Well, today was . . .

Different:

Because I am nearly finished with my thesis, I did NOT spend the entire afternoon working on it. Instead, I ran a few errands around campus. The breeze made the otherwise pleasant weather a bit chilly. Here's what I did:
1. Dropped off my Honors Convocation form to Donna in 201 Yoakley. She is so great. If I were a better person, she would make me want to be a secretary too. Wow for helpfulness/pleasantness/just as happy person that makes me happy too! =) god, you'd think I was in love with her or something.
2. Picked up from Ms. Donna (see above, haha, like you've already forgotten, right?) a press release form for the Honors Convocation/Graduation jazz. Learned that I received the Outstanding Student Award for the Department of Foreign Languages. I think I actually jumped up and down. I think I am becoming an effervescent person. hmmm.
3. Went to the post office and mailed some insurance information to my father. Okay, I'll be specific--it was an invoice for the Physical Therapy for my knee. He offered to foot the bill and there's no way in hell I'm gonna turn down that generous of an offer.*

A Linguistics Lesson:

1. "Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana." --Groucho Marx. This was the gist of our lesson today. We linguists (yes, see how I throw myself in with all them thinkers?) like to call silly exercises like this a practice in constituencies. It proves rather amusing entertainment =)
2. Not exactly a linguistics lesson, but wierdly related. I logged on the Blackboard this morning to upload my linguistics homework and found my name staring right back at me, "Congratulations, Alyssa"** Thinking this was some weird new feature where teachers can post personal messages in the announcement section (of course, only available to that particular individual), I opened the link to discover that she made an announcement to THE ENTIRE CLASS. Why, you ask? I wondered the same thing. Anyways, it turns out that I also snagged the student award for the English Department. I guess I have much cause for jubilation . . .

An Update on Spain:

Too anxious to wait for Ms. Tillman to contact the University of Salamanca about the graduate courses, I did it myself and learned, in no uncertain terms (and rather unpleasant words) that there are no courses taught in the faculties. I suppose the irritation had something to do with the fact that I doubled-checked . . . geez. I guess I should have trusted the concise sentence "sentimos que no hay clases en las faculdades durante el verano" to mean what one should infer: that, if there are no courses in the faculties, then there could be no graduate courses. Oh well, better to be safe than sorry! I will probably never have the misfortune of meeting the person who replied and thought I was an idiot.

I have pretty much decided to combine Summer 2 and Summer 4 sessions 19 June-29 July and 29 July- 1 Sept, respectively. The overlapping date is a bit deceptive. I will actually have the week of 29 July to travel since this would be a repeat orientation in Madrid. I think they refund the difference in cost, so that's super cool of them.

I still plan to leave Chicago sometime in the second week in May (looking for the cheapest combination here) and fly over to Europe to tool around. Jewel and I are secretly planning to take over all of the European Union. shh! No, really. We are. jk
I received a rather timely e-mail from Max, the coolest German alive. We hope to meet up sometime over the summer. Plans are still awfully tentative since he doesn't know the dates of his Biochemistry internships (yes, he has more than one!!!), and I have a lot of figuring to do before I know the best combination for travel. Anyways, it is still super exciting.

On Sunday I found that it would be rather reasonable (esp. for the beginning of the travel season) to fly into Dublin and then catch a cheapie flight to Einhoven (we're talking 45 Euros, folks!). Let's hope I can get one of those flights before they sell out!!! =)

that's all for now.

*The bill and insurance stuff is all rather odd. I think they pretty much randomly selected a few dates to pay for and then left the balance for me. Remind me to never get into that screwy business.
**Clarification: she misspelled my name and I intentionally reduplicated the mistake. don't you have confidence that I know how to spell my own name?