Post Christmas/First week of school

Hello all,
It has just come to my attention that it has been over a month since I've had time/bothered to blog anything!!!

So, per Jenny's request, I will begin with Christmas. It was busy, it was loud, and it was crazy, in true Schmitz family fashion. Many movies were watched, dozens of my mom's desserts were consumed, and boardgames and card playing occurred nightly. My mom made these fantastic squares called mars bar squares, derived from a recipe my grandmother was given in a grocery store. My mom added her own little twist to it, melting Cadbury chocolate on top. I ate many.

Micah and Eva were the stars of the Schmitz Show, from their colouring for grandma, to hide and go seek with anyone who would play. We watched Dora; I annoyed Sarah by questioning the accuracy of the content from the show; she shrugged a lot. Eva snotted on anyone she could get her hands on, especially the kitties. Micah amazed Ryan, Sarah and I in Mcdonalds by balancing on a high ledge. Where she got the idea to perform such an act, only Brandon knows. We enjoyed the girls very much! I spent a majority of my time poking Sarah in the belly for the off chance that the baby would decide it should be awake and moving when its auntie was around. No such luck. Tim consumed more turkey this christmas holiday than all of us combined. We just stood back and snickered as mom attempted to fatten he and kurtis up. We even fit in a day for the girls to go to Ottawa for some Dim Sum. All in all, it was a wonderful time, though too short and hectic by far.

As for the new school year: It began a bit rough, as I, for the first time in my academic career, immediately detested two of my five classes. The first was British North America 1763-1867. I was fairly interested in taking this class, but, at the end of the first intro lecture, I was NOT impressed. No, no problem with the subject matter, but with the 25 year old brand new Prof teaching it who was overcompensating for his newness by submerging the class in overwhelming amounts of essays, 200 dollar textbooks, and all round terrible english skills (very very quebecois) I quickly made my way to the faculty to switch out of this course. Instead, I chose History of Western Europe from 5th-15th century. I must say, I love it so far. Its fascinating, the prof is fantastic, and we have an awesome assignment called an immersion experience, where each student is assigned a job and a general profile, and from there, we create the life and experience, based on research, of our character. I was assigned BAKER. I have yet to find out if I'm a guy or a girl, and from there, I will get to choose an appropriate 13th century Belgian name, because we are all based in the medieval city of Burge Belgium. We have the paper to write, as well as an invited life story and profile, and a journal. I'm pretty impressed with the experience he's attempting to give us. Even his lectures are interesting, filled with art and first person journal cases from various areas. This class will be a lot of work, but I am very pumped for it.

The next horror story occurred in my much anticipated Fantasy and Myth class. I, unfortunately, got stuck with a bozo that decided the GENRE Fantasy was silly, and Tolkien and Lewis and Rowling were boring, therefore he wanted to concentrate on Mythical works, and use the title Fantasy to cover humankinds fantasies/desires. First class, we watched a film about Persius, son of Zeus, which was basically a porno about greek mythology.
I made my way to the English department at 8am the next day to insist I be placed in the other section, which, thankfully, had one last opening. I attended the new class today, and thank GOD it was traditional Fantasy and Myth. We study all the good ones, from Alice in wonderland, Harry Potter, and a Wrinkle in Time. I'm so relieved all the stupidity is behind me.

So now I'm looking at the following classes for this semester:

History of Western Europe from 5th to 15th century
History of Great Philosophers
History of the USSR
English Literature from 1700
Fantasy, Myth and Language

Should be a full term, with lots of hard work, sprinkled with fun times with my floor mates (I heart Cam and Danvy!) and more movie watching, of course.

I promise I will also blog more!! Maybe, if anyone finds it interesting, I will keep you updated on my Belgian Baker.