September

The school year is now in swing. It's nice to be back; I really like our house this year and Carla and I are in our biggest room to date. The campus is beatiful, the weather has been excellent, and even Sodexho seemed welcome. I'm trying hard not to be one of "those" people who come back from study abroad and think everything on this campus and in the country in generally is inferior to what they had before. There are perks on both sides. I do miss Italy. Sitting in my classes today, though, I remembered what it feels like to be academically challenged. And, better yet, to actually understand all the words coming out of the professor's mouth.

Tomorrow I start my internship at Greenwood. My boss told me I could wear jeans on Fridays, which means I only have to dress up once a week (this feels me with indescribable joy), and they're taking me out to lunch my first day as per their tradition. I'm excited to try it. Next week I start the graduate school process--I've put it off from this week so I can just enjoy settling in. I also started my job for Jesus as his research assistant--so far, I spent a couple of hours trying to track down biographical information on a Spanish bureaucrat who wrote an obscure book about Baroque Art in Madrid 1918. It felt like detective work--I found out he was the secretary of the Spanish Alpine Club in 1912, and wrote articles decribing the Los Gredos mountain range, but aside from that he's pretty much a cipher.