size 12 is NOT fat, neither is 14.

Well the year has begun. We have 13 days to go, and I already feel stressed beyond belief. There is way more to this trip than I originally thought and I think I would have really appreciated it if they had told us before hand. Not that I would have given it up, but who really wants to be doing research/homework while they're in Italy/Germany/Spain/Greece? I signed up for 5 days of classes and no more.

Sigh. But that's a lot of complaining, and I apologize. I am still rather excited to be heading across the world in a couple of days. I'm nowhere near packed. In fact my suitcase is just sitting helplessly beside my pile of stuff to take. I'm sure it's thinking "get in my belleh!!" and can't figure out why I would torture it so. Well calm down dear one, you will be stuffed to the brim come September 9th.

I've really enjoyed coming back and hanging out around school. It's been really good to see everyone, and I really forgot how much I miss having everything and everyone centrally located. It was such a breeze coming back (although I didn't bring half the stuff I would normally) and I have felt more at ease this year than I did last year. I guess that was a given though since I was a freshman and freaked out about everything.

Our classes so far have been ok. The bible class is really making me look at Christian art in a different light. I am seeing it for the cheesy thing it is, and realizing that yes in fact, we Christians will buy anything with an image of Jesus or any other Biblical thing on it, whether it's cheesy or not, because it's "religious" and we should like it.

True confession time... in our Humanities class we've been looking at a lot of art throughout the centuries, and I have got to admit that in doing this I have never felt more beautiful. We studied several images from the 1700-1800s and many showed naked women. But instead of being repulsed, I kinda felt better about myself. These women were voluptuous with curves and yet still poignantly graceful. They were what was ideal back then, such a reverse of today. In seeing these women, I felt like I would have been beautiful to some one, instead of just being a bit bigger than the average twig we see everyday on tv and in magazines. And recently, Glamour magazine put a plus sized model in their magazine, but seriously, that girl was NOT plus sized. When did plus size have to be a size 12? If so then I fail at life. I seriously hate American ideals.

I just have to hold onto the fact that I would have been beautiful in another time. :)

I guess that's enough ranting today. I just felt like I needed to actually update instead of letting this fall by the wayside. Have a terrific Thursday!