** Fall Weekend **

Another great weekend!!! Last week was week 7. That may not mean anything to you yet, but if you come to Hiram it will. Hiram has a cool set up for there semesters. Instead of a normal 15 week semester, we have a 12/3 program. We take an average class load of three classes during the 12 week and one class during the three week. I am really looking forward to the three week parts, but I’ll talk more about that when it comes. The semesters are somewhat intense, but isn’t that what Hiram is all about? My classes are definitely moving along, as you can tell by how stressed I seemed about my chem. test. At the end of the 7th week, we get a fall weekend. We have no class on Thursday or Friday. Most students go home, and for students that live far away, this is often their first trip home. I absolutely loved it. It was so wonderful, first of all to have a shortened school week, but most of all to have the time off. I went home and spent the majority, ok basically the whole weekend, with my boyfriend. I was really in the mood to celebrate autumn this year. I never really had a favorite season before, but this year I decided it is fall. The campus is really pretty in the fall, which first put me in the mood. But I was really in the mood to take advantage of the apples & pumpkins & fall goodies time of year. I got online and looked for different festivals. I found some cute ones around here, but Zak wasn’t up for any of them. My favorite would be the apple butter festival. We decided to spend the weekend home instead. To keep in line with my fall festiveness, we went to my uncle’s fruit farm and got pumpkins. We then proceeded to spend our Friday night drinking apple cider and carving pumpkins. My mom cooked us wonderful meals all weekend! I have gone home a lot, probably at least every other weekend. But this weekend made me realize exactly how much I missed being home. I miss my mom – she is like my best friend and it is hard to be away from her. I miss how cozy my home is. I miss having quite time. It was nice to wake up and have the whole morning to myself, in a completely quite and deserted house while my mom was at work. I miss good food. It’s amazing how my mom can make like one thing for dinner with two side dishes, and it is sooooo much better than Hiram’s 25 different options. I came back and spent most of today being sad and frustrated. I sometimes feel that my dorm is my bedroom/closet/bathroom/kitchen. I miss having a whole house. I am so much more relaxed at home. Sometimes I get stressed just by walking into my dorm because of how little it is. This is my little home. One little mess makes the whole room look messy. I just get frazzled about all the things I have to do – clean, homework, call this person, do that. I just haven’t found that system that works for me yet. I need to get into a grove; develop a schedule. Being home was such a contrast to this. I had to consciously stop dissing the dorm and stop telling myself that a home is better. I do like the dorm, it’s just a bit of an adjustment. It really helps that I still have very supportive people around me, namely my mom and Zak. I’m sure eventually I will love being here more than at home.