Once a Freshman, Always a Freshman?

Here I am: 12:10. Sitting on my newly made college bed, ecstatic for my next year of school. I have been in training all week, and finally I have been able to relax with an unpacked room. It's beautiful. A little bit bigger than last year, but in all honestly -- pretty small. My things are neat (other than wall decorations) but there's still not enough room despite the bigger room.

I am so excited for school to start. I want the freshman to move in already, so I can introduce myself and get them ready for a spectacular year. I have Hall President. It is my job to spearhead the Hall Government and ensure that our Residence Hall is an efficient community. I am not an RA, as my job is to include the residents into the Hall Government.

Freshman Halls are known for being rowdy, my only hope is that I can separate myself as a sophomore resident but not seen as different because I am Hall President. The bottom line: I'm a resident. I don't want another freshman year, but I want to be equal too.

I am sure it'll be successful, but hopefully I can focus on my academics despite my strenuous (but rewarding) extracurricular! I'm already at a time crunch and finding conflicts left and right!

Read The Observer's Top 100 Novels of All Time

As a bit of a literary fanatic, let's see how far I have come to reading the Top 100 Novels of All Time. I have decided I liked this list better because it included novels not of the 21st and 20th century. Let's get started, shall we?

Read The Observer's Top 100 Novels of All Time

1. Don Quizote Miguel De Cervantes
2. Pilgrim's Progress John Bunyan
3. Robinson Crusoe Daniel Defoe   
1. It was an adolescent version, but it definitely counts!
4. Gulliver's Travels Jonathan Swift 
5. Tom Jones Henry Fielding 
6. Clarissa Samuel Richardson
7. Tristram Shandy Laurence Sterne 
8. Dangerous Liaisons Pierre Choderlos De Laclos 
9. Emma Jane Austen
1. Saw the play, loved the play.
10. Frankenstein Mary Shelley 
11. Nightmare Abbey Thomas Love Peacock
12. The Black Sheep Honore De Balzac
13. The Charterhouse of Parma Stendhal 
14. The Count of Monte Cristo Alexandre Dumas  
15. Sybil Benjamin Disraeli 
16. David Copperfield Charles Dickens 
17. Wuthering Heights Emily Bronte 
18. Jane Eyre Charlotte Bronte 
1. Technically I never got through the last 100 pages, need to work on that.
19. Vanity Fair William Makepeace Thackeray
20. The Scarlet Letter Nathaniel Hawthorne 
1.  I would have enjoyed it more if I had not read it in school
21. Moby-Dick Herman Melville 
22. Madame Bovary Gustave Flaubert 
23. The Woman in White Wilkie Collins 
24. Alice's Adventures In Wonderland Lewis Carroll 
1. Great book but a disturbing childhood favorite.
   
25. Little Women Louisa M. Alcott 
1.  Beautiful on so many levels, I loved this novel!
   
26. The Way We Live Now Anthony Trollope 
27. Anna Karenina Leo Tolstoy  
28. Daniel Deronda George Eliot  
29. The Brothers Karamazov Fyodor Dostoevsky 
30. The Portrait of a Lady Henry James 
31. Huckleberry Finn Mark Twain  
32. Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde Robert Louis Stevenson 
33. Three Men in a Boat Jerome K. Jerome  
34. The Picture of Dorian Gray Oscar Wilde 
35. The Diary of a Nobody George Grossmith 
36. Jude the Obscure Thomas Hardy 
37. The Riddle of the Sands Erskine Childers 
38. The Call of the Wild Jack London 
39. Nostromo Joseph Conrad 
40. The Wind in the Willows Kenneth Grahame  
41. In Search of Lost Time Marcel Proust 
42. The Rainbow D. H. Lawrence 
43. The Good Soldier Ford Madox Ford 
44. The Thirty-Nine Steps John Buchan 
45. Ulysses James Joyce 
46. Mrs Dalloway Virginia Woolf 
47. A Passage to India E. M. Forster 
48. The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald 
49. The Trial Franz Kafka 
50. Men Without Women Ernest Hemingway  
51. Journey to the End of the Night Louis-Ferdinand Celine  
52. As I Lay Dying William Faulkner 
53. Brave New World Aldous Huxley 
54. Scoop Evelyn Waugh 
55. USA John Dos Passos 
56. The Big Sleep Raymond Chandler 
57. The Pursuit Of Love Nancy Mitford   
58. The Plague Albert Camus 
    
59.  Nineteen Eighty-Four George Orwell 
60. Malone Dies Samuel Beckett 
61. Catcher in the Rye J.D. Salinger  
62. Wise Blood Flannery O'Connor  
63. Charlotte's Web E. B. White  
64. The Lord Of The Rings J. R. R. Tolkien 
65. Lucky Jim Kingsley Amis 
66. Lord of the Flies William Golding 
1. Terribly sexist book, I have read it (unfortunately).
   
