Festoons and Snow Flurries - oh, and Finals, Too

                Festoon - what a fun word, right? Anyway...

                Three more days. I should really be more excited, but right now I’m just focused on the task at hand. Facebook is full of finals woes. However, no one could ignore the trees, wreaths, and ribbons appearing all over town, or the snow flurries and sub-freezing weather. December has come.

                I’ve finished my ROTC commitments for the semester, and I’ve finished practically everything for Arabic. We still have class tomorrow, since language classes still meet during Reading Period, but they’re combining our class with the one before it in order to show a movie. I’m not quite sure why they expect people to show up an hour earlier than usual on the last day before finals in order to watch a movie, but there it is.

                My Hebrew paper is written but needs to be edited for grammar and overall content, but that’s not due until Friday night. I have a philosophy exam Thursday morning (the very first slot of exam period) which isn’t supposed to be that hard, and then Friday afternoon my group presents our physics project. And then it’s over.

                Until then, though, it’s a marathon – one appointment after another. The main problem is actually paperwork; I went to a study abroad meeting last week and found out that I have another whole round of forms to get signed before I head off, which means making a lot of last-minute appointments with various administrators around campus and then hopping around to fifteen-minute meetings all day, but it will all get done.

                Actually, the weekend was fairly refreshing. I was able to take a full Sabbath on Saturday, which was very nice, and to catch up on sleep, the only problem being that when I finally got up at 11:30, there were only a few hours of daylight left. On Sunday my Hebrew professor invited both her classes to her house for lunch, where I had pita and hummus for the first time since I came back from Jordan. It was like Thanksgiving dinner; we were in an actual house, everyone sat around the living room and chatted (in Hebrew), and the food just kept coming! I went home stuffed and didn’t eat anything until Monday morning.

                Because the Hebrew classes are so small and focus so much on speaking, and because people generally take it for a couple of years, the community is very good. Although I have to admit, listening to people discuss the differences between Arabic and Hebrew grammar, in Hebrew, with a little English and French thrown in for good measure, is interesting – especially when you consider that native languages included British, Irish, and American English.

                I also had time to start work on a short story (in English) this weekend that I intend to finish over the break. I haven’t written flat-out English fiction, just for the fun of it, in a long time, and it’s a good way to take a break from studying without forgetting completely about thinking. I also dropped in on  Christmas Tree decorating party in my dorm last night for some hot chocolate and cookies (well, they didn’t call it a Christmas tree; it’s just a tree we happen to decorate while singing “seasonal holiday tunes”, but the spirit’s the same).

                Okay, it’s been a while since I’ve thrown in a random Harvard fact, so here’s one: we love signs. We have signs to tell you where to put your dishes and signs to thank you for doing so (which also randomly appear next to stairwells). We have signs on the doors to tell you whether to push or pull (for those of us who are both book-smart and blonde). We have signs telling you if a door is an emergency exit and if a door is not an emergency exit (the main entrance to Lamont Library is clearly marked as an emergency exit; no one’s sure why). We have the creepy-out-of-context helpline signs on the inside of the bathroom stall doors that tell you you’re not alone. And last but not least, we have the lovely sign in my dorm telling us where not to leave the dishes (under which everyone always leaves their dishes).

                I’m going to miss Harvard next semester. Having exams after classes end is a nice system, but it means that there are people whom I realize too late I won’t see again until next fall or, in the case of the seniors, indefinitely. I’ve definitely made a lot more friends around campus and in ROTC this semester, and grown closer to the friends I already had. However I’m excited for Jerusalem next semester, and for the yet-undiscovered adventures the summer might hold.

                For now, though, I’m just going to concentrate on finals. And then concentrate on Christmas. When I write my next post, I’ll be on my way home!