NeverShoutNever

I have been in Madison now for approx. 16 days and I absolutely love it. So here are a few things about my life now and about Madison in general:

Coffee shops EVERYWHERE!! Just to name a few: Ancora Coffee Roasters, CoffeeBytes, Starbucks, Steep & Brew, Barriques Coffee Trader, Fair Trade Coffee House, Victor Allen's, Electric Earth, Espresso Royale, Java Cat, Gloria Jean's Coffee, and the lovely Caribou Coffee (although there is only one and it is not exactly convenient for me to get to so I haven't been there yet) & most - if not all - with free wifi :)

(where I spend most of my downtime between classes)

Night life & meeting new people... let's just say everyone is very friendly & welcoming (or at least the people who aren't creepers) and there seems to ALWAYS be something to do, especially on weekends. (Unlike St. Cloud where the campus turned into a ghost town at night and on weekends)

Me & Allie (roomie) with the Bouncer ;)

For the first time ever, I have found the perfect roommate! She is easy to live with, respects my space, is clean, sooooo friendly and non-judgemental, and she is a TALKER! Which works so well with me because I enjoy listening :) Honestly, I have yet to find something about her that I don't like. Her boyfriend lives with us and he is so nice as well, again, no complaints. :)

This is my first apartment & I just paid my first rent yesterday! Which was pretty exciting I have to admit (I don't mind writing out that check because I know I'm getting an extremely good deal with everything here) AND my kitty gets to live with me :) ....I just feel bad for my roomie's man-cat Tazz who is afraid of Lola.

(Boy meets Girl)

And something else I really love: being close to home - 2 weekends ago I was able to attend a wedding reception for one of my friends who just got married, and go to a Ladies Wine Night at my friend's apartment in Milwaukee. And just last weekend I was able to go watch my nephew for a few hours while my brother and his wife went out.

I got into the classes I actually need to take, which means I can apply for my major this semester & be that much closer to graduating!

NO FRIDAY CLASSES! For each class, I have a lecture section (50 min twice a week) accompanied by a 1-2 hour discussion section/lab ... at a really random time/place during the week... which makes it quite difficult to memorize the schedule!

MacBooks! I can check out a MacBook from almost any of our 30+ different libraries on campus, and keep it for 3 days at a time (which is more like 4 days, because if I check it out on Monday, I can keep it until 11pm on Thursday) I just brought it to my lectures today to take notes on (instead of pen & paper) - Do any of you do that? What do you think? It makes taking notes so much faster & getting supplementary information down from what the Prof is saying, but at the same time, I had soooo many typos... But, this form of note-taking is certainly a growing trend and I wouldn't be surprised if taking notes by hand will soon become a thing of the past.

I realize this is getting pretty lengthy of an update so I will wrap it all up for now with a song by a band I just discovered which is reminicent of Jack Johnson/Jason Mraz/Joshua Radin/Eric Hutchinson and be sure to watch for a Part 2 on things I miss about St. Cloud coming later this week! What's on the agenda for tonight, you ask? Going to a group fitness class "Zumba" (latin dancing) with Allie! Cheers!