The grass is greener, the air is fresher, the flowers are prettier

That's right! Finals are over. Of course they always kick my trash, this year I had three study guides to memorize: they were 56 pages, 33 pages, and 30 pages. So yeah, that killed me, but it's all good now. The last week of last semester I was walking and I heard a guy yell real loud. I asked if he got an A, he said that he didn't care cause he was done forever. When I'm done forever I think I'll do that too. Finals is definitely one of the "three F frustrations of college!"

I got 5 shots today: polio, tetanus, menigitis, typhoid, and yellow fever. I still need to get pills for malaria. The downside is that I could still get those diseases and still have to watch what I eat. My arms are really sore right now and I'm starting to feel a little sick...just like the nurse said. I was supposed to get the yellow fever shot 10 days before I go. The nurse said they might not let me into Uganda for 2 days. That would be kind of cool actually, if they wouldn't let me into their country...I'm like a rebel or something. Maybe I'll get lucky they'll put me in some podunk prison. I wouldn't mind torture either. As long as they give me a cool souvenir so I can prove that I'm a rebel, cause I am.

We're leaving for Council Bluffs tonight. I'm really excited. It's going to be carefree, lots of eating, having fun, burning our school stuff, good relaxing time. Dyads will definitely be strengthened with everyone there (see the Jo for definition of a dyad).

I saw two businessmen on segways today. Wow, that was funny!

I have hardly eaten this week. Pretty crazy. Usually I can't do anything without food, but I haven't had an appetite at all.

I studied Humanities for like 4 hours today and actually I really enjoyed it. It was a good class that made me realize literature, art, and music are just as important to the world as politics. Well, almost as important as politics. One thing that hit me was what Emerson said about art. He said that art is not the creation but the process. And that it is a form of expression. Of course I've heard that art is expression several times but it also said how we all what to be understood- art helps. I don't think anyone can fully understand someone else, and that makes life exciting, but understanding one another helps out so much. Last semester in my political philosophy class my professor said something that disturbed me and has made me think a lot about. He said that if words can't describe what we're thinking, then we're not really thinking. I should look over his argument again but that can't be right. There is so much that I think and feel that cannot be described by words. Of course I try and sometimes make an idiot out of myself in attempting to describe my thoughts and feelings but that doesn't mean that my thoughts aren't thoughts. I've written lots of poetry, some is funny, most was written to export a certain feeling I had. I think that other people's art can explain our thoughts and feelings as well. And sometimes it doesn't, but you just enjoy it.

"You have seen how a man was made a slave; you shall see how a slave was made a man." - Frederick Douglass
"It is not chaos or death- it is form, union, plan – it is eternal life –it is Happiness"
-Walt Whitman
"You can appreciate a single blade of grass for its beauty but it all comes from the same soil."
-Walt Whitman
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." - Thomas Jefferson
"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America." -Founding Fathers

Thomas Cole and Frederic Edwin Church have become two of my favorite artists. My last uploaded pictures didn't really turn out that great, but here are some of my favorites:

Church:
Church:
This paintings are Cole's empire series. They go through the development, pinnacle, and fall of an empire. The unique thing is that nature remains. The mountain is in every single picture:
Savage State:
Pastoral State:
Consummation state:
Destruction state:

Desolotation state:

Cole, two Indians paying respect to the Niagara Falls:
Neither one of these images came out that great
Church:

Church:


Cole, again, notice the little person in the center:
Church:
Church:

I might find some time to write in here before I go to Uganda. I'm not really sure what my email/letter situation will be like in Uganda or Holland. Hopefully I'll be able to get on here once awhile and give an update of my travels and experiences.

I'm going to go play Mario Kart 64...or Risk on Cannon's computer.