67. The Quiet American Graham Greene 
68. On the Road Jack Kerouac 
69. Lolita Vladimir Nabokov  
70. The Tin Drum Gunter Grass 
71. Things Fall Apart Chinua Achebe 
72. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie Muriel Spark 
73. To Kill A Mockingbird Harper Lee 
74. Catch-22 Joseph Heller 
75. Herzog Saul Bellow 
76. One Hundred Years of Solitude Gabriel Garcia Marquez 
77. Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont Elizabeth Taylor 
78. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy John Le Carre 
79. Song of Solomon Toni Morrison  
80. Bottle Factory Outing Beryl Bainbridge 
81. The Executioner's Song Norman Mailer  
82. If on a Winter's Night a Traveller Italo Calvino 
83. A Bend in the River V. S. Naipaul 
84. Waiting for the Barbarians J.M. Coetzee 
85. Housekeeping Marilynne Robinson 
86. Lanark Alasdair Gray 
87. The New York Trilogy Paul Auster  
88. The BFG Roald Dahl 
89. The Periodic Table Primo Levi 
90. Money Martin Amis 
91. An Artist of the Floating World Kazuo Ishiguro  
92. Oscar And Lucinda Peter Carey 
93. The Book of Laughter and Forgetting Milan Kundera 
94. Haroun and the Sea af Stories Salman Rushdie
95.  La Confidential James Ellroy 
96. Wise Children Angela Carter 
97. Atonement Ian McEwan  
98. Northern Lights Philip Pullman 
99. American Pastoral Philip Roth 
100. Austerlitz W. G. Sebald 

I thought I was a lot more versed in literature, but this is only one list of "top novels"!

Get My Beauty License

Funny story: My mother has never been interested in makeup, fashion, or hair. While all the other littler girls had fabulous fashionista mom's shopping at Limited Too, we were shopping at Target -- and the stuff never was cute (no offense to my mother, her fashion sense has always been fine, just not the vogue reader). She claims it's because her mom was beautiful and loved fashion and makeup. She says that it was a bit of silent rebellion for her. That and before conditioner there was nothing my mom could do to tame her curls but keep them afro short. Anyway, my silent rebellion (though I had a real rebellion too) was through fashion. I have always adored everything fashion and hair related. However, since both fashion and hair are more difficult to maintain (I can barely afford to get my hair cut and died once a year, not to mention every six weeks. Let alone Jimmy Choos, a Birkin Bag, or Dolce & Gabbana sunglasses) I have turned to make-up. Although every so often I splurge at Sephora and pow through my pay check, I feel that I am able to prim the one thing I have the most control over: my face. Let's face it, I do not have the patience to do my hair the exact way I want it (straight or completely un-frizzy) every day, or even the stamina to work out twice a day and get that banging bod. So, my face: that's my pallet and that's what I am good at.

Anyway, I am naturally great with makeup (funny because my mother doesn't exactly know the difference between an eye pencil and a bro pencil -- there's not much of a difference, but still). I do it for myself all the time, my friends ask me to do it all the time, even my mom asks me to do it once in a blue moon. So I'm good at it. But I'm not good enough at it. I want to know the best products to use, the science of it, and learn more skills. I want a license. Plus, I think it would make excellent college cash. The problem: It's expensive and time consuming.

Wish me luck!

P.S. Enough with bashing my mother, I love her to death and am going to miss her when I go back to school (tomorrow)!

Visit all 194 Countries

A few months ago the UN declared South Sudan a sovereign nation, and with that I am yet another country away to reaching my goal of: visiting all 194 countries. I realize this goal is more of for show in tell, but I really want to travel the world. From a young age it has always excited me.

