11.22.2007

Happy Thanksgiving!

Yes, it's late. But happy Thanksgiving anyway! I ate waaaay too much good food today. We shared thanksgiving with a couple of families; one we were friends with, and the other we just met today. (Both are very nice.) I hope everyone enjoyed their meals, etc as much as I did!

Today reminds me of how much I am thankful for. Of course, since it is Thanksgiving, but also that I have so very much to be thankful for. I have more than I need of everything, a lot of what I want, I'm healthy, I'm getting to think about my future. I live in a country of freedom, and so many brave men and women are overseas fighting to defend us. And most important are friends, family, and God and the sacrifice he made to save me. I could easily go on. If I wrote everything I could be thankful for, Blogger would have to block my account so I wouldn't flood their servers.

After we got home from our thanksgiving linner (lunch + dinner), Thanksgiving didn't feel done. Since we all have the day off tomorrow, we decided to watch some DVDs my dad had (especially after going to the grocery store to rent Rattatoille and finding out it had just closed. Oh well. Those poor employees deserve to go home early—especially after working on a very family-oriented holiday.). On those DVDs were two episodes of The Prisoner and Stephane Grappelli. Now, the main question: Does anyone have a box set of The Prisoner I can borrow (or at least the first couple of episodes, so I get more than just the intro montage of background information)? It was really funny. (Okay, no one has to lend me their stuff. I'll track it down eventually.)

Enjoy the last couple hours of your Turkey Day!

11.04.2007

*Happy Dance*

Happy extremely belated Halloween! I'll post pictures of what I did later.

This past weekend, I got to visit Virginia Tech again, this time for a special open house/fall review program. There was an option to send in my application with my Open House/Fall Review registration, and if I did so, I would find out on the last day of the open house whether I got into Tech. So I did.

So, technically, the Fall Review part (the send-in-your-application-early part) was for minorities. Those of you who know me personally know I am as caucasian as it gets (not that skin color matters). However, I did a camp a couple of years ago for teenage girls interested in majoring in engineering. In engineering, women of any kind are minorities; I believe the ratio of men to women, on average, is something like five to one. In some fields, there are even fewer women. So technically, in engineering, I am a minority.

Virginia Tech hosted us fairly well (as opposed to our hotel, which kept us waiting for our room for a while)(but thankfully the receptionist was really nice). We had a nice buffet dinner before listening to a speaker or two and a panel of students who answered questions. The next day was the official everyone-can-come open house, and there were info sessions about different majors and the different colleges. Then came lunch.

And then we found out. Each person who had submitted his or her application early was called up individually and given a letter. We were all told to not open our letters until we got home (Dad told me to open it in the car.). After the letters were handed out, we left.

I opened my letter a few minutes after getting into the car. I had been a bit worried about my application; you always realize what you should have done in hindsight.

But I got in anyway. Dad was happy, and I called Mom and told her the news. It feels so good to know I'm already accepted to one school (the one I'll probably end up going to, no less). And this isn't early decision; it is non-binding. I can shop around. There are two or three more schools I want to apply to, but knowing I don't have to apply to a safety school will save some time.

Everytime I start thinking about college and my future career, I get excited. *mental happy dance*