Still in Provo

You'd think that since I've been away from Blogger for nearly two months, I'd have been off building orphanages in Nepal or studying plants native to Madagascar, or having some sort of summer adventure. Instead, I'm here in Provo, and have been.

I'm taking classes. They've been exciting and challenging. (And extremely time-consuming.)

My first class is an advanced Italian grammar class. I enjoy it. The professor has structured the class so that we always correct homework and have a lesson before our break, and then after the break we have a big class discussion about a reading. The readings are about topics like anonymous letters, women driving, or summer love. There's generally something controversial, and we get passionate about our viewpoints. It's kind of funny to listen to, since we have varying levels of proficiency. ("But the marriage, IT IS important for the people. Two weeks. Sometimes one FEELS.")

Then I go to my English class, which is also full of passion (on occasion), though on the part of the professor. He passed us a copy of a Daily Universe article from the 1990's the other day and said, "WOW! Look at all of these cool perfect forms in this. Wow, that's a perfect progressive. You don't see many of those. Isn't that cool?!" He really thought it was neat. I often leave my English class wondering if I even speak English. I think the other people in my class feel the same way. (One of my classmates wrote a page of creative writing about how maddening grammar is and forwarded it to the entire class after the last test.) This weekend is dedicated to me learning the semantic categories of adverbs. And a lot of other things.

My third class is a Book of Mormon class, and I don't really have much to say about it.

Yesterday I bought two books at the BOOK SALE on campus. I got Tall Blondes (which is a book about giraffes) and teach yourself arabic. I'm excited about both of them. I've been reading Harry Potter lately, like everyone and their grandma, and I'm still only on the third book. Almost finished with it, but still not ready for the seventh one today. (As an aside, a coworker had Harry and the Potters playing in her car the other day. It was hilarious. Have you guys heard of them?)

I've been knitting lately. (I have a knitting group that meets weekly.) I'm knitting a white baby blanket for my friend who wants her baby to be a surprise. Let me tell you all how I feel about babies being surprises: whether you find out it's a boy at the doctor's office when they do your ultrasound, or when they're pulling it out of you, it'll be a surprise. I promise. At birth, I plan on possibly being surprised by hair color and facial features. I plan on my kid's personality being a surprise as it develops. But I will definitely be surprised by my kid's gender before it is born. And it will make it much easier for friends who want to knit baby blankets in colors like pink or blue. :)

So I've been knitting that. It's not huge, but I'm pleased with myself because I've learned a new stitch, and it's still the biggest thing that I've ever knit. I'm just over halfway done.

(I've also started two new hobbies: geocaching and training for a triathlon, but I'll post about them some other time, when I have more to say and more time to write it.)