One week left!

So I apologize for taking so long to blog.  I had every intention when I started this of blogging every couple of days, just to keep you up to date and to avoid super long posts, but apparently that failed.  So I have to go back to last Saturday when Aunt Jayne, Uncle Karl, Christopher, and Stacey came to visit me. Needless to say, it was incredible getting visitors, but apart from that, we went out to dinner at a super nice seafood place.  I was rather adventurous and tried calimari for the first time as an appetizer.  I also got to eat a lot of bread, because I happened to be the only one that was not eating Paleo.  The main course of shrimp scampi pasta was delicious too.  I was a very happy camper after that meal, which was by far the best that I've had since being here.  But I wasn't even done yet!  Then we went to the Bent Spoon for ice cream.  It was the third time that I've been there, and as before, it was incredible, although one of the best parts has to be how I have 9 out of 10 punches on a punch card that will get me two free scoops of ice cream and I haven't paid for any of it by myself!  After they left I went back to doing homework, but the next day I went to a Baptist church service.  That was a new experience for me, because I was one of only four non-African American people there and I had to stand up and introduce myself... That's ok, though.  The music was pretty incredible.  I don't think the next week was very exciting... I went puddle jumping sometime in there, which was exciting, but that's all I can think of.  So on to this past Saturday when I went to New York!  That was awesome.  One of the best parts was the fact that my group ended up being really small, as in two RAs, me, and my friend, Sara.  Because of that, a lot more stuff got paid for, we could do almost whatever we wanted, and we got to take lots of ridiculous pictures.  One of my favorite parts was getting McDonald's, which is probably rather sad, but also the truth.  I know Rachel is disgusted by this, but I miss fast food in general, which doesn't exist in Princeton.  But anyways, I got back at 10-ish Saturday night (I can tell you more about the actual trip when I talk to you), and proceeded to stay up until 4 in the morning trying to write some of a rough draft that was do the next day.  I did still wake up early enough to go to church, though, so I went to visit the Presbyterians with Cornellius.  It was about what I expected, rather impersonal, except the pastor, who was actually from Pittsburgh and knew where Sharon was.  I always get rather excited when I find anyone from western Pennsylvania, so that was exciting!  I then stressed out a lot about getting my rough draft done and my math project, but they both did get done, which was good.  So now I'm starting to wrap up everything... my last Ways of Knowing class was today, my final essay for it is due Saturday, and the final is on Tuesday.  Math is a little more with class tomorrow and Friday, a project due Friday, a problem set due Friday, another project due Sunday, and the final on Wednesday along with all kinds of review for the final, but that's ok... after that I go home on Thursday!  That's enough of an update for now... 'ofa lahi atu! : )

I survived midterms!

So Tuesday and Wednesday this week meant midterms for both of my classes.  Beforehand everyone got in lots and lots of studying, myself included, but sadly, the main point of Princeton, and probably college in general, is to try to surprise you with some new question that isn't exactly like what you studied.  A lot of people were definitely unhappy with their grades for both tests, but personally I was really excited! For the first and I can almost guarantee the last time, I got a 103% one of my midterms!!! WOO!!! On the math one, I got a B+, which I was also super excited about considering how I knew I missed the last question that was 10 of the 100 points of the test. But just in general, it's so exciting to think that I'm over halfway done with FSI! I'm already looking forward to seeing everyone at home and going out to eat at fast food with dad.  It's also really convenient that the week I get to go home is Labor Day weekend, so I get to go to the camp reunion! In the nearer future, I'm excited to get to play in a program wide dodgeball tournament tomorrow, because after being involved in sports for four straight years, not being physically active is really starting to get to me.  Also, this Saturday, Aunt Jayne, Uncle Karl, Christopher and Stacey are all going to come take me to dinner. Score! For the time being I'm just going to ignore the fact that I also have an essay due Sunday, a project proposal due Monday, math homework due Monday, and reading for Ways of Knowing due Monday... oh well. That's what I get for coming to college. Ofa atu!

Stupid, stupid bet.

This past week has been marked by one large gap in my diet. Desserts. Anybody that knows me knows how much I love desserts, especially ice cream. Rachel even told me once that she wouldn't let me marry a guy until I looked at him the way I look at ice cream.  That should really tell me something about my eating habits.  Apparently some of my friends here at college picked up on that fact pretty quickly, too.  What else was I supposed to do except have ice cream with at least one meal a day when it's free and all you can eat? My particular downfall was the chocolate chip cookie dough. Mmm... But anyways, they picked up on this, and the one morning when I was drinking some chocolate milk, one of the boys asked me if I was hiding ice cream in the milk.  I said of course I wasn't, why would he think that? And his answer was that I just liked ice cream that much, and he didn't even think that I could last one day without it. Another part of me is super competitive and hates being told what I can't do, so of course I had to say that I could easily do that. Well somehow that single day without ice cream bet progressed to the rest of the summer term without ice cream to who out of three of us can go the longest without dessert. Dang. It really doesn't help that some of the restrictions also include candy, doughnuts and chocolate milk, which I tried to argue, but apparently it counts as melted ice cream. At least I still get to have whipped cream on my pancakes! For as much as I eat dessert, it really has been surprisingly easy to substitute my typical dessert in with fruit at the end of a meal or one of the dining hall's fruit smoothies, but occasionally it gets a little difficult. A couple examples include the bag of snack sized candy that my RA always has on hand, the ice cream that everybody else eats in front of me at meals, and even the cake after the church service that I went to this morning.  I could just take Mom's advice and eat whatever I want as long as it isn't right after a meal, but that really isn't the point of the bet, and I feel the need to prove my point.  So until Andres gives up (Hafeez is already out) it looks like I'll be putting off the dreaded freshman fifteen! Ofa atu!

Well I'm here now...

I have two older sisters, Charity and Rachel, that were in foreign countries when I found out that I was accepted at Princeton.  Both of them also had regular blogs at the time and suggested that I should start one when I went to Princeton.  The main stipulation was that I had to follow the family tradition of having an alliterative title.  Tidbits from Tonga and Snippets from Scotland were both appropriate, but when I asked them what mine could be, the best Charity could come up with was Poo-poos from Princeton.  Even though Rachel didn't like the idea very much, I decided that in honor of Charity I would start that exact blog.  I sincerely hope that nobody other than Charity reads this, but considering how she's still in Tonga, I guess that I can bear to blog every now and then to keep her updated on my life.
So to begin with one of these updates... I've been at Princeton now for two weeks at their incoming freshman program, FSI.  I am taking two classes for the summer, Mathematical Modeling and Ways of Knowing.  Both of them are the most difficult material I've had to deal with, ever.  It's worse than AP Physics and AP English combined!  But, I'm slowly starting to get the hang of things, which would also explain why I have the time to create a blog.  Back to the classes, though.  Mathematical Modeling is a calculus based course that involves a lot of learning how to use a software program called Matlab.  I hate Matlab.  I consistently spend 3 hours a night at tutoring sessions to try to understand that class.  The other class is much better in my mind.  It involves studying a different discipline each week and how each discipline can look at the same piece of work in a completely different light.  We started off with philosophy, last week was art, this week is history, next week is sociology/anthropology, the week after that is science, and then we have a week of working on a research paper.  I like this because I get a taste of quite a few subjects and can see how I feel about them, which is super convenient considering how I don't have the slightest idea of what I want to do with my life.  I don't like having to write a paper every week, but I guess that's just college.  There's the basis of the boring stuff, Charity, I'll post more later. Ofa atu! : )