all.

Saturday was BLOODY COLD! Saturday was a waste. I honestly cannot remember a single important thing about that day. Sunday we had the most useless hall meeting of all time, to discuss hall conduct (I had two phrases to fix everything: 1) be respectful, use good judgement and 2) if you have a problem with something or someone, talk to them yourself if you are comfortable. If not, go to the AR) One of those days I helped Alyssa who woke up feeling terrible. I made her some tea, and warmed her up. So yeah, weekend was filled with lots of chill out time. Which was needed. I did some really cool linguistics reading, which has helped me out with foreign languages a lot. For example, the English “d” is hard. Say “d” and feel where your tongue is. The tip should be touching the spot on the roof of your mouth just behind the tops of your teeth. This is called an alveolar stop. Now, do the same thing but with your tongue on the backs of your teeth. This is known as a “soft d” and is what all d’s are like in spanish. I have tried to explain it as a cross between a “d” and a “th” because “th”s are done with the tongue on the teeth. W00T LINGUISTICS.

MOONDAY. Day of the moon, and the bloody cold, made colder by sick. I got to meet my Diff E Professor. His name is Boris Botvinnik, a very russian name indeed. And I was wondering the whole first week “so, is he actually russian, or is that just his name?”

Verdict: HE IS SO RUSSIAN!

I continue my streak of never having had a native english speaking math teacher in my life (slovak, czech, chinese, russian). Yay me. Well had an LGBTQA meeting for trans people (I am not transgender or transexual, but I wanted to get involved. For those of you who know the longer story behind that, fill it in here) and it was amazing. Meeting these amazing people, and one of them is the leader of the juggling club! What a cool thing, eh? Ian is the name there. When we introduced ourselves in the meeting, we had three questions.

name (duh)

Preferred pronouns to be used for you

Board game that describes you (two people said black box, which I didn’t know – Kat is going to show me – Kat who is a girl and identifies as male or female depending on the day)

Ian answered as following “Hi, my name is Ian. Erm, I’m not sure at the moment, so if we could use gender neutral pronouns or just avoid pronouns alltogether that would be great.” I don’t remember his board game. Raven said candyland though, and we all had a good laugh about it when she said “how do you win that one again? I just liked looking at the pretty pictures”

So, Ian is an expert juggler and ze (not a misspelling, it’s one of those gender neutral pronouns) is a pretty decent sort of person too. Very shy though.

Tuesday (today) went to class and got help with some ridiculous problems in the homework, then spent 3 hours tutoring a guy in my class who overslept and missed the help session. He owes me coffee.

So that was my weekend – yes, it was boring by my standards.

Future: quiz tomorrow in chem, homework due in both math classes, circus on Thursday (I am going to assist with the silks class) and due to the not having any classes on Thursday, Alyssa, Kyle, and I are gonna hang out on Wednesday night. So that should be fun.

Let the classes begin!

U of O Entry 4

Let the classes begin!

I left you on Saturday night with shopping with my new friend Allison. In this blog I promised you juggling club and fantabulous nonsense, first class and the coffee I was drinking. Since then there have been more classes, chores, more shopping, and my more friends!

So, to be perfectly honest with you, I have no recollection whatsoever of what happened on Sunday night. The university put on some event that was fun, but not fun enough to be worth mentioning. I did some partying, followed by an insanely long walk (long because people learned to hold parties further from the university after 8 parties got broken up by the cops within 1 mile of campus after the big UO win against Cal, 42-3 for those who don’t pay attention). This was followed by the movie watching in the previous blog, which was in turn followed by sleep. Lots of sleep.

