Shopping, Coconuts, and Other Unexpected Situations

Why hello again, Juliet here!

Wow, I'm so sorry that it has been such a long time since I last posted. I have accumulated a lot of stories since then, so this might be pretty long (you have been warned).

Well, where do I start?

First off, a few weeks before spring break, I was in a dire situation: I had run out of snacks. So, I finally decided to take the college shuttle to Target to re-stock :)

I decided to go on a random Sunday when I didn't have that many tests/assignments due the next day. So I got on one of the shuttles leaving from my campus and going to Target. On the shuttle, my roommate was coincidentally there, with her friend. As soon as I spotted her, I waved and said hi, sitting across from her. As I was sitting down, I suddenly felt eyes on the back of my neck. I slowly turned, and low-and-behold, who should it be but Creepy Charlie. ARRGH

Why was he here?? Why, out of all days, out of all the shuttles scheduled for that same day, did he end up on the exact same one as me??  So I nodded at him and sat down, taking out my phone to play Subway Surfers.

Suddenly, I got a text, resulting in me flying head-first into an oncoming train. It was from Lydia.

Lydia: CC. Coincidence? I think not!!

I looked up, and she was carefully not looking in my direction. I followed suit, both of us poker-faced as we texted each other.

Me: I know! What is he doing here??
Lydia: HE KNOWS
Me: O_O
Lydia: At least he didn't get up and come sit next to you. Imagine if that happened
Me: That would be extremely awkward.
Lydia: Ahaha it's either you're fated or he actually tracks you down. I think it's the latter.
Me: Either way it's weird.

Later that night, she told me that when she got on the shuttle and she spotted him, she thought "That's weird, what's he doing here? Juliet isn't even here." And then I got on, and she was like "Of course."

Anyway, so as soon as the shuttle pulled up to Target I ran out, since the next shuttle was set to leave Target a mere 10 minutes after our arrival. So I grabbed a shopping cart, sprinted across the store with it (even rode on the back of it, much to the mothers of innocent pedestrian kids' dismay), to the snack aisle. There, I just grabbed as many bags of chips as I could (including some organic and kosher popcorn, yum), and as I turn to the cookie isle, who should I bump into but yet again CC.

Upon seeing my immense load, he said "Whoa, are you throwing a party?"

I replied, slightly sheepish, "No, I'm just really hungry." *grabs an additional bag of chips*

We chatted briefly, mostly him asking when the next shuttle was scheduled to leave. I told him it was soon, so he took off toward the register.

Upon my own arrival to check-out, I had less than two minutes before my shuttle was scheduled for departure. I saw CC up ahead in line, already leaving with his bags. Meanwhile, I was stuck behind this lady, who seemed to have misplaced her credit card beneath a plethora of cough drops, and then after finally paying for her purchases, decided to join the Target rewards club or whatever, now searching for a pen to fill out a form. ARE YOU KIDDING ME?

So I ended up missing my bus, and had to catch the next one 2.5 hours later. Oh well. At least I got to play Mario Kart 8 while I was waiting.

For some perspective, here is a picture of how many snacks I bought. No judgement, please; I was already receiving incredulous looks from all around the store.

When I got to my shuttle, I had so many bags that the shuttle driver said "Wow, I ain't never seen someone with so many bags in my shuttle before!" to which I replied "Well, I'm honored."

P.S. It has now been about 3 weeks since I got back from Spring Break, and I am out of snacks again.
What?

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So then, after midterms, came SPRING BREAK. YAY! No classes, no schoolwork- crap, well except for that paper in English. Oh well.
It was fun; I mostly spent time walking on the beach, working out, and watching epic marathons of a Spanish soap opera with my dad, up until the point that I could literally feel my brain dissolving.
My dad even helped me practice my driving, by allowing me to drive his car around. There was this one intersection that he said "Okay, at this next light, turn right."
"Okay," I replied, turning into the right lane.
"No, wait, what are you doing, I said right."
"I am turning right!"
"No, right, RIGHT! Oh wait, I MEAN LEFT! LEFT!!"
So we both grabbed the steering wheel and swerved left. Later he apologized, saying that he usually turns right at that intersection, so he wasn't used to turning left :P

Another driving anecdote: We were driving in his neighborhood, him telling me to avoid all the potholes. All of the sudden I saw a coconut lying in the middle of the road.
"There's a coconut on the road."
"A coconut? Don't drive over it"
"So what should I do?"
"Reverse and drive around it."
"Reverse for a coconut? It's a one-way street!"
"It's a coconut! You have to!"

I was laughing so hard as I was reversing and making a wide circle and disrupting traffic, just for a coconut.

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When in the airport leaving Puerto Rico, I had to catch a tram to get to my gate. When I got to the tram, the electric doors were closing shut. No, wait!! All I could think was I have to get on that tram. So I ran towards the closing doors. As they got closer and closer, the space between them decreasing, I got nearer and nearer, until-

I couldn't move. I opened my eyes to see everyone in the tram staring at me, with looks ranging from horror to amusement. I then realized: my head was literally stuck between the doors, while most of my body was still outside on the platform.

What should I do? Should I try to squeeze the rest of me inside? Retreat? But I found that I couldn't move in either direction. Meanwhile, the doors continued to close tighter against my neck and left shoulder.

