Tag Archives: winter

Winter Wonderland

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Crazy 24 hours! Yesterday there was a ton of hype going on around campus because there was a blizzard warning in effect…as is typical for Tulsa, everyone was running around like the world was coming to an end. Tulsans don’t handle winter weather quite as well as St. Louisans do, so I didn’t take it seriously. At around 4 pm yesterday, though, after watching a news update, I realized that this could be the real deal. As a result, my roommate and I buzzed to Wal-Mart Neighborhood Market to get some food just in case we were snowed in for a while. Bad idea…there were no parking spaces, no carts, the food was literally almost gone, and we stood in line for 40 minutes to check out. It was the craziest thing I’ve ever seen! At around 11 pm last night it began thunder sleeting (literally a full thunderstorm but instead of rain it was sleet), and then I woke up this morning to 11 inches of snow on the ground. Then it kept snowing, and snowing, and snowing, and snowing, and snowing, and…you get the point. We finished up with between 14-15 inches of snow on the ground with drifts that were several feet high, and my car is completely buried. They had to shut down every highway going in and out of Tulsa, the Tulsa World didn’t publish for the first time in its history this morning, and the Hard Rock Cafe Hotel and Casino’s roof collapsed! On top of that, the roads are completely impassible and the wind was blowing like crazy! The best part of all, though? Snow day today and already a snow day announced for tomorrow. SO excited! I already went out with my roommate and took pictures of the snow earlier today–it went all the way up to my thighs, and I’m 5′9″! It was really cool, and we had fun running around campus finding the tallest snow drifts to take pictures in. The campus looks beautiful covered in snow, and it was really neat to be able to experience something this big! We broke the records for 24 hour snowfall, snowfall for a single meteorological event, snowfall for a two day period, AND snowfall for the entire month of February. Woah!

Overall, I’m really excited that I got to see history made in Tulsa! I’m sure St. Louis is going to get it even worse–my brother and sister already have school called off until Friday. So jealous. We’ll see if they get more snow than us…otherwise, I’m definitely going to be bragging big time! =) I’m excited for tomorrow, though, because all of the Greeks are going to have a HUGE snowball fight on campus. It should be fun!

I’ll update you on what happens with the rest of my week next time I write. Until then, I’ll be running around in the snow!

Talk to you soon!

Semester 8, week one!

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Every time I start to write a blog entry, I am shocked at how fast time flies by! I’m in my last semester of undergrad? For real?

The beginning of Christmas break was amazing. Finishing finals and getting ready for a month without due dates (well, kind of) was a present in and of itself! The only sad part was that we had to bid both our friends and our Christmas tree goodbye :(


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One of our farewell dinners!
At the beginning of break, I went home to see my family and old friends for a couple of weeks. All of my sisters plus my niece were able to come for Christmas and we had a delicious turkey dinner before opening our PRESENTS! I got a lot of great surprises this year! Grey’s Anatomy Season 3 soundtrack, pretty jewelry from Macy’s, and a new winter coat were some of my favorites.

And the fun didn’t stop there… the day after Christmas I took off to Germany to visit Stefan and his family for three weeks! We spent many long nights playing rummy with his parents, and I ate a million baked goods throughout the trip. For New Year’s Eve, we were in Berlin with Stefan’s brother Oli. People were shooting off fireworks everywhere! I didn’t think that was allowed in cities, but I guess it is there! There was a huge celebration at Brandenburger Tor, right down the street (the biggest New Year’s Eve celebration in the world, I believe – more than a million people!). We walked through the area earlier in the evening but had already decided to forego the crowds and have our own party. That turned out to be a good decision since I got to meet a lot of really nice people at the party!

After we had to leave Berlin, we traveled to Karlsruhe, where we stayed for two weeks. I was going to take two weeks of language classes that I enrolled myself in over two months ago… but when I arrived at the school, the secretary casually said “Oh, we cancelled that class… there weren’t enough participants!” Unable to express my anger in German, I had to act like the passive person that I am not. I ended up switching to a different class that started during my second week, and was a level higher than appropriate for me. Boo! But I have to admit, in the end it turned out better because the course hours were nice, the class was challenging, and I saved money by only doing one week of language school.

Regarding my graduate school plans, I have a new list of things to do now that I’ve submitted my first scholarship application! I have another scholarship application that is due on April 1 (right after I hear back from this first one!). Meanwhile, I have to start preparing my application for the German university I want to attend. The hardest part will be a language proficiency exam that I have to take in June. The exam is supposed to ensure that my German is good enough to understand what is going on in the University! :/

Being back at school is great so far. Although I missed the first week of the semester, catching up wasn’t as hard as I envisioned! And yesterday morning I had a great surprise as I woke up (at 6 AM… jet lag!). We have SNOW! I anxiously fired up my computer and basically stared at my e-mail for an hour and a half, hoping for a SNOW DAY e-mail… with no luck! It wasn’t so bad, since I only had two classes, and Jordan, Stef and I celebrated the snow day in my apartment with a hot cinnamon roll party! Mmmm!

