Put your hands, in my hands, and come with me; we'll find another end.

And my head, and my head, on anyone's shoulder,
'cause I can't be with you.

Clubs I've Joined Since I Got to College

College Mentors for Kids
--technically i havent joined this yet, but i have applied. my interview is tomorrow and i hope i get it. if i do, ill spend monday afternoons hanging out with elementary kids from the charter school in town and teaching them that they can overcome adversity and go to college and all that. and probably how to make ice cream with nitroglycerin or something. awesome.

Colleges Against Cancer
--this one pretty much explains itself. its a big club with hardly any boys and we signed a contract that we'll pay ten dollars and come to meetings and work on awareness projects etc etc. they meet every other tuesday at nine. i dont like cancer so i joined.

Evansville Review
--evansvilles annual collection of all the good writing they can get their hands on from all over. im an assistant editor. most of my work is this semester when ill read poems upon poems upon short stories upon creative works of nonfiction and rate them all for overall quality and basically help decide what gets in out of about 2000 submissions.

German Club
--havent actually been to this one yet. the first meeting was last night but i had to read about trade in 1500. its mondays at eight and yesterday they went around campus chalking german phrases all over the ground.

Quidditch Club
--this is mondays at 1015pm and last night we had the sorting. im not gonna lie, it was pretty cool and very well done. the hat had a song and everything and it was all very cool. i got ravenclaw, which is good, cause if i didnt i would have probably quit the club. next week is trivia and the girl who notoriously knows everything about harry potter is in ravenclaw too. we are going to own. i mean, someone asked her what color was hermiones nightgown in sorcerers stone, and she knew.

Student Christian Fellowship
--scf meets every friday at 630 for FOCUS, which is capitalized even though it doesnt stand for anything. its basically the closest thing to lakeshore that isnt lakeshore. its not incredibly close but its good. we sing and listen and pray and sing and sing. theres a lot of singing. tuesday nights at 9 we have small group study on the book of james, which i go to. both of the leaders are wonderful. one is the first person i met when i got here and the other talks like allyson zimmerman.

Writers in the Schools
--i probably wont get to do this till next semester but you and a partner go off campus to an elementary school (or sometimes middle) and take over a class and teach the nine year olds to love poetry. i am pretty much psyched about it.

seven clubs is enough, right? i think so. honors tea is tuesdays at 4 and church is sundays at 1030 and theres yoga mondays and wednesdays at 530 and oh dear, so much to do. college, college, college! its delightful.

Books I've Read Since I Got to College

(Including scholastically and... pleasurably?)

Completed--

• The Epic of Gilgamesh
• The Book of James
• Einstein's Dreams
• Brokeback Mountain (a short story, I know)
• Artemis Fowl Two
• Without You

Begun--

• Worlds Together, Worlds Apart (my history textbook)
• Wicked
• The Lovely Bones

To Be Read This Semester, for School--

• The Book of Genesis
• The Koran (selections)
• The Dialogues of Plato
• The Inferno
• Tao Te Ching
• The Prince
• The Norton Anthology (extensive selections)
• The Scarlet Letter
• Wieland

To Be Read This Semester, for Myself--

• [All those begun]
• Flowers for Algernon
• Brave New World
• Voyage of the Turtle
• Stardust
• Memoirs of a Geisha
• Alpha and Omega
• Peter Pan
• The Children of Hurin
• Unfinished Tales (if I can get to it)

Can it be done? Only time will tell. Come back next week for further developments.

From "Messages to Kristen Howell"

7 september 2007

i have the bbyd cast picture on my desk so i can look at you while im typing. is that weird? i dont know. but you know i secretly loved that show, so much. anyway as long as you dont turn into a psycho bitch or get distant ill be okay. dont be a stranger is what im saying. i miss you. you sound tired. you will be finished soon and have some good friends.

dorm-away-college is really wonderful. somehow i am surprised to find it has met all my expectations. you of course know how terrified i was in the days before i left, but the awkwardness, though still obviously present, is beginning to lose the fight. i am so happy here. and i read things like marthas livejournal and how shes so sad at college and i dont know how i got so lucky. most of my friends took their best choice of five or seven or ten schools and still they are not all happy? i applied to memphis and here and took evansville because they promised me money, not because i had thoroughly researched it. and yet here i am and it is so wonderful. i have said wonderful already but its true.

