Like I said...

In my last post, I wrote about sun and snow. Today, we got sun, hail, and lightning--all simultaneously! Hooray for springtime in Kalamazoo.

Last weekend I had quite the adventure. I went to a Senegal reunion dinner with the girls who went last year plus my group. We told stories and laughed, and we realized that most of them, at the time, were not so funny. Things like the incompetent doctor who didn't give me a malaria test when I had classic malaria symptoms, like one of the girls last year having a HUGE cockroach end up in her dress--and then in her underwear,  like boys "falling in love" with us everywhere we went... It was a great evening.

Partway through, I got a call from Allison, the woman who runs the Aerial Angels circus troupe in Kalamazoo. She said that she was looking for a last-minute replacement for a circus gig at a high school prom on Saturday night, and was I available? I said yes, of course, and spent all of Saturday sort of freaking out, wondering what I had just gotten myself into.

The gig went pretty well; there were about 100 kids there at the most, and they were pretty impressed by everything we did. Our portable rig was too tall for the ceiling of the ballroom, so we had to set it up in the recess in the ceiling where a chandelier was hung. Naturally, that meant that the ballroom manager was breathing down Allison's neck the whole night, freaking out that we would break her chandelier. I did a little silks routine, which was very well received. I also did a little bit of partner acrobatics with Allison, which went pretty well.

There was one point when I was supposed to fall backwards and Allison was supposed to catch me...and she didn't. I was overly confident in her ability to catch me (she does this for a living, after all), and she was overly confident in my ability to catch myself (it was clear from pretty early in the fall that I was toppling, but I didn't try to catch myself because I was being too trusting). The result was that I was suddenly on the floor, disoriented, and I landed pretty hard on the heels of my hands. My right wrist has been hurting ever since. I think it might be very minorly sprained, but it's not bad.

Today, I had two interviews for campus leadership positions. It turns out that for one of them--Peer Health Advocate--I'll only need to commit about a half hour per week. I can do that! That's nothing! Also, the issue I want to tackle on campus, caffeine abuse, hasn't been addressed at all by peer health advocates in the past. I feel so creative!

The other interview was for the chapel program, which I loved being involved with last year. If I could get paid to do that again, that would be phenomenal. If not...we'll see. Tonight in circus, we're voting on officers for next year. I'm hoping to be president, but we'll find out soon enough what will happened. I'm happy just to be involved, so I'm not concerned at all.

Everyone who sees me lately tells me that I look great. I look happy. It's true; I can't remember another time in my life when I felt so on top of my game, in my element, comfortable in myself. I'm loving how it feels. Walking across campus today and admiring the view of the city from the hill, enjoying the "warm" weather and brick buildings and well-fed squirrels, seeing all the smiling people, I thought, "I'm going to treasure these days for the rest of my life."

I'd say adjusting to being here is going pretty well.