Book Addict's Blog

Time again for one of my round-ups! This is a pretty full one. I had more time to read last semester than I've had in a LONG time. And of course, I did lots of other cool things as well!

Books I've read:

• The Rope Trick by Lloyd Alexander (reread)
• Fire by Kristin Cashore
• Dreamhunter by Elizabeth Knox
• Young Miles by Lois McMaster Bujold (reread)
• Dresden Files Books 1-12 by Jim Butcher
• Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare
• Little Lord Fauntleroy by Frances Hodgson Burnett
• The History of Rasselas by Samuel Johnson
• Lady Susan by Jane Austen
• Coraline by Neil Gaiman
• Queen of Attolia, King of Attolia, and Conspiracy of Kings by Megan Whalen Turner (re-read on the first two; also, got halfway through The Thief)
• The Sally Lockhart Mysteries (Books 1-4) by Phillip Pullman

Places Visited:

• Colorado, USA
• Maastricht and Amsterdam, Netherlands
• London, UK
• Brussels, Brugge, and Ghent, Belgium
• Monschau, Berlin, and Munich, Germany
• Athens, Thessaloniki, and Poros, Greece
• Prague, Czech Republic
• Bern and Interlaken, Switzerland
• Salzburg and Vienna, Austria
• Venice, Milan, Siena, Lake Como, and Florence, Italy
• Madrid and Sevilla, Spain
• Paris and the Loire Valley (inc. Bloise and Tours), France
• Dublin, Ireland
• Edinburgh, London, and Stratford-upon-Avon, U.K.

Productions Seen:

• Les Miserables (two different productions, in London and Edinburgh)
• Don Giovanni at the Estates Theatre in Prague
• A Midsummer Night's Dream (the ballet) at the State Opera House in Vienna
• Oliver! in London
• Legally Blonde the Musical in London
• Macbeth at the Globe in London
• King Lear (Royal Shakespeare Company Public Understudy Performance) in Stratford-on-Avon

Other random things I've done:

• Volunteered at Junior Winter Camp at Forest Home
• Taken and passed the PRAXIS II
• Got my B.A. from Baylor University!

It was quite a semester!

I've been out of school for over a month now, and things have been going pretty well!  The first couple of weeks, I mostly lazed around, though I did work occasionally.  Then, starting in June, my summer began to pick up. The first few days of the month, I visited my grandma with my mom.  It was nice to be able to spend some quality time with her, which I don't always get to do when I see her with a bunch of other family members around. 

The day after I came back from that trip, I left for orientation at the summer camp I'll be working at.  We were kept REALLY busy, being trained in all we needed to know for the rest of the summer! But I still had a chance to start to really get to know the other staff members, both the ones I'll be working directly with, and those I won't be seeing so often. It was odd, though, because all of those staff members who would be working with children had camp names. So someone would introduce themselves to me as Michelle, and I'd have to introduce myself as Azalea (the camp name I ended up choosing, after my first two choices had been rejected because they'd been recently used).  It took some getting used to! Within my specific camp area, we had a rule going on that if you said someone's real name, you had to put a quarter in a jar (we'd use the money to go see a movie sometime during the summer).  I didn't have too much of a problem, because I had never met most of the staff members before, and while I knew their real names, I had never really called them by them.  The harder part was referring to myself by my camp name! At any rate, orientation was packed, but fun.  I still don't know everything I'm supposed to be doing, but I guess there are some things we just have to figure out as we go along.

I left orientation two days early, so that I could go to New York.  I spent an afternoon packing and spending time with my family and my best friend, then left the next morning for Colorado, where I visited with some family friends.  The morning after that, I flew on to New York! I've now been here for about five days, and am having a blast.  I'm here for a history program centered on Abraham Lincoln, so we've taken tours of the city, heard lectures from some prominent scholars, and are working on a mini project. On my free time, I've also walked around the city, visited the Met, seen a free violin concert, and seen the NYC Ballet perform A Midsummer Night's Dream. 

I especially loved the ballet. While I like dancing, and watching people dance, the only full length ballet I'd seen before was The Nutcracker (which I've seen more times than I can count).  So A Midsummer Night's Dream was awesome. Not only was the story fun and the dancing spectacular (or cute, in the case of the really young dancers), but I also loved the music and costumes.  Plus, I only paid $15 for my tickets, because I'm a student!

Another thing I've loved is visiting the Strand Bookstore. I'm staying at an NYU residence hall only a block and a half away from the bookstore, so I've gone to visit it three times. They have so many new and used books, and at such great prices! I've bought 5 books so far, but if I didn't limit myself, I would probably have bought 100.

Well, I have a discussion in about 5 minutes, so I better go now. Hope you are all having as great of a summer as I am!

So, as I said in my last post, I'm going to be working at a camp this summer! At this camp, all the children's staff members have "camp names" that the kids call them by instead of their real names.  For example, some of the other staff members this year are Sandpiper, Tiger Lily, June Bug, Moonbeam, Cardinal, Timber, and Avalanche. At any rate, this means I need to come up with an outdoorsy name in the next week or so. Anyone have ideas?

In other news, Sing Alliance Formal was today.  As always, it was a ton of fun!  Although I didn't get a chance to hem my dress, so even though I wore my highest heels, I still kept tripping on it whenever I tried to dance...

I keep meaning to write here more often, but well, obviously I haven't. Oh well...