i have gotten pretty well involved with the student christian fellowship. they are nice. they sing. they smile and everyone is always cheerful and glad to see you. so i have gone to church both sundays, and i go to a thing called focus on fridays which is like singing and a lesson and some praying and more singing, and i really like it. and i joined a small group studying the book of james. i picked that one because the two leaders appeal to me. one is a girl named jennifer, who is the first person i met when i came here. she is a sophomore and i think we are friends. we laugh and theres not a lot of awkward pauses. the other is a girl named shelley from kentucky. shes little and has blonde curls and she talks like allyson zimmerman, who i know at lakeshore and who is also from kentucky.

i went to the first quidditch club meeting and i liked it but not as much as id hoped. they are just not classy about how they love harry potter. they love it because they love to wear silky robes and shout spells at each other and pretend to be wizards. i love to do those things too (except the silky robes because theyre unrealistic) but i also love to know the characters and soak up the story and learn from the themes. i love that any shortcomings are overcome by a wealth of wonder and that everything fits together. i know this sounds a little elitist but they just do not love harry potter as classily as i do. but ill give it a try.

in my classes almost everything is picturesque. in american lit, my teacher has this fluid voice like she has lived all of this literature, and she appreciates everything. the class puts our desks in a circle and a lot of people talk. in german, frau pleasant is young and wears green rectangle glasses and almost always hiking boots and a skirt or dress. today she had a blue dress with a blue jacket and chalk stains all over her. she seems the type to lose a pen in her hair, if you understand that characterization. she is so energetic and loves german and laughs and gestures hugely. world cultures is my least favorite class but i still like it. my professor refers to himself in the third person a lot and his quizzes are hard, but the material is still somewhat interesting. we're moving now from gilgamesh into genesis. my world history professor is scottish and has only been in america eight years. last class he gave us this extremely eloquently constructed explanation of the butterfly effect, showing the existence of israel to be a direct result of francis ferdinands driver turning left instead of right. i just eat that class up. copyediting is pretty much grammar for the first half so you know i am in my element. dr bone gives fantastic sentences as examples. there were several problems with the presidents speech. the sheepish dominatrix ruined my party.

that is most of my time spent active. i go and do something at least almost all days, but i have gotten some reading done and a lot of tetris. yesterday i read the book of james, brokeback mountain, and einsteins dreams, which i think is a pretty funny combination. today i read artemis fowl two because ive had it for like four years and thought i should get around to it sometime. i sleep enough. i eat in the dining hall about once a day.

tomorrow shannon and i are going to the gas station across the street which is closer than the grocery store to buy milk and rent driving lessons. we get along pretty well even though she snores and that makes me a little irritable at night. but she doesnt know, shes asleep.

tonight i talked to annebel on the phone for an incredible two hours and thirty-three minutes. that might be the longest telephone conversation ive ever had. we are going to read wicked together so we feel like we are not so separated. this weekend we will read 63 pages. on sunday night we'll talk about it and decide how much to read next week.

next weekend i am going on the fall getaway with scf, which is a whole day and night and the next morning on kentucky lake just doing fun things. swimming, tubing, sitting around, frisbee, cards, whatever. its only fifteen dollars, im sort of excited.

i think i have two friends. one is jennifer about whom i told you. she is so nice. everyone here is nice. today she had a bow in her ponytail at focus. she gave me a ride to minigolf last weekend and she was genuinely excited when i told her i had read the book of james. the other is kaitlin who is in my world cultures and copyediting classes. i think she likes grammar almost as much as i do. we laugh. i laugh a lot here. i realize this message is probably longer than you bargained for but i want to give you a good picture of how i am. and i am well. i am happy in class. i am happy to go to class. i have time to get my homework finished and still do things. theres free stuff to be had all the time, usually food.

i love you. call me sometime when you can and tell me everything. love, love, love. i miss you too.

sara.