Today was an awesome day. I had a meeting in downtown Buffalo at the Greater Buffalo Red Cross offices for a camp that I am volunteering for in June. It wasn’t so much the meeting that was really that eye-opening it was more the ride down there. Driving through some of the run down places in Buffalo made me realize how much this city needs done to it but underneath the boards and the cracked cement lay the most beautiful houses. It was really an awesome drive. And I know that a lot of people talk about Buffalo this way but it really does have a lot of uncovered secrets and I’m finding more and more of them the longer I live here. I’m anxious to explore more into the city and surrounding areas before being whisked away into the busy life of an Orientation Aide.

The camp that I am volunteering for is a weekend away for children who are either infected or affected by HIV and AIDS. I am really really looking forward to it. The woman who is running it was talking about how excited the kids get for it each year and how for some of them this is the one thing all year that they get to do, I just can’t wait to get my cabin assignments to find out which age group I got assigned to!!

Uh today could not have been a more perfect Memorial day Sunday, even the weather cooperated! It got to be like 70 degrees today with an awesome breeze!!

This morning I walked down to one of the churches here on Main Street. It was just adorable inside and the people were as nice as can be. I think that I’m going to keep going back since I am going to be living on South Campus all next year the church is just a hop, skip and a jump from my dorm room. I had tried to find a church freshman year but being away from home and adjusting to being on my own took up a little bit of my attention. And than last year it was harder since I was on North Campus without my car and couldn’t easily get to one. I’m really looking forward to getting back to South Campus, living down on Main Street during the summer I forgot how nice it was to be within walking distance of things like a grocery store, Starbucks and other quaint little shops.

I have also been using the bike paths up on North Campus a lot lately. Since I brought my new rollerblades back from the last time I was home the newly paved paths are awesome. I am really looking forward to the weather getting nicer and staying that way. The paths take you all over campus by creeks and under bridges. They really are a nice place to run, rollerblade or just kind of stroll. Let’s just keep our fingers crossed the weather stays this nice.

This week has gone by so fast! I can’t believe it’s Friday already! I got back up to Buffalo on Tuesday afternoon and have been getting back in the swing of things since then.

Yesterday I had a meeting with the instructor of the UB 101 course that I am going to be a Peer Mentor in the fall. At first I was really apprehensive about it, I’ve heard both good and bad reviews about different instructors that try and take over and are really controlling over the class. But my instructor seemed really open to letting me participate in teaching just as much as she is going to. I am really looking forward to being able to help instruct and participate in activities. This class is a unique opportunity, most classes that you have the opportunity to be a Teaching Assistant for you don’t get to interact with students the way that you do in this class. I am really excited about it.

This weekend is Memorial Day weekend. I love cookouts and hanging out with friends so I’m really looking forward to just relaxing this weekend. I just wish the weather would start acting like it’s the end of May. Isn’t Memorial Day weekend suppose to be like the start of summer? Yesterday it didn’t get over 60 degrees and today is suppose to be the same way. Where is the warm weather already!?! It would definitely make this weekend that much better!

Construction has begun all over campus. It’s funny that the minute that the majority of us leave that they start doing things over that would just be too hard to do while all of the students are still around. The one thing that has the majority of us buzzing was the announcement at the end of the semester that not one but two Tim Horton cafe’s were going to be put on campus!!! That’s going to make those long days and late library nights a little bit easier. I hadn’t really taken a walk on campus since classes had ended so my tour the other day had to learn, along with me, what parts of the walkways were closed and where the exact construction was taking place.

Last night was my little sister’s senior prom. I haven’t been around for a formal dance like that since I was the one getting my hair done and pulling on the dress so it was fun to be on the other side of the camera. Even though it’s been two years since I was the one getting all dressed up it reminded me of all of the awesome times that I had during my junior and senior prom. My sister looked absolutely amazing, as did all of her friends. My parents had a whole bunch of people over to the house for pictures, between parents, kids and dates there were probably over 20 people at my house celebrating what I think is the beginning of the end of their senior year. Prom’s are always a great time but they’re also a night where parents hold their breath the entire night. It always makes the memories all that more special when everyone has a great AND safe time. To everyone who is getting ready to enjoy their prom’s, I’m sure you will all look amazing and remember, to be careful!!

I’m back in Buffalo and I have to say for the two days that I’ve been here it’s kind of felt like summer for once which is nice! Other than this afternoon the sun has been out and the temperature has been up towards 70 degrees!

I’ve been spending my first couple of days here getting unpacked into my summer apartment. And after another trip or two to storage I think I’m finally getting there. Now the real question is am I going to be able to find everything in the fall when it comes time to move into my room?! Probably not but we’ll tackle that hurtle when we come to it. I am sad to report however, the goldfish that has been with me from the first day of my freshman year is no longer with us, some would say he took his “final flush”. It’s weird not to have him at my desk with me. He was known by all of my friends as the “nut-case” fish, he was always doing weird things but he was two years old and it seems it was his time to go.

 
RIP Einstein =[

Happy Mother’s Day to all of the mothers out there!

