Back In Dubuque

So, I am back in Dubuque, have been since Saturday afternoon. The last week in DC was pretty nice. Without work, I was able to both sleep in and wrap up a few of the sightseeing things I had not yet done. But first, end of classes. I managed to finish off all of my finals without any real issues. All in all, I think the semester went pretty well. I'm definitely looking forward to digging into the meat of my major and minor next semester, but these classes were a lot of fun. Since I've put this off so long, I'm drawing a blank on what I did at the beginning of the week. It seems to me that most days I slept in late and then struggled to work on final papers. On Wednesday, I went in to have an exit interview of sorts with Bruce and got my picture taken. Thursday, after our final, we went to Vittorio's for the last time and then finally went to the Spy Museum. Rather than just touring the museum, we decided to do the interactive spy game thingy, which was pretty fun (though I think we proved to be pretty average spies). Friday, Packy and I had the unenviable task of shipping our stuff home. It was both a pain in the butt and expensive, but I guess it was better than the alternative. Then we all went to Georgetown one last time to have a more relaxed version of it as our last memory there. We got cupcakes and then did some window shopping and just took in the scenery of it all. Then it was down to business as we had to completely empty and clean the apartment before my shuttle to the airport arrived at 3 AM. We got through it, just barely. The initial flight out of Baltimore wasn't too bad, except that my baggage was a little overweight, which was nothing a little bribery couldn't fix. It was my time in Chicago that proved to be a little bothersome. I had a four-hour layover and a constantly changing gate to deal with. I finally set up camp about three hours before my flight was to take off in what was then my gate. After trying unsuccessfully to sleep in a chair, I moved to the floor and napped for about two and a half hours. When I woke up, my gate had changed again, so I lugged all my stuff to my new gate and waited for take off. When I was finally back in Dubuque, I was greeted by mountains of snow, frigid temperatures, and no one being home. I spent most of the weekend trying to catch up on sleep, which I'm still not fully caught up on. I started working at the Y today, and I will be working close to 20 hours per week these next three weeks (time to start rebuilding my funds after the semester in DC). At this point, I make no promises to maintain the blog during Christmas break, but I fully intend to be back to semi-regular updates once I'm back on campus. So, until I next blog, I wish you all a happy and blessed Christmas season and new year. May your 2010 be even better than your 2009.

God Bless,

Jes