Graduation!

I am now officially a college graduate! Here are some photos my lovely siblings took from the weekend.

 Me receiving my diploma from the dean of the School of Philosophy, Dr. McCarthy.

 Me receiving my University Scholar award from President Garvey.

 Our awesome university mace bearer, Dr. Druart, who was also my academic adviser for two years.

 Me in the procession in.

 My father in the procession in. See the hat? We gave it to him for his birthday.

 Me and J.

 Me and my friend Annie.

 Me and Kevin.

Almost all the soon-to-be graduates of the School of Philosophy, waiting to process in. This picture was taken by the university photographer, not by siblings.

The weather was lovely, and it was a great day. Terrible traffic on the Beltway meant that we didn't get into South Bend until 2:30 in the morning, but we persevered through it all. I will post the pictures from Teresa's graduation in a separate post.

Spring is coming

I don't have meteorological proof for that, really, but I have felt so much more cheerful in the past two days. I have way more energy, and was even described as "bubbly" by my mother. The grey of winter tends to leave me feeling sapped and depressed, and the little bit of sun we have been getting lately is a lovely change.

I am busily working away at finding a job. If anyone knows of a company in the DC area that wants to hire someone with a PhB in philosophy, let me know! Or if anyone wants to hire Kevin as a Greek or Latin teacher, that would be great too. Haha. I am remaining optimistic that we will find something--it's way too early to be freaking out.

Nothing is really going on around here that is terribly interesting. I am the only member of my family who has not thrown up in the last three days, and so I am trying very hard to not interact with them much so that I don't get sick.

Hopefully something more interesting will happen soon. Perhaps I will go on a photo walk--the blog has been kind of short of photos lately, I think.

7 quick takes, vol 23: impending doom

--- 1 ---

Ok, so impending doom is a little over-dramatic. But Comprehensive exams start Monday and go until Wednesday. I hate taking tests, and tests that cover four years of accumulated knowledge are even worse.

--- 2 ---

Also, I'm sick. Yesterday I threw up at work, and today I am staying home from work and resting. I don't plan to change out of my pajamas or get out of bed more than necessary. I don't feel super bad, but I need to get better quickly. (See comps, above.)

--- 3 ---

To go along with comps, it looks like there is another storm coming. At last check of the Capital Weather Gang, it's still not clear whether we will have rain, sleet, or snow. Of course, I'm worried that it will be snow and that school will shut and comprehensive exams will be delayed.

--- 4 ---

Also, for the less liturgically aware, or who just haven't put two and two together, the last day of tests is on Ash Wednesday. ASH WEDNESDAY! I hate fast and abstinence days enough as it is, and now I have to deal with a test as well?

--- 5 ---

Ok, so things look very bad. Comps, in the snow, while starving and throwing up. Luckily, I have some good things to look forward to after comps are over. Besides the obvious, I mean, namely that comps will be over.

--- 6 ---

I have almost no class next week, because on any day that there is comps, you are excused from all philosophy classes. Also senior seminar is canceled that week. So I have one seminar Monday night, and one humanities class Thursday morning. I intend to spend Thursday afternoon tidying my room and preparing it for Teresa to come home for Spring break.

--- 7 ---

Then, spring break! I will be visiting Kevin's family and helping his mother sew costumes for his little sister's cheerleading team. I am really looking forward to it. So not everything's bad...but I do have to get through comps.

For more Quick Takes, visit Conversion Diary!

7QT, vol. 22: snow days!

--- 1 ---

Wow. The federal goverment is opening, albeit late, and we are closed. I can't remember the last time anything in DC was open and we were shut. Our people in charge like to keep classes running! And now we have two days off in a row. My theory is that we shut because Metro isn't running the metrobuses on anything close to a normal schedule.

--- 2 ---

I love the four-day weekend. I am going to get so much done, and catch up on everything I fell behind in last week (not sure what happened there). I realize it's not so good for other people, though. The show at CUA which was supposed to run Thursday-Sunday was canceled last night and will probably now be canceled tonight. And missing out of two whole days of work in the costume shop is going to cripple the next show.

--- 3 ---

I have to admit that I haven't ventured out into the snow yet. I realize I am not that old, but I find temperature changes harder and harder to deal with the older I get. At some point today I will probably brave it outdoors, if only to take some pictures.

--- 4 ---

Oh yeah, and Happy Valentine's Day!  It's one of my least favorite holidays, if only because I think it's so stupid and the candy is usually not very good.

--- 5 ---

Kevin came home with me Wednesday night, for the purposes of playing in the snow with my siblings. Now he'll never get back to campus! Haha.

--- 6 ---

Of course, while he like spending time with my family, and they like spending time with him, that meant that he had to miss the Dominican Rite Mass at the D-House because the roads were not looking good and we didn't want to risk it. Had he stayed on campus, he could have just walked.

--- 7 ---

Ok then. I heard rumors of pancakes floating around last night, so I am off to investigate those. Stay safe, everyone who was hit by this storm!

