Pumpkin butter, King-Anti Midas and an oasis.

Before I get into explaining King Anti-Midas, let me ask you one question:

Are you familiar with the famous Shakespearean tragedy Hamlet?

If not, that’s okay, as “there’s something rotten in the state of Denmark.” (In case you missed it that was a literary reference to Hamlet.) Regardless of the present state of this northern European nation, Hamlet provides a wonderful example of a concept known as comic relief. A brilliant way to “break up” the sometimes-overbearing nature of a tragedy, comic relief provides an “oasis” of humor to the plot of a play. (Or to the nature of a blog.) I’ve always had an appreciation for oases, so this blog does just that. Get ready, ladies and gentlemen, as I’m about to bear my soul.

Here’s the deal. Now, get ready, as I’m about to throw another literary reference your way. I’m like King Midas, except that everything I touch (at least recently) does not turn into gold. Oh, no, no, no: it turns into "broken." (Yes, I am aware that that is incorrect grammar.)

So, if you think about it, I guess that makes me like King Anti-Midas, right? Well, you be the judge.

Rewind to Thursday, January 19^th. I meander over to my lovely refrigerator to open up a nice jar of pumpkin butter, which tastes lovely on a piece of bread. As I open the fridge, the pumpkin butter, which was apparently perched precariously on the top shelf, plummets to the floor below. It shatters. Boom. Pumpkin butter is everywhere. So, there I am, kneeling low to the ground, wiping up my dignity along with the delicious spread that stared at me tauntingly on the floor.

Okay, a day passes and it is now Friday, January 20^th. Before I continue, you must understand that I store food in my room that I don’t use “too” often in a trunk adjacent to the couch. This includes, or rather included, my strawberry syrup. That evening, I opened up the trunk to organize for fun (yes, I am a nerd) with the goal of creating a more proficient special layout. I pick up the strawberry syrup and, apparently, glass bottles are much slicker than they used to be. It slips out of my hand, hitting another glass jar (which I use, or rather, used) to store grains—they both shatter. Syrup flies everywhere, coating the interior of my trunk (and the numerous other food products within) and dousing the floor in front of my wardrobe. Oh, you should have seen my face. It was full of excitement and joy at the prospect of doing even more useless cleaning.

On a related note, did you know that cleaning thick, sticky, molasses-y syrup out of a carpeted floor is nearly impossible? Yeah, I didn’t, but now I do. (I suppose I should mention that it is do-able, but requires everything just short of a miracle.)

Anyways, I was actually relieved afterwards. You see, “bad things always come in threes,” or so I’ve heard. Well, I’d already broken three things and, obviously, this phase had passed. Because, after all, I’d broken three things… right?

Not quite.

So another day passes. It’s now Saturday. I’m in Chloé’s kitchen cooking couscous, the food so nice they named it twice! (If you are unaware, couscous is a small, spherical type of pasta. It’s really, really good.) I’d brought a large glass bottle (filled with Brita-filtered water) to cook with and, after I emptied its contents into the pot, I set it on the counter. Big mistake. As I reach over to the sink, BANG. BANG BANG BANG SHATTER SHATTER. The glass bottle falls, exploding upon contact with the floor. I was mortified. Logically, I proceeded to clean up its contents. Kelsey and Kailey, who were in the room at the time, graciously volunteered to help. (By the way, they are both amazing people and I love both of them for helping King Anti-Midas [myself] over here.)

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the epic saga of Anti-Midas. I hope you enjoyed your oasis.

Happy Holidays!

Hey y’all, its me again, and haaappy holidays!! I know all the high school students reading this are probably headed back to school now, the seniors catching full-fledged senioritis, but the great thing about being in college: I still have another week until I’m back at school! I’ve had a great time at home, but even though it’s great to sleep in your own bed and have your own shower, I cannot WAIT to be back at Charlotte! But anyway, I figured I would share a blog about my holiday season, at Charlotte and in my hometown…my two favorite places (:

Back at school everyone (despite the stress of exams) was getting into holiday spirit! Ugly sweaters, cookies, crisp air, warm coffee…MMM my favorite time of year! My sorority actually had our annual cookie swap with another sorority in Greek Village, where we spent hours decorating the house and cookies! In honor of Alpha Delta Pi and Delta Zeta we had pink and green and blue cookies, and also shaped like lions and diamonds! After all of our preparation we had a great time socializing with other girls and eating our delicious cookies. Later on, some of my guy friends even got into the Christmas Spirit dressing in their festive gear!

