Updates

A few personal updates:

* I've finally started decorating my apartment. :) Because of my immigration issues, I didn't move in until right before training - and so I was immediately thrown into professional staff training craziness, then RA training craziness, then the first five weeks of the semester with extra programming and and and. I just haven't really had a time to breathe. I work until 9 pm on Mondays (I teach a class from 8-9 pm), 10 pm on Tuesdays (Area Council Meetings), 9 pm on Wednesdays (Staff Meeting) and 8 pm on Thursday (late office hours); so by the time I usually get home I'm just too tired to deal with personal stuff like unpacking, decorating, etc. Excuses? Maybe. I guess there are just always other things I care about more; if I really wanted to, yes, I could probably find the time. But anyway, it's just gotten ridiculous and so over Fall Break I decided to start decorating and finish unpacking. Of course I didn't get it done yet. Turns out, it's basically impossible to put a nail in my wall. I think it's because it's an outside wall of the building. After bending three nails, I gave up. Now I'm trying to come up with another solution. [I know at least one of my readers can relate to the frustration of not being able to hang things up in your apartment...haha...it's not that bad yet; I still have a few options I haven't tried.]

*I've once again made up my mind to work out more, cut down on the amount of ice cream I eat and - by doing that - lose some weight. I went running last night. I meant to get up early and go running this morning as well but that didn't happen. And right now I'm arguing with myself whether or not I should go running tonight; it's pretty cold out and I do have some exercise DVDs I could use. We'll see. Let's hope I end up doing something tonight.

*I'm debating if I should put up my Christmas tree. If you've read my religion post, you know my struggle. I'll also be spending the holidays by myself in my apartment. I really wanted to visit my family (and go skiing in Austria) over winter break but there's just not enough time. I have to apply for a new entry visa at the US Consulate in Vienna, if I leave the country - and that takes about 2 weeks and we don't even have a full 2-weeks off for winter break. So I'm stuck here and not too excited about it. I'm debating now if I should just completely ignore the holidays or if I put up a tree and fake excitement until I may actually get excited. Haha. Family holidays suck when you're far away from your family.

Work-updates:

*The next few weeks will be filled with writing RA Evaluations & meeting with RAs to discuss evaluations; writing end of the semester reports; starting to plan things for next semester; etc.

*One of these days, I'm going to try and spend some time reflecting on how my first semester here went. I like reflecting. ;) Some of my staff members hear get really frustated when they hear the word "refelcting" - apparently I ask them to do too much of that? But seriously, can there ever be too much reflecting? I mean, if we don't think about things, how else are we going to learn?