Sunset in Kalama

The view from the front porch of the Forland house, overlooking the Columbia River.

Update City

A recent visit to John's parents' house rapidly turned into a visit to Noah's Ark. In addition to their own two cats and the two dogs, the neighbor's three dogs make regular appearances. One of them is a great dane, and you can literally hear him coming long before you can see him....

I'm approaching the fourth week of classes, which actually means that I'm really only a week or so away from having to tear my hair out over midterms. Already. I really like the quarter system - it makes the year go by so much faster - but there are times when it goes by so quickly that I can't keep up with myself. My body runs around and I just stand there watching it, utterly helpless. It's kind of like babysitting a five-year-old boy with ADD.

I ended up dropping my philosophy class, which was devoted almost entirely to 20th-century metaphysics and honestly had me lost in the first five minutes of the first day. So now I'm only taking ten credits, and yet somehow I'm still spending between four and five hours a day studying. All that, and I'm still coming away with atrocious grades on all of my tests. I'm starting to wonder: why exactly am I doing this again? It seems a little ironic, at least. One would assume that you would study a language so you can expand your horizons, see more of life. Not live so you can study the language. And with as long as I've been studying, it's kind of depressing how low my level still really is.

John, stressed beyond any real measure, ended up dropping his classes in the second week in favor of taking a little time off. He was so overwhelmed, and he's been working so hard for so long, I think he postponed burnout as long as humanly possible before it finally just got to him. What it means now, however, is that he has lots of extra time to throw pancakes across the room like frisbees, play with legos, and make farting jokes with Nate.