Finals Week

I'm down to the finishing touches of my first round of Germany paperwork and my final (other than housing, etc) round of Spain paperwork. I've been working my skin off for Reslife the last few days. I didn't have any finals on Thursday, so I did extra RICCs Wednesday night and Thursday morning/afternoon. Apparently most of the building left yesterday. The good news about all of this is that I think we're going to be DONE by 11 o'clock tonight. The bad news is that I haven't had time to breathe, much less start packing yet. So I'm thinking tomorrow will be packing day, leaving me Sunday and Monday to do the essays. The essays are everything except written - massive 8 page fleshed out outlines complete with quotes, that I just have to run through, flesh out, and polish. Anyway, I've been doing a lot of RICCs so I'm not going to feel too bad about trying to sneak out later. I'm going to pick mom up from the airport and I think I'll leave an hour early, take my last passport photos and buy two folders at Walgreens, buy a money order at the post office, pick up my recommendation from Monica's office, turn the Germany application (sans essays, which I can write this summer) in at the International Office, and turn the Visa forms in at the J-School.

I said goodbye to Zahra the other day, we ate breakfast together at 7 and she caught the Mo-Ex in the rain. It's hard to believe I won't be seeing her next year, unless she visits me in Florida over Winter Break (she better). I said goodbye to Amanda in the hallway, a quick hug and then she left, carrying a soccer ball casually under one arm. She's doing Vet school at Mizzou, so I'll see her again. Last night I made the not so smart but really emotionally necessary decision to have a girls' night sleepover with Ju and Fangbai. We watched Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, which was enjoyable albeit one of the most ridiculous movies I've ever seen. Prite actually stayed and watched that with us, then we were all tired so we slept. I had to get up at 7, though, and Fangbai at 8, so we didn't have quite the wild abandon of a normal sleepover. When my alarm went off I changed in the cold air (the window was open, so it felt snug and nice under the covers but sad to get out of them) and tried not to wake them, but Ju's house betrayed me with every step on the creaking floorboards. I think I'll see Ju this summer or even this weekend, but I can't say for sure when I'll see Fangbai again. I'll miss her a lot.

Mostly, though, I'm too tired for emotions. I'm not even normal head-achey eyes-closing tired, it's manifesting itself more in a sort of nausea and frustration. X( As interesting as it is, I stare at these essays and just want to curl up and sleep instead of typing... typing...