End of another school semester :)

Damn, how wonderful is it when it is only Wednesday and you take your last test and leave the classroom thinking that you have no more school work to worry about and that you can finally pass out on your bed for unlimited time?! What a happy and relieved Isa I am :)

These last three weeks of class were pretty intense and I am glad I am done with it. To be honest, I guess that was the only time that I really felt like I was giving the best out of me. As I look back and think about this whole semester while I write this post, I can tell that this was such a messy and crazy one.

I don't know. I believe that it all began after going to Texas visit my friend Annah, from August 30th to September 3rd, right on the first weekend after school started! I got there Thursday night and, after being lost for two hours until we finally got to her place, we stopped somewhere to get a few beers and catch up on each other's lives. The funny part is that we had agreed on waking up at 6am to be on the road before the sunrise, and so we did! All I know is that we had a huge map in hands, looked through it, circled the places we have heard before, showered (since we had no idea if/how/when we were gonna  have the chance to shower again haha) and left. No computer, Facebook, and cell phone only if necessary. We went to Austin the first day and it was a hell of a long one! The weather was insanely hot, but we still walked and drove around as much as we could. At night, I remember we were feeling pretty gross and tired, but the night had come so why resting at this point, huh?! We ended up bar hopping for a couple hours and meeting people from everywhere (saying that we were doing a road trip in the U.S and that we happened to stop in Austin for the night lol) until we finally crashed in the car where we had parked earlier before. It was terrible! I remember waking up around 4:30am with those big noisy trucks washing up the street and feeling like I was in a microwave. Homeless people were napping just next to us on the sidewalk and cops were passing by every 5 minutes. It was time to leave. It didn't take us too much time to learn how to use our big map and the sun as reference points, but we surely got lost a number of times, giving us a lot of "freak out and non-stop-laughing moments!" San Antonio was the second destination and then Corpus Christi, all the way down South. Trying to drive down a little bit more to try to cross the Mexican border seemed to be a very acceptable challenge, but I would say "fortunately" it was already time to go back to Houston and finally think about getting my school semester started.Truth is, when I got back to RMU on Monday night, I realized that I had a buunch of homeworks, assignments and group projects already going on, without a single clue on how to even start working on all that.

You know, getting things done is usually something that I'm good at,  but this time my mind was somehow not focused on school. It took me a little longer than usual to get used to the new and faster pace of senior year, and even though I was taking only four classes, they were all from either my major or minor requirements, which made me feel as busy as when I was taking five or six classes before. Besides that, I should say I partied way way too much as well. In between party buses to Southside or any other bars on the weekends, Crossroads Bar was fun on Wednesdays and I obviously couldn't miss any of my friends birthday parties or those "for no reason celebrations" if nothing better was going on. Yeah, I guess all the number of irresponsible attitudes and wrong decisions, coupled with the awful and useless following days were not enough to make me stop.

I guess when I was finally ready to get my life straight for at least the last weeks of class, it was pretty much Thanksgiving break, and I knew all I wanted was to have fun during those few days we had free from school since I was going to be with my brother, cousin and a friend from college. The destination was Las Vegas. We arrived on Friday, November 16th (and still recovering from my birthday the day before), for a whole week of craziness and fun. We spent the first three days drinking, partying, going to clubs and casinos, visiting the city and walking around the area. On Monday, we were just exhausted. We woke up and went to Fogo de Chao, the best Brazilian steakhouse you can ever imagine (especially when you haven't eaten food from your home country for a while!) and it definitely made us feel better, even though nothing really happened during the rest of the day. We needed that time out. Everyone wanted to be recovered enough to get to enjoy the Grand Canyon during the next two days of the trip. Renting a car to visit both the West and South Rim of the Grand Canyon region was without a doubt the highlight of our Thanksgiving break. The landscape is just mind blowing and I am not even sure whether I have seen many other breathtaking places such as the ones we saw during those two days. Wonderful. After 5 hours driving back to the hotel we were staying at in Vegas, we went to the Guns and Roses concert to close up our trip and get back to school the next day. As soon as I was back at RMU I promised myself "Isa, your body seriously needs to rest. Please try to get you stuff done and be ready for the end of this school semester." Well, that was on Thursday, so I did not put that into practice until Sunday night.

The only positive side, though, is that I did have a great time and met many people along the way. As far as my final grades are still good, I am glad I took this semester to enjoy college and spend more time with some great friends I made throughout these three and a half years. I am now looking forward to have my last semester of college started. You cannot have that reckless life for too long. At least I can't. So, I am excited to be as productive as possible during my very last semester at RMU (and let the depression time begin!). Lots of things are about to happen, tennis season will be more intense than ever, and I am willing to take the most out of these next months that are yet to come. Before worrying about anything else, though, it is almost time to pack and head to Florida for Christmas break. "The goal is to never settle down," is what I always tell mom and dad!!
xoxo
Isa