Monday! Which for some reason my computer won’t let me type in all CAPS because it is too smart for me to take literary license with my blogs. Side note: The Ting Tings are fantastic for writing to. Monday I did some more organizing, some more shopping for school supplies, and a whole lot of doing nothing. Went to dunch/binner with Andy before juggling club. But do I go to juggling club on my bike? No. On my own two feet? No. On an aero-plane? Hell no. I jogged… on my stilts. For those of you who have never been to the university of oregon, it is very hilly – so as to say that when you are running down hill in jumping stilts, you can clear about 20 ft. in a single stride. And let me tell you, if you think you’ve gotten weird looks for how you dress or talk, you know nothing as to the looks I got taking strides bigger than an elephant is long. Friggen’ awesome. Well, juggling was a blast, I got to see some familiar faces from introDUCKtion, and some new ones too. I am not the best by any means in any discipline (except contact juggling, I am the expert, w00t) but I brought up the idea of a professional company and one of the guys (Dan) was really interested in that, and wanted to learn acro. So we are going to base each other and start the company! Exciting times. AND!!!! I learned how to pass 7 clubs with Dan. For the jugglers reading this (nobody really) you do a split timing 2’s pattern with doubles. Code for “pass every other club, throw it very high, and throw it as soon as you get the club into that hand. And if you see a club coming you can’t catch perfectly, don’t try – just duck. And run, and cry when it lands on your head (been there, done that). Then I jogged back on my stilts, and promptly died of exhaustion. And even though I was exited and exhausted I did not forget to set my alarm, and I got up exactly when I needed to (7:30) without anyone else’s help (yeah, Mom. I told you I could!)

MARTES! A day which had nothing spanish in particular about it except a girl’s phone went off in class and she told someone not to call her during class, and she said it in spanish (¡no llamame cuando estoy en clase!) and I just felt like yelling across the room ¡No traegalo el telefono a la clase! (for those of you who don’t understand that, it was don’t bring your phone to class).

I only had one class on Tuesday, and it was Differential Equations at eight bloody ay em. And then I was done.

For those who have not taken Diff E, it is fucking hard, and takes a lot of energy to understand the semi-abstract concepts presented in this class. For those of us who have taken 6 months of Diff E before, it is going to be the biggest snooze fest. The first two thirds of the course is review. Yeah. Easy as pie, one might say.

For the rest of Tuesday I went to lunch with Allison when she had a break and… well, God, I don’t do anything these days. Or I do and then I forget about it. AH! I did laundry, yes I did. I did laundry and did my homework that isn’t due till next Wednesday. The teacher (who is a sub, because our prof gets back in town on Monday – great vote of confidence for this guy, misses the first week of classes) told us that we would learn how to do these problems over the next week. Well, I had two hours to kill for laundry, and so I just did a little reading for some of the harder problems, and I did it all. Because I am that smart. No, in reality, because Ms. Kolesikova kicks such a large quantity of ass as a math teacher. Cheers to you.

I still need a good name for my dragon picture, so if you have any good ideas for dragon names, please do tell me. And I need help with a puzzle. When you have a 4x3 poster (too heavy for sticky tac) and your walls are made of concrete (no push pins) and you arn’t allowed to use the ceiling to hang things, how do you hang up said poster. I am accepting all suggestions. Because right now my amazing favorite poster of Van Goghs sunflowers is sitting under my bed getting flattened (on purpose, but it would do a much better job on my wall…)

MERCREDI! There was absolutely nothing french about Wednesday, none of my friends are taking french, except for the fact that after *sprinting* from one class to the other because I didn’t know exactly where they were and twice went into the wrong building, if someone had asked a favor of me, I would have responded with “but I am le tired…”

If that person had said “well, take a nap, ZEN FIRE ZEE MISSILES!” it would have made my day. Well, now I know where all my classes are, so I will simply be walking quickly instead of sprinting (getting the building right on the first try will help).

Class 1: Diff E, same story as yesterday. Cept he had us do some problems on the board, and when I didn’t go up to try them out, he asked me “you not want to problem on board?” (he is Chinese, in keeping with my tradition of learning math with non-native english speakers – the proffession is hardcore Russian too…) and I responded “oh, I already did them yesterday.”

