Activity.

I love Christmas break in college: no continuing classes means absolutely nothing to worry about. I'm doing my favorite things all the time without any repercussions:
1) Being with family
2) Being with friends
3) Reading whatever I want
4) Skiing
5) Eating
6) Playing Guitar Hero until 5 AM :-D

I've picked up a new translation of Crime and Punishment, which is fun because the new words give me a new perspective on the story. (Wow, that's ironic: I used "new" three times in that sentence.) Generally, I enjoy reading books written to be read in English, because I feel like I can analyze word choice and sentence structure without feeling like I'm making things up, like I do when I find myself admiring vocabulary in a translated novel. Knowing that the author originally combined the words he chose so carefully to produce different combinations of (essentially cultural!) connotations and denotations throws me off, and I feel like I'm missing something. I wish I were fluently bilingual, so I could read in a different language and experience the feelings the author intended. I’m using a skewed perspective, I guess, in analyzing something solely for thematic content, but it's valid, nonetheless. None of the critical essays I've read have been translated--but maybe that says more about me than it does the range of perspectives on the text. Maybe I'll bring this up in my literary criticism class next semester, which, by the way, I am thrilled to take. We're doing Heart of Darkness and As I Lay Dying, two of my favorites, as well as many short stories and novellas I don't recognize. I've passionately missed literature!

I hope my classes are challenging enough to keep me interested this semester. Last semester, I was incredibly bored--19 credits kept me busy, and I came away with straight As but only one (one!) intellectually revelatory concept (see Thermodynamics). I'll be taking 18 this semester, but I'll have anatomy with a cadaver lab (taught by the professor I work with in my lab, so I'll be favored :-D) and a micro class that reviews say is taught "way above the level of a typical intro class," so I'm psyched to take that. Basically, I'm psyched just to LEARN SOMETHING NEW, because with the exception of my chemistry class, I've been entirely intellectually stagnated. Here's to an awesome new year!

AND ALSO, IF ISRAEL DOESN'T STOP BOMBING GAZA, I MAY NOT BE ABLE TO SPEND SPRING AND SUMMER TERMS IN JERUSALEM.

DEAR MIDDLE EAST, PLEASE CALM DOWN.
DEAR BYU, PLEASE DON'T CLOSE THE JERUSALEM CENTER.
THX, JESSICA.