Of course the weather gets messy when it just got better, and we decide to walk downtown!

Today, all we had for class was focus area which meant Journalism all day. I wrote 2 articles and then spent the rest if class talking with one of the girls in class about an interview she recently did. She interviewed a scholar here on campus and about his plans after GSP - the story he told was incredible. He has his entire life mapped out and he plans on starting out next summer by thru-hiking from Canada to Mexico. I had never heard of thru-hiking until today but it basically means hiking on/off trails through states/cities/countries and roughing it. I got the opportunity to talk to him about Into The Wild because I thought he would find the book interesting and turns out not only has he read it, but it’s one of his favorites:)

In the afternoon, we took a surprise trip to The Fuzzy Duck where we ended up spending 2 hours! Any trip to The Fuzzy Duck is a good trip. We talked about books and school and other things over fruit smoothies and iced coffee. The coffee shop is definitely one of the few things I will miss when I leave! And speaking if leaving, only 2 days left!

Tonight was also The Amazing Race, GSP version. Unfortunately, Hannah and I had to miss it, but as it turns out, when Bria came back from it, turns out the whole thing was a bust and we didn’t miss much. Guess we got lucky:)

I started working on my project to remember my time here at GSP and it’s turning out great!

Today marks the day in which, one month ago, we began our Governor’s Scholars Program experience and now, with less than 100 hours remaining, things are starting to wind down.
Besides the fact that my roommates decided to wake me up at 5:30am to go swimming/do laundry, today was a normal day.

Why today was awesome:

1. Our general studies teacher, Salome, cooked us traditional West African cuisine today in class. We had rice with a tomato/onion/habanero pepper/spinach stew on top and then for dessert we had papaya with cottage cheese. Delicious!
2. It was Salome’s birthday today! We celebrated by going into town to The Fuzzy Duck, where we treated her to a cappuccino and dark chocolate covered espresso beans. And then we went to the bakery where I proceeded to get a pretzel the size of my head :D  3. I have an awesome project idea that uses up all my quotes from GSP that I can’t wait to start.  4. Our hall went out to dinner tonight at a local Mexican restaurant called La Finca’s!
5. In Journalism, all we did was prep our table for our final banquet on Friday. Each class will sit together for dinner and they are expected to come up with a centerpiece and name tags and other things that represent their focus area. For an hours work, we did awesome! Everything we’ve done incorporates newspaper in some way and it looks awesome:)
6. This isn’t totally awesome, but it was supposed to be! Film Studies was supposed to screen their movies tonight but unfortunately, due to technical difficulties, the movies were rescheduled to Thursday. At least they weren’t cancelled completely!
7. Lastly, I finally got my letter from my best friend back home. It was just what I needed - can’t wait to see everybody!

3 days left!! (I think this last one is the most awesome of them all!)

Just, don’t forget socks! Or in my case, being only one sock instead of 2 -.- (I ended up getting 2 sizes bigger and wearing the bowling shoes with my own shoes also on my feet haha)

Today in Are You What You Eat, we finished up watching Forks over Knives which was incredible. I like to think I eat a mostly plant-based diet (I would call myself pescaterian) like the movie suggests everyone should be doing. I find it astounding how with just 5 weeks of eating such a diet, a man lowered his risk for heart disease by 48% and his cholesterol dropped by more than 125 points! We also read from Pollan’s book “Food Rules” and then went to the library to work on our projects.
Afterwards, our hall went bowling as a bonding exercise and it was crazy fun! Hopefully we do more activities like that :) it was also very fun to attempt to stop Hannah from winning ;) (although it didn’t work because she won nonetheless haha)

In Journalism, we celebrated the publication of our newspaper! Lynn took us to The Fuzzy Duck to mingle over coffee and I hit the jackpot. I FINALLY, after one and a half years, found a book I have been looking for!! It’s called “Howl” by beatnik author Allen Ginsberg and I cannot wait to devour it tonight. We did get caught in the rain on the way back though and got soaked!

Running club got cancelled because of the rain and even though there was a classic film on tonight (featuring the one and only Humphrey Bogart!!!!) I just couldn’t muster up the energy to sit still in the theatre for 2 1/2 hours. So, the rest of the night will be spent chatting in the dorm and catching up on The Walking Dead. I’m about to finish season 2 and Hannah and I just got Jessica addicted and she’s on the second episode now.

