a billion baby galaxies with wide open spaces

Hi.


i bought Hell or High water today. Its the first cd ive bought in a very long time.
cant wait till eisleys new album comes out. it wont be long now.


on monday i went to my cousin jennie's wedding. it was a low-budget wedding, her second. It was at the courthouse. it lasted all of 10 minutes.
but it was still beautiful.
i love weddings, the fact that two people are so sure of their love for each other that they want to spend the rest of their lives with each other (that they need to). I love to hear people say that they've found the person God made for them. its beautiful.
my mom and i were the only people from our side of the family that showed up for the wedding. i think that since it was jennies second wedding, people didn't think it was important. but really, its just as important as her first wedding. its obvious that they love each other very much. i was glad i got to be there to see it.

yesterday i got back from unm orientation. it lasted two days. i had to be there on tuesday at 8 am. we stood around all groggy-eyed and awkward until sign-in. i wasnt looking forward to it. i just wanted it to be over.
we got our dorm keys and went to a lecture and split into groups according to major. my leader reminded me of danielle gawronski. she was really cool. we sat in circles and played name-games. it was like kindergarten.
the entire first day was really boring. we walked around campus and picked out classes to sign up for the next day and sat in lectures about things like 'how to survive college', 'why financial aid is important', unm rules, date rape (they actually had a skit for this one), drugs and alcohol (lame skit for this one too), etc etc etc. the only lecture i really liked was one on diversity. i had started to fall asleep during the other lectures, but then this lady named Bird was speaking about how unm is a diverse campus, and how everyone has predjudices and judgements of each other but that we should get past them and come together as a community. I thought everything she said was really cool, that we shouldnt judge people based on their looks, job, status, who they hang out with, where they're from, etc. she walked up and down the lecture hall in between rows of 200 students, keeping us all interested and aware and occaisonally calling out, "hey you! you there, are you texting? put that phone away!" (thought that was funny).
then we went outside and split into groups. each group got a sheet of paper with something on it, something like 'african american', 'jock', or 'women'. our category was 'men', and everyone had to write down negative things associated with that category, for example that men are insensitive and wont ask for directions. the negative things filled the paper, word after hurtful word, and then we hung them all up and silently went in a circle, armed with markers, and crossed out things on every sheet of paper that werent true. there was mark after mark through things like 'black people eat a lot of chicken', 'women are too emotional', 'people from the middle east are terrorists', 'obese people are lazy', 'jocks are stupid'. some people were emotional. some people were indifferent. but in any case, i think everyone came away with an open mind. it was a good exercise because it made us realize that our judgements are stupid and sometimes dont even have a cause. i like to think it brought us closer to each other, and through that i think we could get closer to God, which i was thankful for.

at night we went to a dance. when we left our dorm i told my roomates that i was tired and wouldnt stay long. it had been raining for 4 hours and was raining still, and everyone was hurrying but i was in no hurry. it was like music, walking through the dark with rain falling. i was wearing flip flops and almost fell to my death a couple times (it was slippery), so i took off my shoes and walked like that. everyone was looking at me weird, and my roomates thought it was gross.
i didnt care :)
when we got there this guy was handing out glowsticks and we all got some and went inside and there were colored lights and strobes and loud music and i laughed to myself when we pushed to the middle and danced to beyonce, single ladies. It was actually more fun than i thought it would be. so i ended up staying the whole time.

the next day was so stressful. we went to sign up for classes and i found out that my math and science credits had transferred, but not my english credits. So i had to wait until after lunch and meet with a lady in the english department to clear things up before i registered for english. and since my math credits went through, i had to sign up for calculus this semester even though i thought it wasnt required and i thought i was done with math. discouraging. anyway, it was 1:30 before i finally had a chance to walk over to the english department, and everyone was leaving. the lady there cleared everything up, but by then it was too late and all the classes were full. It was disappointing because i really wanted to take english this semester, but now i have to wait till next year. so i told the english lady, "guess ill have to sign up for another class now so that i have all my credits", and she was like, "no youre gonna need more than one," because, turns out, something had happened with my account that morning as i was registering and it cut me off at three classes. so i just thought, whatever, it wont be hard to find more classes, so i walked to a computer lab with printers and attempted to sign up for some (hopefully) easy classes, but they were all full or didnt work with my current schedule. i quit after about 45 minutes and went to get my stuff out of my dorm, but while i was gone construction workers had pretty much taken over the dorm i had been staying in. i could see the dorm, but they'd put a temporary chain-link fence around it and for the life of me i couldnt find a way in. so i spent another 20 minutes doing that and finally i just jumped over some wet pavements and walked through the construction zone to get my stuff.
then i was like, alright i cant do this on my own, so long story short i found my advisor and she fixed my unm account and helped me sign up for classes. i ended up leaving at 4:30 ish. i was the last person to leave out of 200 students. yep. i love college.

while i was leaving, i saw a guy standing on the median between frontier and unm. Its not a very wide median, and cars were flying past, but he was standing there playing an accordion. what made me stop and look was his face. it was happy, content, full of joy. he swayed to his own music and cars were going by too close for comfort, but he seemed perfectly content, just him and his music.
i hope we can all be like that, even on stressful days like i was having.
so full of life and love.


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music-

first aid kit
as cities burn
cloud cult