First finals, my very first california sunburn, and: the midnight yell

Yet another week gone, I cannot believe how fast it's going. First quarter almost over, which means I'm almost halfway through my stay... Brrr. I'll just focus on the here and now.

Tuesday I finished my first course, the easiest, of course (why can you never be done with the toughest course first? It's evil), my film and TV class, with a paper and a laughably easy quiz. Tuesday night I made dinner for Sylvia and Brigid and me, and we went off to James' to watch Gilmore Girls...and found out that it was an old episode. We studied a little, played spoons (a very populal game, lately, somehow), and blablabla (weekdays really can be boring). Wednesday I took the Physics final, and well, I've never bullshitted so much on a science exam in my entire life. There were mostly "conceptual" questions which showed that apparently, we were actually supposed to have understood all the complicated stuff he'd talked about in class, and even other complicated stuff that we'd been supposed to read about. Oops. Luckily, it was an open book, open notes, open everything exam, and it seems I'm quite good at bullshitting, because I got a 92/114 (+/- 80%).

Wednesday was also when I went to my final capoeira class of the quarter (I'm planning on signing up for it again next quarter), and afterwards found out a marvellous thing:

Ladies and gentleman, I can cook.

Alright, I see you all, shaking your heads, laughing a little, Hedwig cook, yes sure, we can all add some ready-made sauce to pasta, but I would reply, no people, I don't mean that, I actually cooked. As in, made a real dish. To be specific: I made risotto. And ladies and gentlemen, it tasted good, no, heavenly. And I didn't even have a recipe! I just googled "risotto recipe" and deducted the basic ingredients and cooking actions from the first half-dozen I looked at.

Actually, risotto is the perfect dish for me. I'm such a restless cook, I just have to stir something all the time, even if it's just pasta, and if I have something in the oven I just have to check up on it every 5 minutes (well, actually, I put the kitchen timer on 5 minutes telling myself I can't check before it goes off, or else I'd check even more often), so a dish where you have to add new broth all the time and stir a lot, yep, I'm in for it.

Because the weather was so marvelously nice on Wednesday, and because it was the last day of classes, I'd invited everyone to come study on the beach on Thursday...and of course, when James and I arrived at the beach (Sylvia, Brigid and Maximo were cutomairily late), there were clouds, a cold wind was blowing, and the whole beach experience was just not as I'd imagined it to be. But of course, just when you start to despair, the sun decided to come take a peek, lying on the beach turns out to be quite nice, and lo! playing basketball with Martin and Sylvia proves that I'm not actually all that bad at putting balls through a net either! (alright, so I'm not exactly good...but at least I don't suck any more).

Anyhow, as usual, the sun only needed about an hour to make sure my head looks like a traffic light right now, but as it is raining again now (no worries, not as much as it did before) I kind of like the burn, it reminds me that the sun did shine, albeit only for a little while.

Of course, not much studying had been done at the beach. Did I spend the evening studying, then? Well...not exactly. First, I went to Ultimate Improv' again (funny, but not as much as the first time) with James, and it was only after twelve that I finally started on my Physics paper. But: I set myself a goal, and I reached it: by two thirty I had a thousand words. That means, one more thousand tomorrow, one more thousand sunday, and I'll be done!

By the way, to all those people I complained to last semester that I had lost the ability to sleep in? It's back. Big time. As I was reminded of yet again at 02:09 this afternoon, when I finally woke up. Woke up. This is 2 pm that I'm talking about. And I did not wake up a single time in between.

I guess that just means my biological clock has given up on me. Oh well. We'll make friends again when I'm at my eight-to-five job this summer.

Luckily, all I really had to do today was a genetics review at 3, which turned out to be profoundly useless (I left halfway). Sylvia and Theresa made a wonderful, lengthy dinner (beets and bratkartoffeln), and we watched Don Juan DeMarco, still the most effective manipulative romantic comedy in existence on this earth. It was made even better by Sylvia's reactions, little yells and "ow"'s and sighs over Johnny Depp's beauty.

Finally, I'd like to tell you about a little bit of UCLA lore, or should I say customs. During finals week, at midnight, when tired and crazy from cramming...people yell. Loudly. Lengthily. And in a long wave you could probably follow across Westwood. There is an addition, too: apparently, in the Wednesday of finals week, so next Wednesday, people run down the streets in their underwear to celebrate. Four words: this I gotta see.

A -not yet yelling- sunburned Hedwig bids you goodbye.