It’s interesting, every year there is one day, only 24 hours, in which everyone is suppose to remind our Mom’s how much they mean to us, how much we appreciate everything they do for us. Why isn’t it that we tell them everyday that they are the reason that we are the people have become, that they are the support system from which our motivation comes from? My Mom is probably sick of hearing this from me because I’m pretty sure I’ve said it every Mother’s Day since I turned like 15 but it has only as I have gotten older that I have begun to really appreciate the huge presence that my Mom has been in my life.

As I get older, I realize that the approach I take to handling situations, the way I choose the people that I surround myself with, even the small, minute decisions I make everyday, are in some way connected back to her and the values she has taught me. As I get older, my Mom starts to shift from strictly a parent to more of an equal. Whereas when I was younger, she stayed away from our personal lives, teaching us independence and strength to deal with conflicts on our own; I now find myself calling her more often for advice. And to be honest, the conversations usually end in me telling her how I want to handle the situation and her just “mhm’ing” because she knows I have already worked out the solution in my head. But that too is just a testament to everything that she has taught me. I am now a young woman, capable of handling things on her own, calling every once and a while to just re-affirm the fact that I am making the right decision.

So thank you to all the Mom’s out there. And I don’t think Mom by definition has to be someone who gave birth to you or even someone who has been there every step of the way. A Mom can be an aunt, a grandmother, a friend, any woman in your life who has made a difference. I guess in that sense I’m a pretty lucky person, because I find myself with more than one Mom and yet, only one true one at the same time.

So it is officially summer. What’s great about college is that when our classes are over, they’re over. There is no summer reading list or summer assignment that we have to get done. It hasn’t really hit me that I have absolutely nothing to think about. Well, that’s probably because it’s not really true. I still have to take an on-line course in order to be a research assistant in the psych lab I was hired by next year. It is suppose to take between 15 and 20 hours so I think in the next couple of days I am just going to spend some time snuggled in bed finishing it up.

I forgot how stressful packing up was going to be. First of all I am someone who hates packing. Loves to travel, hates to pack/unpack. Those are the times I wish I was Sabrina, the Teenage Witch and could just point at everything and have it magically be packed up. As stressful and exhausting as it was, it was funny rummaging through those drawers that haven’t been touched in months. Things that I haven’t seen since the beginning of the year were being uncovered. I even found that alarm clock that I won at the STARS holiday party! It made me smile to think back to different things like that over the year. And after three trips to my summer apartment, two trips to storage and a packed little car, we headed back to Albany.

Being home has been exactly what I needed. The end of the semester was especially stressful and spending time with my family has kind of given me a piece of my mind back. I’m looking forward to a few more days here before getting back to work.

It’s oddly cold here in Buffalo recently which helps keep me in the library longer and also is not making it easy to believe that it is the beginning of May. There is something that just doesn’t seem like we should all be packing up our clothes quite yet, usually by this time of the year you’ll find me laying in any field around campus, out in the sun, with my textbooks and laptop surrounding me, and that kind of symbolizes the end of the year.

But I guess this semester has been different than most, as every semester is different than the ones preceeding it and the ones that will ultimately follow. There have been the ups and there have been the downs but like anything else in my life, I wouldn’t take back a single moment of it. I am a firm believer in not regretting anything. Have I made mistakes in my life? Absolutely and my Mom will attest to that but I truly believe that they make up every piece of who I am. Do I wish some things had gone differently? Yes, with everything that is in me. Sometimes I feel like I have the perfect life that everyone should want to be me {as cocky as that may sound} because I look around and everything seems in it’s place. Then something occurs that reminds me that I’m human and not everything in my life will go the way that I want it to, no matter how bad I want it.

So the next four days are about getting through the three exams that stand in the way of being back home to take a week break with absolutely nothing planned before heading back here to Buffalo to start working again. Let’s hope the weather brightens up a little bit…

WoW!! I truly can’t believe that an entire semester has gone by!! I feel like we were just making our Spring schedules, and packing up our holiday gifts to bring back in January. This week has been absolutely nuts and it’s only going to get crazier next week. I have been cuddled up in the library everyday for the last week coming out for only a couple of different reasons.

On Tuesday we had our STARS banquet at a really nice hall by campus. It was a great chance to get most of us together one last time. We were given awards for different reasons, Super Star, various academic awards, and we all got awards based on our personalities and individual skills. One of the ones I got was Rookie of the Year which I was pretty pumped about!! It was also a nice chance to say goodbye to the graduating seniors, to say thank you to our advisers (one of which is leaving as well!!) and enjoy some good food. Two of my really good friends and I made a cake for the banquet that came out awesome!! Some pictures I put up are the graduating seniors, our sophomore class and the delicious cake that Lindsay, Sara and I made!!!

I don’t mean to make this short but I’m letting myself take a break tonight so I have to try and get as much done as I can today considering I still have three exams ahead of me before I can really relax and head home. Speaking of home, I’m not really sure when I plan on packing everything up…ugh. If only there were like 35 hours in a day, I would totally get everything done. Keep your fingers crossed for me!!!