For more Quick Takes, visit Conversion Diary!

March for Life

That was a cold day. My goodness.

 This year, I marched with the Dominicans instead of with CUA, as their schedule worked better for me. I traveled to the Mall with the friars and priests, but wound up marching with the Nashville sisters, in order to march alongside my dear friend who joined last year.

 We were closer to the stage than I have ever been before. Knowing OPs has its perks, let me tell you.

 Crowds, crowds, crowds. Apparently the crowd was quite small this year, which is hardly surprising. I honestly don't know if I've ever been as cold as I was today.

 Many buses got canceled because of snowy conditions. The roads around DC were a total mess Tuesday night.

Some people, of course, see in the low turnout a sign that the pro-life movement is waning. I do not think that is the case. The crowd is younger every year, and our spirits were high despite the cold.

 There was singing, dancing, chanting, and praying as we marched along.

 The counter protesters were not willing to brave the weather. My sister said she saw only two. I didn't see any.

 Fulton Sheen in Dutch! There were a lot of groups from other countries, including the Netherlands, Italy, Canada, Scotland, and Argentina.

 The crowd coming up the hill.

 His flag says, "Appeal to Heaven!"

A CUA sign! The worst part of not marching with CUA was not getting to carry one of their signs.

This March made me feel more hopeful about our chances of ending abortion than any March yet. We were happy and cheerful despite the cold. We are determined. We will not give up!

As I posted on Twitter this morning: Pain is a constant reminder you're still alive, but 1/3 of my generation isn't. #whywemarch

7 QT, Volume 18

--- 1 ---

Starting today, I am using Jen's template. I am not sure why I never started using it before, but when I realized it included the link back to her blog, which I always forget, I was sold.

--- 2 ---

Classes and finals are all over! I have not received any final grades yet, but I am anxiously awaiting them. At least one is going to be lower than I had hoped, but I don't know what I could have done differently. My classmates and I felt like the grading standards changed from assignment to assignment. Oh well.

--- 3 ---

Coming up is a nice long break. I intend to spend it productively. I have a long list of things I would like to get done, and I am going to pick a few and make serious progress on them. I hope so, anyway. On today's to-do list is clean my room and go to Confession.

--- 4 ---

Speaking of Confession, for my birthday (which is actually tomorrow), Kevin gave me a book about making a good Confession, which I sorely need, and a book called How To Pray the Dominican Way. Those of you who know me in real life may know that I am slightly obsessed with the Dominicans, so I am really looking forward to reading it!

--- 5 ---

I am making decent progress on Christmas presents. I have several ready to go, and several more than need work. If I follow through on my goal of sewing a lot of them, I have some busy days ahead of me. But I think it will work out. After Christmas, I will post pictures of the things I sewed.

--- 6 ---

Can I just say, making a wedding registry is weird? I have an aversion to gift lists, although I usually wind up being asked for them because I am a hard person to shop for. I get that. But the wedding registry seems strange. Not, "we will need some glasses," but "these glasses, right here!" I guess that makes other people's lives easier, and some of the glasses that exist are very ugly, but it still feels weird and greedy.

--- 7 ---

If you are reading this and coming to my wedding, feel free to ignore or be inspired by the registry. Or just not give a present. Also, the invitations haven't gone out, so if you haven't got one, don't stress. Also, the registry is hidden because it's not really done at all. So I don't know why I'm talking about people who haven't been invited yet buying things off a registry which no one can see. I should probably just stop talking.

For more Quick Takes, visit Conversion Diary!

I'm engaged!

I got engaged last Wednesday!

Everyone always wants to hear the story, so here it is.

We went to Mass. We left, and on the way to the car, under a beautiful oak tree (which we couldn't see because the sun had set already), Kevin asked, "Will you marry me?" Of course I said yes!

My ring is silver with an amethyst. I'm not really a diamond person, but my favorite color is purple, so Kevin decided to get a purple ring instead. (I don't wear gold.) And no, I'm not sure why my skin looks like an elephant's ankles.

Inside, it says "friendship which has been set on fire" in ancient Greek.

We're hoping to be able to pull off a double wedding with my twin sister next summer.

I am so organized!

It's not even Advent yet, and I already have all but one Christmas present planned. I don't know who of my family reads my blog, so I won't say what they are, but I am quite pleased with myself anyway. A lot of them are hand made, so they will probably be slow in the making, but my goal is to get all the bought ones bought by the time Advent begins.

However, all is not sunshine and roses over here. I am halfway done a paper due tomorrow, which I had really hoped would be done by now. Also, yesterday I got a paper back. I misspelled my professor's name all the way through. How humiliating. I guess this is God's way of keeping me humble!

Just about four or five more weeks of balancing schoolwork with regular life, and hopefully next semester will be a little bit less crazy. Hopefully.

7QT, Volume 16

Wow, it has been a few months since I participated in this link up! For my seven quick takes, I'll do seven photos.

 Halloween! I am a deviled egg. Kevin is a soul in purgatory.