“Oh, well… Sih- here an sure ever-one elz dus right”

I can understand Czech accents like they are not an accent at all, but you put a chinese accent in front of me, and I take the next 30 seconds decoding it… I hope I can do better with Russian, because if this guy tried to teach me something I didn’t already know, I would be f*%ked.

Class 2: Elementary Linear Algebra. I don’t really know what I expected of this class, to be perfectly honest. I think when they designed the class name they said “what is the most complicated way to say ‘math designed around linear equations?’” Yeah. Linear Equations. As in, no square roots, no multiplication of variables, no squaring variables. Just linear variables and (for the most part) whole number coefficients. The most complicated it is gonna get before November is solving systems of three equations and graphing two equations at inequalities. To anyone at BASIS: didn’t we finish that class in like 8^th grade?

Class 3: Linguistics. In 2 words: seriously cool. The proffessor is Prof. DeLancy, and he is a crazy old man with long hair and a crazy old man beard. And he uses sound effects in his lectures. He is fantastic, excited about everything, and has a serious sense of humor. I’ll come back to linguistics in a bit.

Class 4: Organic Chemistry. Yes, I took this class already too – in 9^th grade and 10^th grade. I read through the book in a skip reading fashion, and the syllabus and I will not learn anything new for a month and a half. We are going to spend 3 weeks alone on naming and Lewis dot structures. In addition, the number of people in this class is >300. Pardon me if I didn’t take the time to count. But he said “all… well, more than 300 of you, have taken Gen Chem before yadayadayada.”

I looked at one of his homework assignments, and it will be an easy class.

We all looked at my schedule before I left for college and said “wow, you are gonna have no free time”

Well, it is the opposite. At least for the first time, I am gonna have SO MUCH FREE TIME!

And now, for the irony of the whole situation. Is it not sad that the most interesting class, and the one that is teaching me things from day 1 I didn’t know is the only class that does not contribute worth a damn towards my major?

So, more on linguistics. Linguistics, for those who don’t know, is the scientific study of language. So now that we’ve got that cleared up, we can start learning. That was what Mr. DeLancy said, and followed it with “but honestly, what the hell does that even mean ‘the scientific study of language?’” So we defined some terms, laughed at his drawing skills (he started it) and really defined linguistics, and why we study it. We talked about how human language (spoken) is different and superior to human language (written) is different and superior to animal language. I would love to explain all of this to you, but I do not have a 50 minute lecture’s worth of time to write. I’ll do it in person if you ask. It is complicated. When it takes 50 minutes to explain what the title of the course means, you know the class is gonna be complicated and therefore fun as hell (if you are like me and love learning).

So, bright future in classes one fourth. Hopefully I’ll get into better ones for winter quarter.

However, due to increased time, I accepted the job working at Bounce Gymnastics, and I am drinking some coffee at the Eugene equivalent of Café Milano (but way cheaper) called Café Perugino, and it has free (fast) internet and amazing coffee, which I have been enjoying for the last hour. Around 5:45, I will hop back on the old cycle, and pedal myself over to Bounce, where they are going to hang up my trapeze in the only place they have room: OVER A BLOODY TRAMPOLINE!!! CAN YOU IMAGINE THE CRAZY S*%T I AM CONSIDERING DOING WITH THAT?!?!?! And then my trap will live there in peace and harmony and I will never have to carabiner it to my backpack ever again. Thank God – that is tough to do while on a bike…

So, that’s all in terms of updates except the plans for a vampire movie night with Allison tomorrow night (Interview with The Vampire or True Blood, season 1 – we havn’t decided which yet) and the new friends. I met a girl named Tina Foley who reminds me in a somewhat creeepy way of Sarah W. from BASIS, and she is fantastic. And I met one of Evan’s friends whose name is Callie, and she is fantastic. I am including a picture of Evan taken from his facebook so you all can see what he looks like.

Thats it for me folks, sorry that was so obscenely long, I’m sure not even my own family will make it through this one without falling asleep…

Until next time – be safe, have fun, and LEARN MORE THAN I AM GOING TO! PLEASE!

