Dancing, Sculpting, Spaghetti Factory

There's about a foot of fresh snow on the ground just now. Saturday morning I went for a jog and couldn't help but drink in the beautiful sunrise against the snowy caps of the mountains and the thick blankets of snow over the leafless branches of the trees. It had all come down on Friday night - I was going with Scott from the Chinese house on a triple date to the museum of people and cultures on the south side of campus. Snow was falling thick and fast when we left, but we didn't have any trouble getting there. We enjoyed a scavenger hunt, a trivia game, and then a competition for who could make the coolest clay object. I knew immediately what I wanted to make, and Scott, although he was slightly incredulous that we would be able to do it, agreed. We made a dancing couple out of clay, and it turned out amazingly well... their dance frame was amazing! We won the most prestigious award of the evening for the Judges' choice, which was a huge almond toffee symphony bar.

Exuberantly victorious, dancing couple in hand, we foraged our way through the heavy snow to the car. All went well until we tried to make it up the slippery incline to the FLSR. The car's tires desperately needed to be changed, and before we knew it we had slipped off the road. Just as I was about to hop out to push, another car pulled over and the young man inside got to the hood before I could even open the door. In seconds we were back on the road, and we slipped and slid ourselves the rest of the way home somehow. Isn't it cool to see how people are so willing to help?

For the last part of the date we settled down to a round of Settlers of Catan, one of my favorite board games. Before the other teams had a clue of what we were up to, Scott and I had amassed ourselves a huge stock of land, resources and development cards that helped us win the game in a landslide :). It felt great... two victories in a night!

I've been doing quite a bit of dancing lately... Tuesday I introduced Brad to the Social Dance club, and taught the poor boy about 6 dances (at least the basics of them) in one night. By the end I'm sure his head hurt, but he make significant progress! He asked if we could practice again this weekend, so we settled on Sat. evening. Later in the week he texted me to ask if he could take me out to dinner afterward, which I had no objection to. 15 min. before the date started he called me to ask if I wanted to dress up a little - so he could get a feel for what the testing conditions would be like lol. I agreed, put on a skirt, and drilled him in cha cha for an hour and a half. When we got tired of that, he took me to the car and said he thought it would be nice to go to the spaghetti factory, which was awesome since I had never been there before. The food was excellent, and we talked for 3-4 hours non-stop... it was great!

Otherwise, it's hard to get up the self-discipline to do all of that school work/teaching prep that isn't due tomorrow, but I am doing really well with keeping on top of what I have...

Dinner's finally ready, so I've got to run.

Love and miss you all!

Margaret