Friday, October 29, 2010

October !!


Happy October!

Where to begin...right now I am away with the volleyball team for our tournament at Hunter. Last night was our senior night and wow does time fly. I feel like I just arrived at EC for preseason volleyball and meeting my team. We have had so much fun and plan on having a few more weeks too! We are going to the Empire 8 tournament next weekend to play Nazareth and then we plan on much more too. It has been a wonderful seasons of road trips, fun games, and awesome supporters. The above picture is from our Halloween doubles tournament. Its our latest tradition to have teams picked at random, find a costume with your partner, and play tournament style during practice. My teammate and I decided to be grapes. It was a riot trying to get out of the dorm and into the gym, along with trying to put on a back pack with all the balloons on us. We looked good as green and purple grapes, but let me tell you it was not the best idea for playing volleyball. Safety pins plus sprawling is not a good idea, so we ended up in last place. Some of the other costumes were Matilda and Ms. Trenchable, Dr. Evil and Mini me, ghosts, Wayne's World, characters from the hang over, cows, and nerds. The cows won!! It was quiet entertaining trying to watch the ghosts play too.

This picture is from last weekend after our conference wins...we tested out these wash off mustache tattoos. It was too funny!

The above two photos are from Parent's Weekend. We had such a great time. There were so many activities going on. We went to Quarry Farm tour at dusk and it was beautiful! Of course we had to travel to one of the bars that everyone goes to with all our parents. The next day we had our parents versus volleyball players game. As you can see I was matched up against my dad at the net. He did have a block on me, but I'm okay with it. The dinner dance and Dr. Meier's house was really nice too to spend time with our families and class members. After putting out parents to bed we went out! It was a great weekend!

Well time for bed we play early tomorrow! Ciao!

Sunday, October 3, 2010

2-0-1-1 We're the class that's almost done!

Senior year is here! I can not believe how fast the past three years have gone by.

Last time I blogged I was starting my next internship and summer was still around. So, I'll fill you in. The rest of summer was great. I learned a ton of useful information from both my internships. Although I did want to visit more graduate schools and spend more time with my family it was still a wonderful summer (including two weddings)!

Back to Elmira...for sports medicine training we broke right into our work and did all our certifications within the first few days. The same for resident assistant training. I am excited to say that my building staff won the RA challenge this year! Speaking of which I am living in Tompkins hall and loving it. My residents are great and some of my closest friends have decided the Tompkins environment is for them. The wood floors and trim in the room definitely make everyone feel at home. During training for orientation we started preseason for volleyball.

My new teammates bring a lot of talent to the court and really good laughs. So far in the season we have really succeeded having won our home tournament, a big win against Steven's Tech, and this past weekend the tournament at Oneonta State. We are working well together to accomplish our goals, and having a blast doing so! Since we play weekend tournaments we get to spend much quality time together snuggling on the bus, bouncing on the hotel beds, making sandwiches, doing work, playing buffalo tag, celebrating, family dinners at coaches, and most importantly laughing. We certainly have a lot of character on the team :) .

Aside from volleyball classes are going well. I recently began dissecting another cat, this time it is for comparative anatomy class. My lab partner and I decided to name our cat Jose'. And yes we did choose a cat that looked nothing like either of our cats at home. So far we have been looking at the muscular skeleton and of course comparing it with other vertebrates. Cats are not the only exciting moments in class. For plant ecology we have been taking field trips for lab to the USDA Material Plant and a Professor's wooded land. Along the way I have learned how to distinguish trees, plants, and calculated various species diversity in the surveyed area. Along the way I saw my first ever salamander and a ton of spiders!! Eventually the spiders didn't bother our lab and we were walking right over or past them. So far we have had wonderful weather and even had the chance to venture on the bank of the Chemung River on a sunny day.

My yoga class is great because it keeps me calm and relaxed. Even sometimes too relaxed where I have fallen asleep on the mat. Opps!! Along with yoga I am taking Evolution where we did a candy lab to figure out phylogeny of candy. Trust me it sounds delicious, but seriously hurt our brains leaving that class. Child Psychology is another class I am taking, which is something new for me and really quiet interesting.

Okay so classes rested aside everything is going great on campus. My friends who live in the new dormitory absolutely love all the space. Mountain Day and Octagon Fair were fantastic as well.

Alright, just thought I would catch you up real fast. I will have to give more details about Mountain Day and Octagon Fair next time!