Today, as we were eating frozen yogurt, my mom was recalling our visit to Paris twelve years ago. She said that I loved to talk to people, anyone. She said I would walk up to random people in the street, say "bonjour" open up my phrase book in order to begin a full fledged conversation with them. She is right, I love people. I love talking to people. I love learning about people. And thus, I want to see people from all 194 countries (obviously there are many people that should have countries, but do not, though that's another issue entirely). Anyway, I would like to mention that my mother lost my favorite French phrase book on the top of the Eiffel tower twelve years ago. Part of me has never forgiven her, if you find it I will be forever grateful.

As far as the countries I have been to, I have been to twenty-three. I know it's twenty-three but I'm sure i have left some out:

Countries Traveled

1. United States
2. The Bahamas
3. Virgin Islands
4. England
5. France
6. Mexico
7. Spain
8. Italy
9. The Netherlands
10. Greece
11. Germany
12. Ireland
13. China
14. Japan
15. Israel
16. Jamaica
17. Panama
18. Costa Rica
19. Nicaragua
20. Guatemala
21. Taiwan
22. Vietnam

P.S. I know there are more, and not all of these are in the 194. I'll add more when I think of them! Oh, and do the Palestinian Territories count?!

Cinnamon's Bucket List

Inspired by Alice's Bucket List, and realizing that I have not been posting as much as I should, I have decided to publicize and (hopefully) keep track of my own life goals. If you did not know already, I have a very addictive personality. When I think of something I want to do, I have to do it -- no matter what. I then obsess over this idea, for a while, but this idea often disappears for a while. It's kind of like this: I start things but don't always finish. Hopefully this bucket list can keep track of the goals I have started, and inspire me to finish them.

I am going to keep a master list of all the items in my bucket list, here for now. When I add something new, I'll create a new post about the new item in my bucket list. Off we go!

CINNAMON'S BUCKET LIST

 Visit All 194 Countries
Get My Beauty License 
Marry Someone I Am In Love With
Become Fluent in Hebrew
Climb Mount Everest
Go Swimming with Sharks
Learn How to Scuba Dive
Finish my College Degree(s)
Join The Sorority Best for Me
Go Sky Diving
Find A Time-capsule
Ride a Motorcycle
Go Skinny Dipping (Modestly, if possible)
Have a Garden Full of Flowers
Be in a Film
Go on a Safari
Ride First Class
Experience Weightlessness
Sell My Own Professional Painting 
Learn to Belly Dance
Learn to Drive Stick Shift
Read The Observer's Top 100 Novels of All Time
Watch the Ball Drop at Midnight in NYC
See IMDB's Top 100 Movies of All Time

Friends Come and Go

As time goes on you realize a thing or two about friendship. For one, friends grow apart. As people move on to different places in their life, the likelihood of one spending time with a friend either increases or decreases. And for people like me who are not good at keeping in touch with people, time spent often decreases.

It's a given that I won't keep in touch with all my friends back home who are living 3000 miles away, but not keeping in touch with friends at school is pathetic. For example, my absolute best friend from last semester (we used to be attached at the hip) and I never talk. She begged me to take a class with her and while I am so glad I took the class, we never talk. She is so much more interested in talking to her new friends in the class than catching up or hanging out. And of course, I get that. But it's kind of annoying how I feel like I've been trying to make an effort to reach out and talk to her and that it hasn't been reciprocated.

Last semester she spent every weekend in my dorm hanging out with me, this weekend she spends a lot of time here too -- but with her other friends. It's not as if she can't have friends, or that she has to hang out with me (I didn't ask her to come to my dorm and go out or anything) but she could have at least said "hi." But rather, she calls me in her intoxicated state begging me to go down to her friends room on the second floor and find her keys and wallet that she lost. To which I annoyingly obliged (I was studying) and the door was of course locked. I don't mind doing favors for her, just that I feel like she only talks to me when she needs something. I think that she legitimately cares about her friendship but we're drifting apart and I feel like this always happens to me. I always drift. I constantly drift.

We were best friends last semester, now we're barely friends. I'd like to think that I could call her if I ever had a problem, but I feel like I barely know her enough to do that. Plus, that's the place for a best friend. A title that we don't carry for each other anymore.

Sometimes I wonder why people drift apart. Sure, people grow up. People don't spend as much time with each other. But if you legitimately cared about each other in the first place, wouldn't you be the first to call and catch up?