U of O Entry 3

So a lot has happened since my last entry. I have made a couple friends, one of whom I think is going to be a very good friend, had coffee with the head of a christian organization on campus gotten my first taste of rain, had my first class and stayed out till 2AM shopping. Not kidding about any of that.
We’ll go by days (assuming I can remember one day from the next)
I left you on Thursday afternoon before my hall meeting, which was (shocker here, people) a meeting about staying safe on campus. Including not having exorbitant amounts of sex, and if you do, don’t get noise citations for it (I heard some of that last night from across the street). Alcohol stuff, drugs stuff, don’t be a moron stuff. Which was followed by us going to a big to-do at the EMU (student union equivalent of the U of O). That was really fun at times, and ridiculously boring at others… Fun times included some dancing with Alex, being cynical with Megan, watching crazy people dance to the concert outside and there were black lights in the fishbowl (the big room that animal house was shot it) and so I did some glowy contact juggling in there, and impressed some people and maybe recruited someone too! I know that doesn’t sound like a lot of fun stuff, and it wasn’t – I spent about 3 of the four hours being very bored indeed. This was pre-meeting new friends.
SO! On to Friday!
This is what happens when I take too long to write an entry – I forget things. I have no recollection of what I did on Friday. AH YES! Casino night, again at the EMU. This name is a bit misleading, there was far more than that. It was huge. There were carnival events going on in the east lawn area, there were info booth set up all over the place (including an LGBTQA booth that gave me more information about their group than I could handle – yes people, I am finally getting involved in an organization) and a concert outside. There was a “hit a friend with a pie” booth and a “put on funny hats and take a picture” booth and a giant trampoline with bungees and I pulled off a back flip (not a back tuck, there is a difference) and a double back tuck. Yay on me. AND THEN! The casino opened, and we played some seriously fun Texas Hold ‘Em. And we were really competitive, and then we asked someone to find out what we were playing for (the more chips you cashed in with, the more raffle tickets you had in the raffle). Turns out the raffle was for a pizza. And we stopped caring about winning and just made outrageous bets. Which was fun. Until Ben got a straight flush and took… well, I believe it was upward of $2000 in chips. Let me make this clear, you are only given $1000 to start with. He did well that night (although, did not win the pizza). Then there was (terrible) Karaoke, and lots of Beatles rock band (Revolution is the greatest song ever) and then I crawled back to my dorm at 2AM. It was this day that I found out just how well my roommate and I are going to get along. I can in at 2AM, and he wasn’t home. He got back 20 minutes later, and he was hanging out with some friends. We have gotten in within 30 minutes of each other every single night without fail, be it 2AM, or 10PM. Its awesome.
SATURDAY PEOPLE!!! NO MORE FRIDAY, FRIDAY IS DONE!

