Snow?!?

Hello everyone!

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving. :) Mine was exceptional. Dad missed me so much that he decided to fly me back to Oregon for the holiday. We have a week's worth of break for Thanksgiving here, so I was able to relax a bit and just be with my family. I'm sorry if you didn't hear from or see me while I was home...we kind of kept it under wraps so I could lay low for the week.

Coming home this last week was really interesting. I was looking forward to it so much that I couldn't sleep the night before. The plan was to wake up at 4:30, leave my room at 5:30, walk to the metrolink which goes straight to the airport, and be there in plenty of time for my flight that left at 7:55. I was all ready to go, and I finally got to sleep. Unfortunately, my alarm didn't wake me up. I didn't wake up until about 6:55...one hour before my flight was supposed to leave! As you can imagine, I started freaking out, grabbed everything, jumped into my clothes, called my good friend Stephen and begged him almost in tears to drive me to the airport. Good friend that he is, he sped me there, trying to console me the whole time. Hahahaha, I felt like I was in labor or something, the way the situation looked....Luckily the people at the airport were nice and I made my flight, HALLELUJAH! Thank you, Lord for good friends, living near the airport, and nice airport people!

Being home again after the past almost four months was really interesting. It was so good to see Mt. Hood, the Columbia, Mt. St. Helens, and other familiar landmarks from the air. My best friend, Shelli, and my family came to pick me up. Shelli brought me some good Portland coffee, and I got big hugs from everyone. The wierd thing was that it was so familiar...almost like I had never left. Home was familiar, the people were familiar, the scenery was familiar, but something was different. Nothing at home had changed. I had changed. I related to things differently than I used to. I had different habits and behaviors and speech and thought patterns than I did when I left. I was still myself, but as a good friend told me, the details about me had changed. I don't know exactly what those details are yet, but I think I will come to find out about them more as time goes on. Another thing that was odd about going home was that I now had connections and parts of my life in two very different, very distant places. Oregon is still primarily home, but when I came back to Missouri, it felt like coming home as well, just in a different way, I guess.

I leave Missouri for a week and what happens when I come back? SNOW! As my plane flew in, I could see it all over the ground. It's not incredibly thick, but everyone is already making fun of me for my grimaces when I think about the rest of the winter still to come.

My good friends the Dicksons are here this week to check out UMSL! I'm very excited to have them here. They're a family string quartet from back home. They were in my orchestra and met the Arianna this year at the same camp I met them at a couple years ago. I remember being shown around this campus myself almost a year ago....so much has happened since then! Who would have thought I would end up here, anyway?

I finally finished my music history paper on the viola da gamba, THANK GOODNESS. Just one left to go that's due on Thursday for my writing class. This one's about music education in urban areas, which is a little more interesting and easy to write about than the other one. ;) After that, I have a chamber concert on Thursday, finals on the 8th, juries on the 9th, an orchestra concert that same day, and a journal for writing due the 11th. Then I'm done! :) :) :) :) :) I've already got my schedule for next term. Instead of music history and writing, I'm taking non-western music and cultural traditions, both at the honors college. All the rest of my classes are the same.

I love you all, and I'll see you soon....assuming the cold doesn't kill me first. ;)

Maren