Tomorrow will be an early morning since we leave for our field trip at 8am! And, the best part is, that’s now the only field trip I will be on this week!

Also, we’re officially a published newspaper! This would be our entire newspaper crew celebrating the fact that we got published and got a review of 10/10! We also went down to The Fuzzy Duck for celebratory coffee!

Here’s the link to our website: http://kentuckyscholars.hubpages.com/hub/Kentucky-Governors-Scholar-Program-Launches-Online-Newspaper

    ((Can ya tell who the 3 show-offs of the class are?!))

You know you are going to need a triple espresso when you wake up at 5:30am just to do laundry -.- At least we were the first ones down there and got done quickly!

In Journalism, we worked on our articles for a while in the library (mine is almost finished!) but then Lynn had us attend a speech. It was lawyer who has worked for the KY Press Association and now works for the Courier Journal. He was incredibly inspirational but some of the cases he talked about were so gruesome that I couldn’t imagine being in his position.

In General Studies, we ventured downtown to explore. This pretty much meant going into all the neat coffee shops and bakeries and vintage shops. In the bakery, I bought 2 scones, a biscotti, and a pretzel the size of my HEAD all for $6! Then over at The Fuzzy Duck Coffee Shop, I bought the mug above and a neat pen. After depositing my bags in the room, Hannah and I went to read in the alley and I was actually finished my book, Into The Wild.

Last year, I read Jon Krakauer’s other book Into Thin Air and wasn’t too incredibly impressed. But man, was Into The Wild good! It basically follows the story of a hitchhiker who walked alone into the Alaskan wilderness and lost his life. There was just something about the way Krakauer displayed Chris McCandless’ character as full of this raw energy and passion even as he lay weak and dying. Never before had I heard of such dedication from a single person, so hell-bent on separating as far away from society as possible that it was just shocking and eye-opening.

At dinner, Hannah entertained me with stories she came up with on the spot telling the stories of those lucky enough to be sitting in her line if vision:) It was the warm-up performance to the big performance of the night: Showcase! This weeks was much better than the last one! We had everything from original haikus, to Spanish rap, to opera, to a tribute Backstreet Boys band that ended the night by ripping their shirts off (they got in trouble for that one!)

Unlike last week, we were not pleasantly surprised with a dance post-showcase because the executives were not pleased with our behavior at the convocation earlier this week. But have no fear! The roommates threw their own dance party in their dorm full of awkward dancing and the like!

Now, all that’s left is to sleep and tomorrow is FINALLY Family Day!

{{total random side note but the last season of Skins comes out July 1st and I could not be more pumped!!}}

Today was one if those weird days in which we had an awkward block of free time before we had our last class at 6:45pm. I started the day off with General Studies until 1:30 (with a break for lunch) and we actually were productive today! We went down to IGA Supermarket and our job was to compare food products. For example, I bet most people didn’t know heavy cream, even of it has more calories, is better than you than whipped cream because it is made of real food. Same with regular vs. flavored cream cheese. Don’t even get me started on how awful Poptarts are! Once we got back in the room, we just discussed everything we had found out. The best part was how none of the guys were phased at all and still bought their junk food :)

After lunch, we had a hall meeting and we decided we were going to participate in the next showcase! We’re going to dance with one of the guys halls to Grease’s “Summer Nights” We’ll see how that goes haha:) After we got back in the room, I had a good 4 hours before class and at first, I was only going to read for a little bit but I ended up taking a nap for an hour and a half! It was much needed - I was exhausted beyond belief.

Journalism was avoided today in that instead of having interviews, we talked about the controversial speaker instead. After that, Lynn told us about our exciting field trip tomorrow! We will be headed to Morehead News and The Fuzzy Duck for about 3 hours out of our 5 of class time. Should be a nice break from routine! After discussion fizzled out, we still had 20 minutes of class left but I feel as if Lynn figured we didn’t want to be in there so she let us leave early!

At 8:15, we went running for the second time and this time, we ran for 12 minutes and walked for 18 running a total of 2.5 miles. I felt awesome! Unfortunately, we got back at 8:55 and there was a party at 9:00. That was the only time to leave because it was off campus and we were all sweaty so we couldn’t go. Hearing from our other roommate, it was a Star Party and there were huge professional telescopes and you could see Saturn and its rings!! I’m disappointed about missing it but I’m not disappointed about running:)

Expecting a good day tomorrow - only 3 left until Family Day!