My pledge class and me all dressed up in our ugly sweaters!

My two guys friends in their ugly Christmas turtlenecks!

Another super exciting part of the holidays was SOCCER! That’s right, unranked UNC Charlotte was headed to the College Cup Nationals against UNC Chapel Hill. Charlotte actually paid for six buses to drive to Alabama in order for us to have an awesome cheering section for our boys, and all we had to do was pay for our ticket. (I actually stood in line for 3 hours to get my ticket…totally worth it!) Everyone who was going to good ole Bama met the buses at 6 AM for our seven-hour ride. I slept most of the way down, but when we finally got to the game we all rushed out to do some face painting and tail-gating with those who drove down to the game on their own!

Christina painting Chloe's face!

A bunch of my sisters and I before the game!

Once we got into the stadium, it was insane. There was so much Charlotte spirit in the air it was hard to handle! They had posters at the door so we could cheer on our team, and seating wasn’t selected so we could get super close to the field! Charlotte ended up losing to Chapel Hill 1-0 (BUT we did get bad ref calls and should have had two penalty kicks…), but overall it was still a great experience. It was the first time a Charlotte sports team had been to a National Championship, hopefully just setting the precedent for more dates to come! As always, I’m proud to be a part of Niner Nation (:

WHOOO GO CHARLOTTE!

We got to sit SO close to the field!

Some of the signs that were made for the team

After the game, I was done with exams, (lucky me, I only had one! A perk of being an architect major for sure!) so I got to head home. I had an great time over break, as I know everyone did, because lets face it: you get to do nothing! Winter break in college, unlike in high school where you might still have exams, is prime relaxation time because you have absolutely NO work to do. At first I didn’t know what to do with myself! It was awesome to be able to sleep in everyday, see my best friends who go to different schools, decorate my house, and relax with my family…all without worrying about assignments!

I missed my doggy SO much!

Enjoying one of those crazy light shows with a group of friends (you know, the ones that are tuned to the music on the radio...so cool!)

Before dinner celebrating my best friend's 19th birthday!

Then finally, one of the most exciting part of the holidays…THE NEW YEAR! Finally, after 365 days, it’s 2012. For me and my family, I was actually lucky enough to go to Atlanta to watch the Chick-Fil-A bowl to bring in the new year. Me, my brother and my dad (along with my dad’s friends) drove down the day of the game to explore Atlanta, tail-gate, and watch the game. I was cheering for University of Virginia, my dad’s alma mater, and while they lost to Auburn, I’m still wishing everyone a Happy ‘Hoo Year (UVA, go Hoos GO!).

It is called the "Chick-Fil-A Bowl", after all...what would it be without a giant cow?!

My family and I inside the Georgia dome, go Virginia!

I hope everyone enjoyed reading about my holiday experiences as much as they enjoyed their individual times on break with families and friends. Enjoy the beginning of 2012 and bring in the New Year with a big bang!

XOXO Elizabeth

Quite Late, Should Sleep....

As the title implies, it's quite late. Considering I've got an exam tomorrow at 8 AM, and I'll be rollin' out of bed at 6:50 so I have time to stretch, shower, eat, and generally wake up. I can't sleep though. My brain is going crazy right now. I started three songs in the past three hours I've tried to sleep, only in my head and on paper (I don't want to disturb the room mates). I'll be working on them a little more tomorrow when I can make noises and not really care. So I figured I might as well go ahead and post something, as it's been a while since someone posted, and if I ask someone to post something, it'll be a while before it gets done what with winter break coming up and such. So here I am again, talking to possibly nobody over the vast expanse of cyberspace. Hello nobody, nice to meet you, thank you for allowing me to feel important for a few minutes.