 Fall is my favorite season. Yesterday I went walking around campus taking pictures.

 Tricolor trees! After taking biology freshman year, I now know how this works.

 I think they have to plant these beautiful bushes across from the school of architecture because it is so ugly.

 These are near the Nursing-Biology building.

 (At CUA, we have a biology building and a nursing building. The building in between them is called Nursing-Bio. Someone was super creative there.)

Here's the one that got away. I only had my phone, and it couldn't focus without any natural light. This could have been such a cool shot, with the Shrine in the background and the green and orange leaves with the CUA banner. I may go back tonight and try to retake this shot.

Rome, Day 2

To catch up, I'm going to have to post a little more frequently. Don't expect this to continue!

 I think the Rome metro looks like a tapeworm. I'm sorry. It does.

 Pope Leo, founder of CUA, hanging out in St. John Lateran. Is there a reason he always looks like he's playing with an invisible yo-yo? I would like to know.

 So much gold! Why exactly we went to Mass at St. John on the feast of St. Peter and St. Paul is not clear to me, but apparently it's a Holy Day of Obligation in Rome, so it's a good thing we went, even if we picked a strange church to do it in.

 On our way to another church, we saw this trail through the straw that a bunch of ants had made.

 This is Santa Cruce, I believe. It's hard for me to tell because I have no pictures from inside it.

 Kevin, reading the map. A common occurrence.

 I forget which church this is, but it is covered in mosaics so I automatically love it.

 St. Sophie, virgin and martyr! My self-adopted patron saint. Her relics are in a little church in Rome near St. Mary major.

 See that underground basement part? That's where the relics were kept. We couldn't find them, so we had to ask a Benedictine (in Italian!) who unlocked it for us and let us go down. Don't be worried by the lit candles. We didn't interrupt Mass; they were setting up for a baptism.

 Cardinal Wuerl's church was unfortunately shut.

St. Paul outside the Walls is my favorite church ever. I will let the pictures speak for themselves.

 The pictures fail to do it justice, really. It's so large, and so gold, and so overwhelming.

 The Forum.

The Colosseum! Photo credit goes to a kind fellow tourist.

Wow, I got all of day two into one post! Let me tell you, it was an exhausting day. We saw tons of churches I didn't take pictures of and walked miles and miles.

Next up: Sunday!

So far behind! Rome, Day 1

On blogging, that is. In terms of schoolwork, the library books I ordered come in tomorrow and I am going to print out my online articles today, so I'm in good shape there. I hope. Due to IES program requirements, I have to turn in my paper five weeks early, so I can only hope that in two weeks I can get a paper up to the standards for a paper everyone else has seven weeks to write. But what can't be cured must be endured, and I am resigned to the (very real) possibility that I may well not get an A in this class.

I still haven't posted the Rome pictures, and I went to Berlin and those pictures aren't even sorted. So here, without further ado, is a substantial dump of Rome pictures. I think it will take several posts to get through them, so here is day 1.

We arrived on Friday at about 2, and went to go check into our hostel. I had been worried about it, because the internet reviews were not stellar, but let me tell you, it was great. For 20E/night, I have zero complaints.

 This is Kevin's favorite bridge in Rome. Perhaps he will be so kind as to remind me in the comments of what it is called.

 First view of the Vatican! We followed the advice of a CUA philosophy professor--if you come at St. Peter's from one stop farther than the tourists go, you get this amazing view as your first view.

 Roman pigeons love to do this. I don't know why.

 The day was so good from a weather perspective it was hard to get photos! The sky kept getting blown out.

 Us at the Vatican. For a tourist selfie, this turned out pretty well!

 It was St. Peter and Paul on the Saturday, so St. Peter got a lovely robe, and if you donated some money to Peter's Pence, they gave you a holy card! So I did, at basically every church we went into.

 Isn't it every Catholic girl's dream for her boyfriend to take her to Rome and then find a photo op with a Swiss guard?

 Because our minds cannot always be set on the eternal, I offer you this photo of a seagull eating a dead something. This is probably on of my top five favorite photos from this weekend. Analyze away, armchair psychiatrists! (I spelled that correctly on the first try. Exhibit A of why everyone should study ancient Greek.)

 There is a specific spot in the square, and if you stand there, all the columns line up. For those of you who are thinking, "Wait, did they not before?", I offer you the next shot:

 This is what I saw when I turned around to look at the other side. Apparently they don't usually appear to line up. I would make a terrible detective--I'm so unobservant!

 The bridge, again, from the other side. Or maybe it was a different bridge. Kevin?

 The Pantheon.

Apparently every other tourist in the world wound up at the Trevi fountain at night. I don't like crowds, so I took a picture from the side, and I think it turned out pretty well.

Next installement will be either the pictures from Saturday or half of the pictures from Saturday. We did a lot of stuff. (Note: I have asked Kevin to comment and fill in my blanks, but obviously other readers are free to do the same, or to straight up correct me if I got something wrong.)