Horse Horse Tiger Tiger

This was a hard blog post to write. Where do you pick up after such a change?

I moved out of my apartment, out of Memphis, and back home to Dyersburg. In 29 days I will be once again leaving Dyersburg to fly out to Washington D.C. Tentative grades are due May 11.

It's been a looooong semester.

The rest of May will be prep for my internship.... prep prep prep prep. My Chinese teacher in high school used to always ask us 你准备好了吗？(Ni zhunbei hao le ma?) before tests. It was a question asking us whether we had prepared well or not. I usually answered with the oft-overused phrase "马马虎虎“ which, while literally translating as "horse horse tiger tiger," usually just means "eeeeeeeeehhhhhhhhhh okayyyyyy I guess."

That's kinda how I feel right now. I haven't gotten a lot of information. So I feel like horse, horse, tiger, tiger.

5 Minutes Later

Sooooo I just checked my email and guess who got an update? WHEW. May 18th-ish I'll get my roommate assignments. Got more books to buy for my classes. Still waiting on an internship placement...

Oh well. Have some pictures!

who's that girl? Tis I, Mackenzie, "featured" in a corner of the school newspaper. I could spot that nose from a mile away.

Early April was the Student Ambassador Board Mudball Tournament. It was superhero theme, and Honors Student Council won most spirited with our super face paint!

This is lint. From the dryer in my apartment. I had to empty it FOR someone because they didn't before they started their load.... It's a wonder our apartment didn't burn down. And the funny thing? I've found bigger hunks in the last weeks before I left.

PHYSIC'S SECOND ANNUAL TRIVIA NIGHT! I became salt queen but I won a sweet radiometer-- pictured somewhere  below. Radiometers work because they do the spin spin when the lighty lighty happens. Yeah.

Here it is! Looks like it was taken right from the 70s. 

The DEANS are coming, the DEANS are coming! Another shot of the student line up shown in the first picture. I should probably explain what this is. The inauguration ("investiture" they called it) of the new president of the UoM happened, all RSOs were asked to send a student representative. They also had alumni. So one one side of this huge line, we had a  bunch of students and on the other a bunch of not-students-anymore. It was fun. They had a big party in the UC afterwards with delicious food and cake and it was so delicious. 

Tree. In a box! A whole tree, just for me, in a tiny box!

Me on the way to the Presidential Leadership Awards. I'd just driven from home earlier, so I was a little exhausted, but it was really fun. Wanna know something not fun? The only white button up I have does not, in fact, button up all the way to the top. Rather, it opens to a slight "feminine" v-neck. This did not work for my tie, so I was just going to safety pin it shut, but I couldn't find a safety pin. Running out of time a patience, I almost used a binder clip before giving up and resigning to continually straightening my shirt. 

Some flowers outside of the U.C. As the end of the semester neared, I decided whenever I felt bad, I'd take pictures of flowers around campus. We have a lot of them spread out and it's really pretty. 

One night I decided to make crazy spaghetti. It took me like two hours but it was delicious. And I even added spinach. The true sign of being an adult. 

As the campus warmed up, people brought their dogs to campus. This tiny beautiful magic little puppy. My hand was bigger than it's head. 

The thursday before finals is reserved for studying. No classes, no RSO activities allowed, but who throws a party with loud loud loud music starting at 11? My apartment complex. Ugh. 

Took a relaxing visit to a park in Bartlett. There were ducklings SO SMALL I could fit three in my hand. Tiny little baby ducklings. 

Paaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaanorama.

Traffic backed up in Germantown (not me driving, don't worry). Some say there are still cars backed up to this day... 

My first time at Genghis Grill! It was delicious!

A peek at some of my Chinese work. Blonde-hair, Gao, wants black-hair, Wang, to drive him to Chinatown to eat. Gao gives horrible directions, but thinks that in the end they found it. Wang's like "Bro, that's not Chinese. That's Japanese. We're in little Tokyo."

One of my favorite sports on campus is the little rose garden. Just gorgeous.

 

More roses!

Another peek from finals... This is Japanese. and yeah, it's as hard as it looks. Chinese, grammatically, is very, very simple. The difficulty lies in remembering the vocabulary and sentence structures. Japanese is very memorable, but it's a struggle because the grammar is so hard. I mean, it's not like, English hard but MAN. It's a struggle.

Grades are trickling in slowly, so far so good, but man this semester was a struggle. Balancing HSC, homework, Mackenzie-time, and friends time was really hard. 

I'm heading downstairs now to work on plane tickets with mom. This semester may have been crazy, but now I think everything is horse, horse, tiger, tiger.