I was in this exact same predicament last year on the eve of my last exam before winter break. I don't know what it is keeping me awake. Whatever it is needs to go away, I don't like it one bit. Last year instead of doing this, I went walking around outside in the freezing cold with nothing on but a t-shirt, shorts and sandals, pretending I was crazy and muttering to myself. This group of girls passed me, and one of them was like "What the *insert expletive*!?" I don't know why I thought this would make me sleepy, it certainly did not. I went back to Witherspoon and sat in my friend's room as a bunch of them played Super Smash trying to keep the volume to a dull roar. But when you play Super Smash, there's no dull roar to possibly be had. It's either full out roar, or nothing. Around 3 I finally got tired, went back to my room, slept a few hours, and killed my exam the next morning. Let's cross our fingers, knock on wood and do a bunch of other superstitious things to bring that good fortune back for tomorrow's exam (ESCI 1101). Shouldn't be too hard, but we'll see....

So semester in perspective I suppose? Yeah it was good. It was really busy. I've been way too busy this past year and a half. I'm going to cut back on things next semester and take more time for myself. When you're stretched thin, you can't be effective at anything. Unless you're living off of 5 hour energy (subtle product placement) and sleeping in the library, eating scraps out of the trash cans. My workload is really not that bad, it's just not that good either. So next semester this guy is going to slow things down, and take it easy before he departs for the following year to various locations in and out of the US. Man time really just gets away from you. It honestly feels like last month I was catching up with all my friends, inspecting the new parking deck behind Witherspoon, raising very small, relatively non-existent amounts of Cain at Cookout far too often, saying "oh I got my first test back, blah blah blah I just didn't know what to expect blah". Oh my.... In less than a year I will have spent more time away from Charlotte than I ever have in my life, and astronomically more time outside of the US on my own. It scares the heck out of me to be quite frank with you. I've just started developing all these ties to this school and the area, to people and places and bands and clubs and now I've gotta go. That's it, drop it, and hopefully pick back up where I left off when I come back. I honestly don't think that's going to happen for some of the things right now that I spend the majority of my days working on. But I've always found the old saying true, that when one door closes, another one opens.

Anyhow, I'm going to close this blog up for the night and really, really, really try to get to sleep. I didn't even have any caffeine today! To prospective students; I hope you will consider UNCC and the Levine program seriously. This school is amazing, it has something for everyone, and I'd be at quite a significant disadvantage without the program and our directors. Be honest with yourself for the next year or so, and do things that matter to you, that are fun for you, but are still contributing to something in a positive way. Don't build up a good looking, heartless resume, come into the program and lose your steam in the first semester. Be prepared to work hard for this program even after you've gotten it. The term "free ride" could not be more inaccurate. And know that for every ounce of effort you put in, you'll get out of it 10 times that, likely more. And have a fantastic holiday break.

Wish me luck tomorrow!
I don't need your luck... I was born lucky.

Happy Holidays my beloved nobody on cyberspace.

And yes, still no pictures. WHATEVER.

Hey everyone!

My name is Chloe` Rodengen and I’m a freshman in the Levine Scholars Program here at UNCC. This is my first blog entry…so I’m going to go ahead and give this a shot!

To start you off, I’m from South Florida so adjusting to Charlotte has been a big change for me. One of the biggest changes has definitely been the weather! I have never ever seen the leaves change and tend to freak out a bit every time I walk outside because it’s so beautiful (and cold! we’ll for me at least). Not to say that palm trees and beaches aren’t nice too, but there is definitely something special about having four seasons. Yes, I think its safe to say that I’m falling in love with fall. :)

A few weeks ago, my suite mate Bethany invited me and a few other friends to her house near Asheville, NC so I could see the true leaves changing in the mountains for the first time. We hopped in the car and drove about an hour and a half west until we reached her house near the Appalachian mountain range. Since we left at night, I had no idea what to expect in the morning. When I woke up and walked towards the kitchen, I set my eyes on one of the most amazing things I’d ever seen. There was so much color everywhere! Here’s a picture of the mountains from Bethany’s balcony. For a native Floridian, this was definitely one thing I wish I had growing up.

After a great breakfast of pancakes that Bethany whipped up for us, we jumped back into the car and drove down to South Carolina (which was only about 15-20 min away!) and saw this gorgeous little area by a creek that had a bridge built back in the 1820’s.

We walked around the area, took some fun pictures and just had a really peaceful and relaxing afternoon. Here’s a picture of the four of us with the beautiful leaves in the background!

(Anna, Kailey, Bethany and me!)

