Savoring Every Moment

I have arrived! The flight over to Luxembourg was long and bumpy —  not good for someone who hates flying like me. Luckily I had friends to keep me distracted and was able to sleep most of the way. We arrived in Germany at about 10:30 a. m. (European time) then took a three hour bus ride to the place we are staying in Mordorf le Bains, Luxembourg. It is absolutely gorgeous here, rolling hills, fields of beautiful yellow flowers, and it helps that it is 80 degrees and sunny!

There is a festival going on in town tonight so we plan on going there tonight and enjoying our first dinner together,. I promise to write more once I have a handle on this crazy European keyboard and send along pictures too. It seems like this is going to be an amazing experience and I can’t wait for everything to start!

Can you tell I am a bit jetlagged?

I will keep this entry short and sweet because there is not much to report other then the fact that I leave for Luxembourg in less than four days! Packing was as much of a hassle as I thought it would be and the bags sitting in my living room right now will have to be sorted through to pick out all I need for Europe. I know I will forget the most essential things, but I am working on lists so hopefully I won’t forget too much!

The past few days have been spent finishing up my final paper for my Irish Catholicism course which I am writing on the novel Dracula and its connections to the religious and social fears of England and Ireland in the 19th century. I swear there is some cosmic connection between that paper and my life; I have never seen so many books concerning vampires be returned to the library at one time! I turned on the TV this evening to take a study break and there just happened to be Francis Ford Coppola’s version of Dracula. I have to admit, I am getting VERY sick of vampires!

My next blog entry will be from Luxembourg, I can’t believe it! Hopefully the jet lag won’t be too bad, you will probably be able to tell from the next entry so I apologize in advance for anything I may write next time…chalk it up to the time difference!

“Time flies when you are having fun”…or studying for exams. The days following the concert flew by and now I can’t believe I am going home TOMORROW. It will be great to go home for a bit, work some hours at the library and focus on packing because I leave for Luxembourg next Sunday! I have to admit, I hate packing and having to do it three times in a row (packing up my room, unpacking, and packing for the trip) is going to be a hassle. The fact that I am going to spend a month in Europe certainly makes up for it though! A few of my friends who are currently studying abroad are thinking of visiting me while I am there and accompanying us on our weekend trips to Amsterdam, Belgium and Paris, it will be great to see them!

The past few days have definitely been full of “end of the year” events. The annual CAB banquet was great; Jimmy, Alexandra and I put together a pretty impressive slide show if I do say so myself and everyone seemed to enjoy their time together. I attached a picture of the new and old CAB board, as well as a picture of the outgoing Executive Board. CAB is losing six seniors and I honestly can’t believe it. My friend who is graduating told me that it is probably harder for those left behind and I would have to agree. It is difficult to imagine a Holy Cross campus without my senior friends and even more difficult to believe that I am going to be leaving after next year! I was also invited to the Forbes Library children’s room BBQ to send off the Smith College work study students who work on the opposite schedule that I do. My boss Jude invited us all to her house and I had a great time, I can’t wait to start working at the library again! My roommate found me on Amazon.com the other day pouring over lists of new Children’s literature to get ready for the summer reference questions; needless to say she was a bit confused as to why I was looking up If You Give a Mouse a Cookie instead of researching the impact of Dracula on Irish culture…it’s all part of the job! My job in the Religious Studies department is also ending for the year, I couldn’t ask for a better department to work in and I can’t wait to return next year. My boss Cathi will keep me posted on all the Red Sox updates I need while I am in Luxembourg I am sure!

The workload for my 5 courses, especially at the end of the year, has been intense. Luckily my exams have been going fairly well and my Irish Catholicism seminar paper on Dracula is the last thing due before my trip; it’ll be nice to be have the sense of accomplishment when I turn everything in. I also got some good news this past week that certainly helped alleviate the stress of finals…I am going to be a Senior Interviewer next year! That means I get to interview potential members of the class of 2013 and work with admissions in a capacity different from being a tour guide. I can’t wait and was honored to have been given the opportunity.

I hope to update once more before leaving for Luxembourg but until then I will echo my friend Amy’s blog by saying congratulations to the Holy Cross Class of 2012, I know most people made their decisions a few days ago. Get ready for the best four years of your life!

I think when I look back at my years at Holy Cross I will immediately remember every Spring Weekend. My freshman year I was shadowing, learning the ropes so that I could run it, which I did with Alexie my sophomore year. Now this year I was one step removed, but still got to help with every event and be a cheerleader for Alexandra and Mary who put together an amazing weekend!