Thankfully, the doors finally gave up and opened back up. I gratefully pulled myself in, rubbing my neck. A middle-aged couple asked "Are you okay?" the husband barely holding back a smile. I was literally that person who got their head stuck in a tram door. Yup, that happened. Well, whatever, at least I got on.

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So, as you guys know, I had to turn in 30 art swatches with perfect colors and absolutely ZERO brush strokes. I spent over a month painting all of my swatches until I was satisfied.

When I turned them in, my art teacher looked at them briefly, and said "Except for these four, all of these are no good."
"All of them?"
She looked at me and said "Yep, they have way too much water."

Furious and determined, I grabbed my swatches and walked away. I crumpled them up into a ball and threw them out. Then I ripped out a clean sheet of paper and started anew. This time, I glared at my water cup, determined to not even use one drop of it.

Through my determination and frustration, I repainted each of the colors during the last 40 minutes of class. When I was finished, I grabbed them and showed them to my professor.

She looked at each of them carefully, using a special lamp to detect hidden brush strokes, and matched my colors to her color wheel. After a while, she gave them back to me, saying "They're all good." She looked up at my astonished face and smiled. "So didn't something just click all of the sudden? Didn't you feel a sense of peace after finally getting the colors right, with no brushstrokes?"

Well, actually, I was more experiencing feelings of death and destruction, but sure, let's go with that ;)

So I guess my determination worked. :)

Then yesterday, we got our paint swatches back, with our grades. Heart thrumming, I received mine, turned it over, and saw... 100%! A+!! WHAT!!! I was so happy :)

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If you are still reading this, thank you for your endurance :)

What's next? Oh yeah, dorms.

As you guys may know, I currently live in one of the older buildings on campus. So Lydia and I wanted to move into the newer dorms, even though they are farther away from the quad. We were hoping for the nicest building called Fleming. However, for whatever reason the housing department gives people specific 60-second time-slots in which they are supposed to request a dorm, which are stretched over 3-4 days. So a quarter of the freshman-turning sophomores registered the first day, and then another quarter the next day, etc. So basically the people on the first day got first dibs on everything. I'm not sure how the time slots are decided; I think they are pretty random.

Anyway, Lydia and I got time-slots on the second day. Not bad, but not great, either. But by the time the people on the first day had finished, all of Fleming had been filled. :(
So we had to choose from the 3 buildings left over: Our current one (JRC), a slightly newer one that is a little far away (Murdy), and the building commonly known as being one of the worst (Haygood). My roommate and I wandered around like an old married couple going house-hunting.
So the second day, a few hours before our time slot, I wanted to actually see inside the dorms of Murdy and Haygood, before we made a final decision. So I visited Haygood, where a friend of mine lives, and took some pictures of her dorm to show Lydia later.

But then I went to Murdy, and I didn't know anyone that lives there. I was aimlessly wandering the halls when this random Asian guy suddenly walks past me, and goes into his dorm a few doors down from where I was standing. I thought to myself, Should I? Well, I want to see the dorms, right? So I walked over to his dorm and knocked on the door.
He called "come in", and I walked into his dorm, with him just awkwardly standing there.
"Um, I know this is really awkward and strange, but can I look at your dorm? My roommate and I are thinking of moving to this building, and I just wanted to see what it looked like."
He looked at me, and said "Uh... sure, I guess," and let me pass. I felt even more awkward when I saw how messy his room was, with his dirty clothes strewn across the floor. Meanwhile, he just stood there stiffly. He looked really shy and awkward, and I felt bad.
"Sorry about this, I know I'm really weird."
"No, its fine."
I engaged him in a little small talk, and then left. I had originally wanted to take a picture to show Lydia, but that was obviously way too weird, especially with his boxers all over the floor.

But anyway, in the end, we decided to move from our current room, Dickey 111, to....
Dickey 112.
Literally the next door over.
Well, whatever. It's a good location (I can leave for my classes that start in less than 5 minutes and still get there with 2 minutes to spare) and its all-girls.
On the plus-side, a bunch of people that I'm friends with are apparently all moving to bottom Dickey (since they also weren't on the first day, so Dickey is the next best choice if you are a girl). For some reason, top Dickey (where I am) was more in demand than bottom Dickey, so they are all in the floor beneath me. At least now I can visit them more often :)

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Also, in English two weeks ago, we had to turn in what's called and Annotated Bibliography, which is basically a bibliography that you also briefly summarize each of your sources. So when I was writing mine, I couldn't find hardly any sources for my topic, so I just had to use about a sentence from each book. My room right now is full of film studies and analytical Shakespeare books. So I just had to derive as much as possible from each little sentence of information. I was sure that I wasn't doing it correctly, but I thought "Well, this is the best I can do", and I submitted it.
The next day, during English class, the professor suddenly interrupted us from our writing workshop, saying: "I just want to commend Juliet," (at this my head snapped up in surprise) "for going above and beyond in really explaining each of her sources. She really deserves 11/10 points for her bibliography." Everyone looked at me and clapped, much to my embarrassment. I couldn't believe that something I was even doubtful of receiving full points for actually gained me the highest grade for that assignment in the class.

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For whoever got to the end of all this, thanks for sticking with me. It was a lot to catch up on, but hopefully I won't leave as much time between my posts from now on.

Have a good week! Happy Pesach cleaning!

~Juliet :)