We then drove back to North Carolina and ate at this cute little pizzeria/bakery in downtown Saluda. We ordered a mushroom and goat cheese pizza to share and let me tell you, I’ve never had such a delicious pizza in my life. Full and content, we packed up and took the drive back to Charlotte.

This trip was definitely a lot of fun and I had such a great time being immersed into fall for the first time! I’m definitely getting to experience a lot of really cool things here in Charlotte, the change in seasons for sure being one of them. Looks like winters right around the corner though! Uh oh, guess I better get ready for snow, there’s a first time for everything I suppose, haha.

Thanksgiving break is coming up in a few days though, so It’ll be nice to get a little taste of home (and the glorious 75 degree weather) before going into finals in just a couple weeks. I can’t believe how fast this semester has gone by! Hope you all have a wonderful day :) thanks for reading, I’ll be back soon!

Love,

Chloe`

Greetings and salutations!

My name is Kevin Caldwell and I am a freshman in the Levine Scholar’s Program here at UNC Charlotte.

College gets a little overwhelming at times...

On that note, I’m actually from Charlotte – I’ve lived here all of my life. I often get asked how I like going to school so close to home; many people find this concept appalling. There seems to be this misconception that, in order to truly “go away to college,” one must travel at least 100 hundred miles away. While I certainly understand this idea – and I’ll admit that I struggled with it in the weeks preceding school – I’ve come to completely reject it.

Going to school so close to home is one of the greatest things that could have happened to me – I love it. I’ve always appreciated Charlotte as a whole, but now that I have the liberties associated with being a college student, it’s one hundred times better. Not only do I get to experience college just like any other freshman, but I also get to have dinner with my family every now and then, which I really enjoy. I have the advantage of knowing where the good restaurants are, along with all of the good events to attend throughout the year. I’ve also grown to appreciate the internal GPS I’ve been developing over the years in the city – that is a priceless skill, my friends, as the roads in Charlotte don’t always make sense. (Correction: they rarely make sense.)

A lot has happened since school has started, though, and I’ll try and encapsulate as much as possible in this post. I’ll start with one of my favorite memories of this year – the beach trip over Fall Break.

Over our Fall Break, the Levine Program rented an oceanfront house for the freshmen and sophomore classes to spend some time together away from all of the daily stresses of college. Twenty-six of the thirty of us went, along with a few faculty members, Dr. Zablotsky and Kelley (the directors of the program) and Dr. Mike Richardson, a member of the Levine Foundation. (Can you say “perfect?”) The trip was simply fantastic.

We had a lot of fun cooking at the beach.

First of all, the beach is awesome. It just is. Second of all, it’s even more awesome when you’re with a group of really groovy, swell people. We got to splash around in the water, play cornhole on the beach, lounge around under the sun and take long walks up and down the shoreline. (These were my favorite…) After these long walks, re-nourishment was of the upmost importance, but that wasn’t at all a problem; after all, Dr. Mike bought over half of the grocery store. In fact, I think I still have some leftover cookies in my dorm room right now from the beach. (I don’t even think they’ve even been opened yet. I’ll attend to that issue later this week.)

Family.

Two things in particular stand out to me when I look back on that weekend. One of them occurred spontaneously when Anna S., Elizabeth, Bethany and I were walking along the beach around 10:00 p.m. Saturday night. As we were walking, we began to hear really loud dance music – we walked closer to investigate and stumbled upon an older couple’s 50^th anniversary party. Since the party was a pretty lively one, we decided to host our own little dance party (using their music, of course) on the beach right where we stood. We were having a good ol’ time when we noticed a few partygoers begin to maneuver to the edge of their dance floor to watch us. (I guess we did look rather strange…) We didn’t mind the attention and just kept on dancing until we saw a bright flash – the event’s photographer had spotted us and had promptly taken our picture. I suppose he wanted to capture this unexpected occurrence as a unique way of documenting the event – this is the best guess I have. Regardless, it gives me a certain sense of pride to know that, somewhere, this couple might be laughing about the night they watched the goofy group interpretive dance outside on the beach. That gives me immense joy.

We had fun with the house's elevator.