Saturday was by far the best day so far. The majority of the day was boring, I went and got my books and school supplies (which I do not recommend getting in the same trip when you are on a bike, they are very difficult to get back to your room if you only have one backpack). The rest of the day was filled with youtube and lunch and 2 hours of ultimate frizbee. It was seriously intense. Evan (my roommate) and I slogged out way up the stairs to our third floor dorm and collapsed. This was followed by a very amazing dinner – because we were starving. BUT THEN! Graham (guy I met an intoDUCKtion – yes, it is a terrible pun, and yes U of O is full of them: DUCK the flu and so on and so forth) invited me over to his room to hang out, and we all ended up in his friend’s room with 4 other people. This total of 6 people turned into about 20, at which point we decided we were officially a party and needed to move downstairs to the lounge. We then spent the next 2.5 hours playing childish camp games (mystery, screaming trees – I won that one, and a 20 person human knot along with other things of that nature). Then it was time for FREEBIES AT FREDDIES, which is where Fred Meyer is open only for university students and they have tons of discounts! Which is code for if you spend $60 on stuff you forgot, you will only spend $53. So: lots of stuff? Yes. Lots of discounts? Not so much. But I got myself a laundry hamper, and some detergent and some other stuff I needed.
But the best thing I found that night by far was allison. She was one of the girls at the “party” in Walton Hall, and when we were playing more childish games (never have I ever, Waah, things of that nature) while waiting for the buses to come for Fred Meyer (we were there for over an hour in the cold) Allison and I got to talking. When we got to the store, she asked if we could stick together and be shopping buddies, and we did. We had such a fun time, and I could not imagine shopping for a hamper to be so enjoyable…
Well, we are friends, we have meals together sometimes and I went over to her dorm the other night to watch waitress (till 2AM, and my roommate got back 15 minutes after I did that night too). Her carpet was amazing. It was a carpetgasm. While I was watching the movie I just couldn’t stop moving my feet around on it… and neither could she. And we got all hot and bothered talking about Keri Russell (star of waitress) and Johnathan Rhys Meyers (they were is August Rush together). Good night indeed. Followed by fantastic sleep.
I’m gonna end this one here so the entries are pretty short, and write entry 4 immediately.
Coming soon to a blog near you: Sunday, a day in which absolutely nothing happened, and Monday – juggling club and other fantabulous nonsense
Tuesday – class and the coffee I am drinking right now!

University of Oregon Entry 2

U of O moving in, Day 2
September 24th, 2009
4:51 PM

So we got up at 8:00AM this morning in order to get to check in early and they let us do our thing at 8:30. We started moving things up slowly but surely. I am in the 3rd floor of a 3 story building. I am staying in Bean hall, Ganoe section (ganoe is pronounced guh-no. It’s amazing how much pronunciation changes from canoe to ganoe with one letter) and my roommate’s name is Evan, and he is from Eugene, so he can show me the ropes. Moving in went smooth, and we did a bit of shopping to get the things we forgot (shaving supplies, pillow case, comforter etc.) and I FINALLY HAVE A BLACK BED! That’s right, with the exception of my green sheets, I have a black pillow case and black comforter, which I think looks fantastic. I’ll hang up my posters, including my 6x4 Van Gogh poster of the sunflowers later tonight I think, and then I shall declare myself fully moved in. Classes start next Tuesday, and honestly, I cannot wait. The next five days are filled with hall meetings and other “exciting activities, but I would rather spend every minute at the gymnastics and aerial center down the street. That’s where I am now actually, watching their classes, getting a feel for the teachers and students. The aerialist is really excited about having a single-point guy around, because nobody there knows a thing about it – so I am the expert now!

I had to say goodbye to my dad today, which came really suddenly, and was gone just as much. I walked him to his car, we said goodbye and there was some serious crying going on, but we were both clear on the fact that this was a good thing and that I was going to have a blast. His parting advice was “be safe, be smart, learn a bunch of stuff” to which I replied “yep, that’s the plan, and in that order too.” Then there was some more crying on my part on the way back to campus and I got some info about the things around campus, and the different groups (there was no LGBT booth to be found, but my RA is gonna find me some information about them so I can get involved) including way more religious groups than I was expecting. The RA is my neighbor, and he is a very cool guy, I actually think we are gonna be friends.

I have a hall meeting tonight at 7:45, and then I really have no idea what I am going to do tonight. Maybe I’ll get together with Andy, Graham or Rachel (kids I met at orientation a couple months ago) and see if we can find something to do. I’ll write again in a few days (or maybe tomorrow, I really do enjoy it) with some more news of my classes and books and whatnot.

University of Oregon Entry 1

So I am going to try to keep a blog for everyone back home of the happenings of my life over here in Oregon, starting this week when I moved in. The first two entries have my own time stamps on them because I wrote them without internet a couple days ago.
So here we go

U of O moving in trip Entry 1
September 23, 2009 10:46

So once again, I’m in a hotel room, and I can’t sleep because I don’t sleep until midnight. And soon I will not be able to sleep because my dad will be snoring. So I am watching Mamma Mia! And writing this journal.

