Slacker.

I fear that as the workload increases, it will be absolutely impossible to update this little blog every night. Yes, the actual WORK has begun here at PGSIS (pronounced puh-jesus), and everyone is overwhelmed. Luckily, staying up 'til 3 in the morning and staying (or at least looking) awake simply by drinking a red bull (or, if you're particularly adventurous, a redeye) and applying an extra coat of mascara has not affected the wonderful friendship between the 10 girls in our wing. During one of our pow-wows, Molly talked about the Gov School J-Curve--as time goes on, we like governor's school, then it is the absolute bane of our existence, then we love it again. Most of us are hoping that these first few days are the bottom of the curve and things can only start looking up from here.

Tuesday started early with a fire drill--Emily, our Fire Marshall, was bedecked in a spectacular hat and badge made by Molly. Apparently, all of the RTAs had stayed up past midnight on monday to make their wings some awesome fire gear. Afterwards, we walked as a giant mass of govies to breakfast at the cathederal, a particularly impressive sight when still veiled by the morning haze. After enjoying (read: enduring) some morning fuel (thank god for Clif Bars), it was off to my first Japanese Language Class.

The immersive environment of the language classes is pretty intimidating. But if you love languages, the class is amazing. We move at high speed through the lessons we've studied in our books the night before, amazingly quickly catching on to greetings and polite expressions. The incredibly small class size does wonders for ensuring everyone's success.

Three language classes combined make up the Japanese Culture class, the teacher of which franknly stated "I won't be teaching you anything. At all." I wasn't sure whether to laugh or curl into the fetal position. He's very into the whole self-teaching philosophy--but unlike some of my former teachers, I have complete faith that he won't use that as a reason to be lazy.

Next was Intercultural Communication with the aweeeeesooooome Dr. Shallenerger, who I definitely want to get close to over the next five weeks. He's very dynamic, knowledgable, and not too opinionated. I love the class, our assignments, everything. It's great. All great.

Of Course, I also enjoyed International Relations with--get this--a professor who we refer to by her first name?! I love it. The class is another one that feels like it should be twice as long as it really is--in fact, I wish I could choose this class as my focus instead of Global Enviro.

Next was Global Environmental Politics. Let me be honest. I'm not in love with the class, but the Prof. is a really good guy who reminds me of Jack Althouse a little. I think the problem is everyone in the class agrees on everything. So discussions aren't really debates, they're just kind of...everyone agreeing--in a very intellectual way, but I need a little more heated debate to stay interested, I think.

I skipped dinner (someone please go make sure my mom's not having heart palpatations, as I totally had some Easymac) to work on homework, then the academic day ended with ICONS. Team Kenya--I'm not going to lie--kicks ass. We all get along great, we're ahead of the game, and our RTA, Nalylee, is awesome and fun. After adding a secret, unwritten article to our constitution (When somebody knocks on the door, hide the food.), we continued to work hard on researching Kenya. As our whiteboard proudly states--World Peace is not a competition...but we're winning.

Suck on that, South Africa.