The other particularly memorable thing (at least for me) about that weekend comes in the form of a personal epiphany – I secretly want to become a barista. Done. I’m not even kidding: it seems like the perfect career. Making different flavors of coffee, experimenting with different spice combinations and bringing the goodness that is a hot beverage into someone’s hands brings untold levels of happiness into my heart: I love, love, love it. Over the weekend I managed to perfect my signature beverage – hot chocolate. I would whip one up for anyone who would accept one and repeatedly caught myself offering one to anything that moved. (I wasn’t kidding when I said that I loved making them. Simply being in the kitchen excites me.) Now the secret to hot chocolate, you see (drum roll, please) is to add a little bit of vanilla coffee seasoning syrup, purchased from a local coffeeshop. Once this has been added to the mixture, it gives brings the beverage from the realm of “good” to “fantastic.” Add a sprinkle or two of cinnamon and you’re sailing!

My speciality beverage.

School continued after Fall Break like usual until, one week after we got back from Fall Break, we had an extraordinary opportunity placed in our hands. Our freshmen common reading author, Dr. Moustafa Bayoumi, came to campus to present a lecture on his book, How Does it Feel to be a Problem? This book is centered on Arab-American relations in the post-9/11 era, focusing specifically on the way these relations have affected young adults; it’s very relatable and I would strongly recommend it. I was fortunate enough to be able to have dinner with Dr. Bayoumi before his lecture along with the wonderful Bethany, Jake and Samantha. I’m sure I speak for all of us when I say that we thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity to engage one-on-one with him. We were able to ask him a lot of personal questions (which I never thought I’d be able to do) and were able to hear his story about trying sushi in Korea – it was presented as a whole fish and was served to him when it was still alive!

Bethany, Jake, Dr. Bayoumi, yours truly and Sam after the lecture.

Before I conclude this blog, I’d like to write about one final thing– the Florida roadtrip. Two weekends ago, Caitlin, Jon, Kelsey and I drove down to Tallahassee Florida! Caitlin’s sister plays in the marching band over at Florida State and she had extra tickets for the FSU/Maryland game – she offered us tickets! We all decided that’d be an interesting way to spend the weekend, so we clambered in the car and set off! I couldn’t have asked for a better way to spend the weekend.

There are very few occasions when a solid six-hour car ride can be described as fun; this was one of them. For the entire 300 or so miles we jammed out to straight-up country music… and it was perfect. (And, yes: I’ll admit that I was guilty of singing loudly and proudly to some good ol’ Taylor Swift. No shame.) On the way down we stopped at a Cracker Barrel, feasted on some Southern goodness and actually rolled into Jacksonville (where we were spending the night) at around 9:00 pm.

The next day was a lot of fun. We got up at the crack of dawn (which wasn’t really the most enjoyable experience) and had breakfast at Dunkin Donuts. Jon bought us all coffee and delicious circles of sugary goodness; afterwards, we drove another three or so hours along I-10 into Tallahassee. When we got to FSU we went to Caitlin’s sister’s band practice, which was spectacular, I must add!

I was completely floored by the marching band – I’d never experienced something like that before. You see, from 6^th to 12^th grade I attended Northwest School of the Arts – a fantastic school I might add – which, as you may have guessed, didn’t have sports. I loved every second I was there, but I did miss out on some of those “quintessential” high school experiences, namely: football games. As a result, I never was exposed to such things as marching bands at that close of a level. I’d attended college football games before, but I’d never been so close to a marching band. (And there is something to be said about being so close to the band: it was really, really cool.)

All of us at the game!

The game was pretty fun, too! We had excellent seats and enjoyed the whole game, particularly the arm-waving “ooohhh-ooh-oh-oh-oohh” motion that all Seminole fans prescribe too. (That was a lot of fun, I must admit.) The rest of the day consisted of a delectable dinner at Olive Garden and a long drive back to Jacksonville, followed by some more driving the following morning – six hours straight, if I recall. So that was the weekend! We drove… and drove some more, but it was well worth it and we all had a ton of fun.

This is one of my favorite pictures. Ever.

As I conclude this blog post about my freshman year so far, I have one thing to say: I really love college. It’s fantastic. I can’t summarize my thoughts in any better way, but I know I’m in the perfect place right now. I couldn’t imagine my life any other way.

So until next time – Kevin’s signing off. Thanks for reading!