So we managed to navigate all the way from Tucson, AZ all the way to Eugene, OR without using a single I-anything, and used US routes and other roads like that. It meant that we could go slow (which was necessary, given the shitiness of my car combined with the really large amount of weight in my car) because there was not a single person around, cool for us indeed. So we got to enjoy the scenery of ne.va.da (or lack thereof) by ourselves. I did a lot of sleeping due to the large amount of sleep not had by me the night before (which I will have to write about another time – was a night worthy of at least a few words) so I missed out, but we did get to see lots of flatflatflatflat. And lots of buttes, and lots of shurbs.

And we finally settled in a town which took me two days to be able to remember the name of, and I can now tell you confidantly several things about it. First, it is called Tonopah. Second, it is one of the small towns in Nevada where brothels are not legal. This came as a shock to me, not that there were no brothels, but that brothels are legal ANYWHERE! We did pass some on the way, one of them was called the shady lady, and there was only one reaction that my father and I had: laugh for 5 minutes. So, everyone raise your hands if you knew that…

Moving on!

Tonopah, boring, small, and full of people who smoke way more than they should. Oh, and I should add that this was after more than 12 hours (straight with no breaks for more than gas) of driving. My ass hurt to say the least.

Day two was much the same, driving for a long time, with hoover dam in the middle. If you’ve never been there, do. It is something to see indeed (plus the new bridge they are building is gonna be a stunner when it is finished). The architecture is amazing, and the fact that it is so BIG. I knew hoover dam was large, but this was anything beyond my imagining. No kidding.

So, got past hoover dam and got to california, and got all the way to Reno (which I do not advise trying to get gas in, getting back on the freeway post tank-up is a nightmare) and I got a break after almost 3 hours behind the wheel. Then we drove the way to Klamath Falls, OR. We planned on staying there, but I said “Screw it, lets just go all the way to Eugene, I wanna get there tonight.” And so we did. We drove in the dark for 2 hours with ash falling all around us from the multiple wildfires going on at the time. When we got to Eugene, it was 9:30, and we had breakfast at Denny’s because it was next to the hotel (yes, 9:30 PM). This was in fact our 3rd breakfast is a row, given that there were no dinners at Tonopah the previous night that I could eat – so I had a veggie omlette. I still havn’t had dinner. I did have a lunch at 9:00 PM today at subway though…

Eugene day 2, I went to the admissions building and ironed out a payment issue (one of my scholarships hadn’t been applied, and that was a difference of about $13,000 per year) and then on to breakfast #4 (by far the best, french toast slathered with berrys and custard). Then we decided to go check a possible outlet for aerial work (they do gymnastics and aerial work).
Well, I get there, and they have a circus trap, 3 silks, to cordes, a floor covered in crash pads, trampolines, sky swings, bungies for trick training, and a tight rope. This is Bounce Gymnastics school looking to expand to become Bounce Gymnastics and Circus school. And I mean all kinds of circus arts, including acrobatics, juggling, circus and aerial trapeze (single point and static), and stilting. They have the facilities, and the financing, but what they lack, is teachers. I may have quite the job waiting for me in a couple weeks teaching aerial and other circus arts. Yeah, no shit. Benefits of the job (apart from getting paid) include free studio time on any of the equipment whenever there isn’t a class. So this is pretty much a dream gig. I’m gonna be teaching everyone from little 7-10s (what I’m used to) all the way up to beginning and intermediate adult classes. You should have seen the woman when I told her everything that I do, and how excited she was when I told her that yes, I do have teaching experience. So yeah, I’m excited to say the least.

The rest of the day consisted of me wasting time juggling in a quad and getting some more college type supplies. AND I SAW TEXAS!!! Well, his name is Mark, and I met him at orientation. And now I am in my room, waiting for tomorrow, which is check in and move in. I get to meet Evan, my roommate and see my new home for the next year. Very exciting times, and I will write some more the next time I get a chance.