Have a great weekend!

TUrkey!

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The joy of break is slowly fading, due to the stress of finals approaching. Going home to Houston for a week was much needed, and seeing my family and dogs were great. I always have a good time cooking the turkey for my family, and I owe my brother fudge this Christmas since I didn’t have time to make him any during this trip. Seeing old friends and teachers from high school was also a nice pick-me-up to help stay motivated as I returned to the reality of college. The couple of weeks ahead to finish out the semester are jammed packed with both fun and academic events.
Tri Delta is having our philanthropy event, all-you-can-eat pancakes basically throughout the night. The proceeds are for St. Jude, and the pancakes will be LEGIT. Preparing for the event has been memorable, including chalking the campus with my sisters in the what I think is freezing cold. Native of Houston, this weather has been outrageous. For proof to that previous statement, I went to class in 27 degrees this morning so getting out of bed was a struggle. Not yet sure how I will handle these ice storms people speak of!
Organizations are hosting their Christmas parties, and one I am especially looking forward to is bowling with TEMSA. Also, Tri Delt formal is quickly approaching, yet I am no way near ready for it to happen. Campus is buzzing with holiday cheer, especially on the “U,” considering Christmas lights are wrapped around every tree branch, and on buildings in TU Blue. Every night I walk back I put something else on my holiday to-do list during break, including gingerbread house making, sleep, sleep, and more sleep.

VEGAS!!

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from student blogger Quinn…

Okay…so I told you that I would be back with details of my Vegas experience, which was awesome! My friend Isaac, originally from Tulsa, drove to Tulsa for the holidays and had to head back to California (where he works). So we decided to take a road trip. We knew this wouldn’t be an easy trip. Considering the fact that four guys were in a car for about a day straight and the fact that I’m 6′4 spending the most of the car ride in the back seat of a 3 series didn’t make it the most enjoyable experience. However, all of that well was worth it.

I flew into Oklahoma City the night before we headed to Vegas. Isaac drove to OKC and we headed out. The trip went well and we probably listened to almost every song in my iPod, but luckily Isaac had an 80 GB almost at capacity that we played for the remainder of the trip. When we hit Arizona it started snowing pretty bad. We never thought that it would slow us down, but it got to point where had to actually pull over. So we pulled over at about 4 am at some gas station past Flagstaff and decided to take a nap. Not my idea, but hey it happened. At some point Isaac must have woken up and taken this picture.

We awoke about an hour later and got back on the road. It still was snowing, but not as bad. We had finally started seeing Vegas exits and made a detour to check out the Hoover Dam. This was my first time there and it was actually pretty cool. I can now scratch that off my bucket list.

Within an hour we had finally made it to Vegas! We got to the hotel and met up with our friend who had flown in. We didn’t waste time sleeping, but quickly hit the strip. We didn’t stay out too long because we had to rest up before our night began. Later that night was New Year’s Eve and we had John Mayer Trio tickets. I had never seen the Trio live, but I love their music and their performance was also. As midnight came around we got an added bonus as Bob Saget came out along Jeffrey Ross to do a little stand up. It was a great way to bring in the New Year.

For the rest of the trip we got to experience the Vegas nightlife and went to the Beatles LOVE Cirque de Soleil show. This was amazing! I had listened to the Beatles music before, but after watching this show I am now definitely fan. The last couple of days we hung out with some UT friends who had stopped in Vegas before heading to Pasadena for the National Championship. Overall, the trip was great and I didn’t lose any money gambling!

2010 Already?!

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from student blogger Quinn…

Okay so I haven’t blogged in a while and so much has happened in these past couple of months at TU. School and extracurricular activities have been keeping me pretty busy. In December, SA had an ice rink set up outside of Bayless Plaza. It was a pretty cool set up. There was even fake snow and hot chocolate and cookies were served. I was pretty sad when I found out that they didn’t have my size in skates. However, Santa showed up later that evening too. Santa and I got a chance to hang out earlier in the day in ACAC when he was chilling in sleigh with his helper.

Finals weren’t too bad for me considering that I only had two. So I was actually done with finals a week earlier than most people, but I decided to stay in Tulsa for an extra week to work on an extracurricular project and hang out with friends. I wasn’t too productive on the project though so I decided to head home after staying a week.

Being back in St. Louis was awesome! I got to see friends and family who I hadn’t seen in almost a year. I actually won’t be returning to St. Louis until November because my internship and Spring Break plans (I’ll fill you in on those later). My stay in St. Louis was shortened because I went to Vegas for a week ! I’ll talk about that trip more in my next post so stay tuned!