Thursday started the weekend off with a bang at the Spring Weekend Kick-Off in Kimball. I spent most of the afternoon blowing up balloons and driving t-shirts and supplies from Hogan to the event. This was interrupted in a great way by my Luxembourg meeting where we received our plane tickets and overseas cell phones – less then 2 weeks, I can’t believe it! I finally made my way down to Hogan and had a great time watching Limbo contests, musical chairs and the most intense arm wrestling match I have ever seen…it was a great night!

Friday was another beautiful day. It has been nice to have a couple of classes outside with the nice weather and it is great to give tours in something other then rain! My fellow tour guides and I have charted it and it rained or snowed literally every Friday we had to give a tour. Our rainboots certainly got a workout! Friday night was the comedian Christian Finnegan and I just happened to be stationed outside his lounge area so I got to schmooze with the comedians and watch the show from the balcony in a comfy chair.

The chair was pivotal because the next day we had the Spring Weekend Carnival, Fireworks and GrooveBoston dance party. Jimmy and I tried to figure it out and we think we both worked for 14 or so hours, 1:00PM to 3:00AM and we probably stood up for about 13 of those hours…it’s all part of the joy of CAB I guess! The carnival was amazing, very well organized and it is always fun to go on the rides you loved as a kid including the “Tubs of Fun”, bounce house and Mega slide, not to mention eating ridiculous amounts of fried dough. The Fireworks were a blast (literally and figuratively) and the GrooveBoston dance party, a new event this year, was a hit with approximately 500 people coming throughout the night.

This past Tuesday was the last big event for Spring Weekend, the Spring Weekend Concert featuring Jason Mraz and Everclear. I’ll try to give an insider’s perspective on things because it takes A LOT of work to pull off a concert. The day started at 6:30 AM when most people arrived at the Hart center to load in all the equipment for building the stage, hanging the lights and working the sound. The rule for concert day is that anytime you are not in class, you are at the Hart center working so before, after and in between my Education class and Shakespeare class, I was doing some heavy lifting at the Hart center. As you can see from the pictures, it is amazing to walk in at 7:00AM and see a green tarp on the floor and then to leave around noon and see an entire stage built, it certainly gives you a sense of achievement! At 6:00 there was the security meeting where we got our stations for the night. I was in the ticket booth which was a lot of fun because whenever a good song came on we could take shifts and run out to the concert and stand next to the barricade front row to watch it. We did get a little stir crazy though, as you can see from the attached pictures. The entire show was amazing, especially Jason Mraz who obviously enjoyed himself because he did THREE encores, much to the chagrin of us workers because it meant we could not start taking down the stage until midnight. The process of breaking down the stage and rolling everything into trucks took about three hours and at 3:00AM a group of about 30 faithful volunteers trudged back to their dorms. It was a long, but very fun, night.

So there is my Spring Weekend update, hopefully it gave a bit of insight into what CAB goes through to plan and execute most of the events you see on campus. It’s a lot of work but I enjoy every minute. Study period started Wednesday so I get to catch up on a bit of sleep before the onslaught of due dates then it is off to Luxembourg!

You really can’t beat Holy Cross in the Spring, it is such a beautiful campus and after a rather rough winter everyone here seems to want to spend every waking minute outside. This worked well for us at CAB because Battle of the Bands was this past Saturday and the weather was amazing! As the pictures will show there were very few people who were NOT at Kimball Quad enjoying the music and the sun. My mom will be glad to hear I did not get a burn (I used sunscreen!), unfortunately some of my friends were not so lucky…I guess it’s the price you pay for soaking up the sun! Lauren and Brian (the co-chairs of the 10 Spot committee and the two people in charge of the event) did a GREAT job and turned the day into a huge success.

This week has been hectic but fun. It was helpful that it started off on a good note with the news we are living in a Senior Apartment, I mean, in the newly named Edward Bennett Williams Hall. I put a picture in this entry because I honestly can’t believe we got one! Wednesday night I went to O’Conner’s restaurant (DELICIOUS) with my Irish Catholicism seminar. The week before we went to Professor Reynolds house so she is definitely spoiling us. It makes me really sad that these 5 classes are ending so soon, I really enjoyed all of them. I won’t miss the 5 class workload though!

Now for my shameless Spring Weekend plug. As I mentioned before, I serve as the Point Person in CAB for the “Special Committee” which organizes Spring Weekend. Every committee in CAB is required to have an event and this year the caliber of events has gone way up (though I have to say-seeing as Alexie and I were in charge of it-last years was awesome as well). Alexandra and Mary, the Special co-chairs this year have spent SO much time and effort on making this weekend amazing and I know it will pay off. I will slip in the schedule here and expect a BIG recap next entry!