Following Fads Has Never Been So Fun

Once upon a time. I despised twitter. I didn't understand why people wanted to know when Kim Kardashian was taking a dump or when Miley Cyrus was getting her hair done. Needless to say, I was wrong. Twitter is amazing. No. Beyond amazing. Now I can talk about all the insignificant things I feel like posting on Facebook... on twitter. Rather than having to find a friend who will put up with my annoying tangents, or going on my blog and posting for hours, or even posting on my Facebook where nobody cares. There's twitter.

And, I can actually follow politicians. Yes, that's right. I got twitter to follow politician, not to hear about the Kardashian's dumps. (Seriously. I'm so sick of them - and glad I left California). I get to hear about all the interesting things happening with AIPAC, my congress people, and even Obama Singing! Plus, I follow the Queen of England. Obviously she doesn't follow me, she doesn't follow anyone. But I get to hear about Pippa... and I am getting way too excited about everything.

Anyway. That and stumbleupon were the two recent fads that I refused to follow, and now that I've hopped on the bandwagon -- I'm obsessed. Only, I hope Twitter won't turn into a Tumblr disaster - I was so obsessed with Tumblr once upon a time, and now mine is as deserted as the Arctic.

What are the fads that you're (surprisingly) in love with?

What's Your Color?

Let me just say, I had one of the best weekends ever. I spent it up in the wilderness below the trees, and it was beyond gorgeous and fun. As part of a Leadership class that I am taking this semester, I went on a retreat. It was a bonding experience for all thirty-eight of us.

My favorite part of the retreat was probably the "Colors." We took a quiz that identified which colors we were. And I was pleasantly surprised. Generally I have been identified as a "Blue." But this time I thought I'd end up "Gold." Rather, I got what I generally get - "Orange."

Now let's identify the colors

BLUE: Intuned with emotions and feelings, intuitive, caring, optimistic, good communicator, motivational, outgoing, dramatic, passionate, fun, talkative, confident.

ORANGE: Go getter, charasmatic, spontaneous, playful, fun, here and now, risk taker, completive, action oriented, resilient, challenges, enjoys outdoors, multitasker.

GOLD: Respects rules, faithful, prepared, efficient, dependability, family oriented, practical, organized, timely, orderly, punctual, schickler.

GREEN: Accurate, careful, change-oriented, thorough, inventive, persistent, un-bias, enjoys quiet and being along, logical, inventive.

Now looking at these main characteristics, you can probably figure out which category you fit in. But you might be pleasantly surprised. For me at least, I find that I am such a spectrum of colors. For example, I am a total Orange in that I am confident, fun, adventurous, and loud buuuttt, emotion is such a huge part of my life. Also, I am hyper-organized and on top of things which is a huge aspect of gold. Lastly, I ask questions like crazy (which is green). My friends always make fun of me for asking so many questions about everything and their lives. I never grew out of my "why" stage, just figured out how to ask questions that beat around the "why" bush.

So, what color are you?

XOXO,
Cinnamongirl

Up and At 'Em

Everyone always tells you that you have so much time in college. This is a lie. It generally applies to the people who socialize, party, sleep, eat, go to class, and get involved in a couple or organization. But this is not the case for me. Rather I find myself running around campus all day, only to get back with enough time to eat, shower, and sleep - barely. And the said part is that the semester has yet to begin and I still do not have enough time to breathe.

But I guess you can say that I'm one of those people that feed on being busy. But if there is one thing this overachiever cannot stand, is lazy people - or people that just don't care. For that reason I have found myself slowly distancing myself from people who are not as up and at 'em as I am. And for whatever reason, that is the case - and I have lowered my vast list of friends to maybe a couple people that I care about greatly.

I love college I really do. And as part of the Spring semester I am hoping that I can continue to express myself on this not so active blog. Thanks for listening as I vent.

I'm trying to think of something clever and witty to say, but then I remember that I am not clever or witty. All I am is too pale for my own good. Which reminds me that last night as my friends and I were getting ready for the usual pre-class festivities, I piled on my bronzer and stood for photos. But rather get tan on my visit to Florida, I got whiter. And my photos can be identified by the white ghost. An Oreo. Because anyone who stands next to me looks black.

Speaking of sandwiches... I'm hungry.

Until next time,
XOXO Cinnamon Girl!