Birthdays on Birthdays on Birthdays

Saturday was my friend Peter's 23rd birthday, so we celebrated. And today is Colby's 200th birthday! I will post pictures of that soon, I promise.

But, here are a few shots from Peter's Golden Birthday. Enjoy!

Picture taken by Peter's mom, Barbara.

Lava Cakes- Yum.

 

Tom's massive dinner.

Happy birthday, Peje!

Team Mujeres

So, watch this video:

Empowering, right? What if we could do something to help? Maybe not just girls, but people from around the world?

Last January, a group of alumni and teachers from my high school decided to do something to change the world. But that's hard when you're a college student who is trying to figure out when your next paper is due and just how much money you can spend on Ramen noodles to not be 100% broke. But, we found a small solution, and now, I'm inviting you to join.

Kiva is a website that gives out microloans to individuals around the world. The thing about microloans is this: you donate $25 that gets donated to someone like the group Siempre Unidos in Peru.

They open up a local grocery store with the money they received from Kiva, and when they start making a profit, they pay back the money they borrowed and then your $25 dollars comes back to you, and you can lend it out again to someone else who needs it. It's an awesome thing, and it's not like it's a lot of work.

If you want to join our Team Mujeres on Kiva, just sign up and search for the team. You can join or not, you can lend some money, or not, but if you want to, you could help change the world.

This post isn't sponsored by Kiva or anything, I just think that it's a great idea and is changing the world. I've had a great experience with it, and just wanted to share a little bit of it.

Have a great week, everyone!

100 Days of Colby

So, I've reached a pretty significant mile marker: I graduate from Colby in less than 100 days. Where has the time gone?? It feels like just yesterday I was arriving on campus and moving into my freshman year dorm, and the day before that I was looking into schools to attend. Crazy.

In order to commemorate these last 100 days before I'm shoved into the "real world", I've decided to take a picture a day until I graduate. I'm counting on all of you to hold me accountable, since there will probably be days when nothing exciting is happening and I have nothing to capture on film. However, even when those days come, I will note the mundane and post it here, to remember this last leg of my Colby journey.

And so, here's the first installment. Enjoy!

95 to go!

Places

Spending tons of time working in the bookstore- overtime for the start of the semester.

Foss Dining Hall

The dance studio- I'm taking a ton of dance classes so I spend an incredible amount of time here. Yay!

Around Here

Hallway Hockey

Colby Swim Meet

Broomball Champions, finally. 

Update: today it is warm, sunny, and beautiful! And, I'm almost healthy enough to go running outside! Soon, so soon.

Nemo

Winter storm Nemo found us! We didn't get hit as bad as some places south of us, but boy howdy did we get some snow and howling winds! I'm not going to lie, it was a pretty fun snow storm even if it did cause some major damage. I think we probably got over a foot of snow, but the wind piled it into HUGE drifts, so I really have no idea how much fell. Yesterday I ventured out into the storm to get pictures. Enjoy!

Pre-storm

Had to dig my car out this morning- it was a workout!

I hope you all survived Nemo!! 

Sidenote: Happy 20th birthday to my brother Peter! Congrats dude!

The Beginning of the End

Today was my last first day of classes. Weird. It's weird because for the first time in my life, I have nothing planned next. Once I graduate in May, I have no idea what to do. I'm in the process of applying to a few jobs (race car driver? musician? bartender? yeah right...), and considering grad school (maybe?), and trying to figure out where I want to live and what I want to do, and it's terrifyingly exciting.

However, in all of this worry about the future, I need to remind myself to stop and enjoy the 4 months I have left at Colby.

Like, how much I'm going to miss my friends (even though they will obviously come visit me all the time):

Or how much I'm going to miss being on my own schedule with time to go to noontime yoga or a 10:30 jog in the snow. I'm being sappy, I know. I just need to remember to sometimes stop worrying about the future and focus instead on how lucky I am for my present.

Bring it on, second semester.

Solitude

So, yesterday I did something completely out of my comfort zone (sound familiar?)- I spent the day alone. Normally, and I hate to admit this, but I don't doing things alone. I've gotten better about eating in the dining halls by myself and other little things, but yesterday I took a huge step. Yesterday I went out to a sit down lunch and then a movie, 100% alone. And let me tell you, it was LIBERATING. I had so much fun, and it was nice not being dependent on other people's schedules, and to sit where I wanted in the movie theater, and to eat lunch as slowly as I wanted.

So, overall, I would HIGHLY recommend going to lunch and a movie alone. It was an experience, and I'm glad that I did it; I might even do it again. Plus, I got to see a pretty cool movie that I would recommend to anyone:

Bonus, I think Jennifer Lawrence is amazing and I want to be her best friend.

I hope everyone had a relaxing weekend, and I will update you all once spring semester officially begins on Wednesday!