SPRING WEEKEND 2008
Dominate ’08!
Spring Weekend Kick-off- Thursday, April 24th, 5-8, Upper Kimball

Christian Finnegan: The Indecision Tour 2008 – Friday, April 25th, 10 pm, Hogan Ballroom, tickets sold all week at Hogan $5 and at the doors

Spring Weekend Olympics- Friday, April 25th, 11:30-2, Field house

Spring Weekend Carnival/ BBQ- Saturday, April 26th, 4:30-8:30, Hart Center Lawn

Fireworks Show- Saturday, April 26th, 8:30-9, Hart Center Lawn

GrooveBoston (aka The Biggest Dance Party HC has EVER seen!)- Saturday, April 26th, Fieldhouse

Holy Cross Spring Concert 2008: Jason Mraz, Everclear, Special Guests Bushwalla and Justin Kredible- Tuesday, April 29th, doors open at 7, Tickets are on sale at the bookstore $20 HC student, $25 consortium, and $35 public

Less then two weeks left of classes? You have got to be kidding me. The prospect of being a Senior is slowly starting to sink in; if you ask almost any Junior how they feel about having the school year end so soon you will probably get the response “I don’t want to talk about it.” Is it too late to add a graduate school program here? A retirement home perhaps?

This past week seems to have been focused on Senior year. We selected courses at the crack of dawn (alright, only 7:00 a.m.) last week and I was lucky enough to get everything I wanted, including the elusive Rhetoric class that I have wanted to take since Sophomore year! I will be taking two history classes and two english classes for the third time in a row and I wouldn’t have it any other way. On Tuesday we got our housing appointments and on Thursday we have housing selection. My roommate Kena and our (hopefully!) future roommates Edna and Esme are keeping our fingers crossed for an apartment, we’ll see how it goes!

This weekend is the RSO Student Leadership Conference and Jimmy Doan and I are going on behalf of CAB. Not only do I get to attend, but I am presenting an Educational Session with Jimmy and Ben (our advisor) on mentoring within an organization, as well as sitting in on a round table discussion about programming on campus. It should be a good experience, but there is a lot of work to get done before that!

Saturday also happens to be the annual Battle of the Bands sponsored by the CAB 10 Spot committee. It was a fantastic day last year, everyone sat out on Kimball Quad listening to their classmate’s rock out (much to the dismay of those involved with the wedding that happened to be scheduled the same day) and I am sure this year’s Battle of the Bands will be a huge success too! Hopefully the weather will remain as nice as it has been, especially because Sunday is the Admissions Open House for admitted students. I will be stationed at Hogan Campus Center in the morning to serve as a “stationary tour guide” then I will be selling the always popular "God’s on Our Side" shirts that CAB is known for.

I promised myself I would not use the word “busy” in this entry, but it really is the only way to describe this upcoming weekend. We’ll see how it goes!

I guess this blog will be slightly different than others because I will be starting it at the end of one year and writing until the very end of another. Hopefully you will be able to keep an interest in what I promise will be a very busy life!

Busy seems to be my mantra lately. As I walk by friends on the way to class, I am realizing that I have not had a decent conversation with them since I have been back from Christmas break. Even my friends abroad are noticing (the care packages are coming soon I promise!) and it seems like everyone here is running around at a hectic pace. My decision to take 5 classes this semester may also be the reason I seem so busy, but helping to oversee the planning of Spring Weekend, mentally packing for my trip to Luxembourg in May, and facing many huge and important papers in the upcoming weeks certainly isn’t helping to lighten the workload!

CAB (the Campus Activities Board) has, like always, taken up a large amount of time but it paid off the other night with the Spring Fling Dance. I am the secretary on the Executive Board of CAB but I am also the Point Person to the Special Committee, Social Committee and Arts and Outings Committee. This means that I am a resource and general cheerleader for the groups that plan events like Spring Weekend, the OppKnocks Dance and off campus trips to places like NYC and Newport (which is coming up next weekend).

The Spring Fling Dance, which was run by Social, was Friday night in the ballroom and Nicole and MaryBeth who are the Social co-chairs worked really hard to make everything perfect. The Hogan Ballroom became a Hawaiian Luau and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves, especially the CAB members that went, as you can see from the elegant and not-so-elegant pictures I posted with this entry.

This week has started out at a fast pace but by the end of it I should be able to visit Newport and relax for a bit. I have been working on guidance lessons for my Education class, and this past Tuesday we finally got to present them! Talking to 5^th graders about Problem Solving methods was definitely a step outside the normal reading and writing associated with my three English and two History courses, but it was certainly a welcome step. I also got to see my Appalachia group (another fun picture to look at) for the first time in weeks; we had a great time watching our very own Justin Winn perform at the 10 Spot, he did a great job! Hopefully the rest of the week will go well then it is off to Newport on Saturday!

Welcome to the life of a Holy Cross Junior in April!

Just a few photographs from Junior Year…..