Last night was Faculty Night, so I invited my Chinese Professor (Liao Lao Shi - or Yu Hwa Rozelle) for dinner. Then, many of her former students saw her and all sat down with her. They were all Chinese, from various places including mainland China and Singapore. Then they all began speaking Mandarin. It was fun to try to understand what they were saying. Then, my professor said she thinks I am good at learning Mandarin and that I can audit her class next quarter. I'd prefer to take it but I will have 20 units* next quarter in addition to the 2 unit Chinese class. (20 is the maximum allowed).

The food for Faculty Night is great! I am going to try to find out when each dorm is having Faculty Night next quarter and eat there! The decorations are nice too - real flowers as center pieces, and table cloth!

This past weekend I was very "anti-social" but at least I got enough sleep. I didn't really leave my room - but I got all my reading done and a paper written, as well as most of my math homework done. There is a math midterm coming up too! It seems that as soon as one midterm ends, another comes!

I have a couple of mentors now, from WICS (Women in Computer Science) and MentorNet. :-) I also have Big Sibs (short for Siblings) who are upperclassmen who are supposed to take care of their Little Sibs (2 little and 2 big siblings per "family")

I need to decide on a topic for my physics class research paper. It is very hard to choose. I am wavering between "women in physics", and "Buddhism and physics."**

On Nov 22, I will get to go to SF for Wynton Marsalis... one of the 6 subsidized dorm tickets so it's about $5. I'm lucky. I was among the first to email my RA, and my RF, and anyone else who was in charge about it. :-) Most everyone else who wants to go will have to pay much more.

This Friday (Nov 8), Jason Garfield, a world class juggler (who holds the record for the most number of pins juggled at once), is coming to Stanford. :-) I am going to see that performance instead of helping host our dorm's campus wide party.

Last Friday (Nov 1), I went to hear about Cognitive Liberty - and basically the ACLU's position on the Patriot Act. Very liberal and paranoid stance.

I turned in my absentee voter ballot last week - I was very happy to be able to vote :-)

This Sunday (Nov 3), something very funny and unprecedented happened. There was a campus-wide Tug of War contest, on dirt but over mud so that whoever lost would fall in the mud. My dorm is known as a "SLE" dorm (Structured Liberal Education dorm - a residence based, humanities for masochists, great books, class) because nearly everyone in it is in SLE. Because SLE is so demanding, no varsity athletes are in it. Everybody makes fun of SLE for being so.... studious. There are 2 other SLE dorms which are next to mine. On Sunday morning, a team of about 6 skinny guys from my dorm decided to represent us. Surprisingly, we beat team after team - including frat teams with giant football and basketball and crew athletes! It was double elimination, but we were the only team to go entirely undefeated. Even in the last round, where it was best 2 out of 3, my team won the first 2. :-D So, now we say that we may be nerds, but we can win tug of war as well! Oh, and 3rd place went to our neighboring SLE dorm :-) 2nd was a frat house.

Last Monday (October 28), I also attended a seminar on "The Culture of Fear, One Year Later". It provided different levels of paranoia and perspectives from three professors. While I try to attend as many of these talks as possible, I am being pressed for time because of midterms and such.

Oh, and last Friday (Nov 1), I took a small break and went with some friends up to Hoover Tower. We could see San Francisco and the bay. I didn't know it was so close!

Tuesdays are very busy - I basically have class from 11 am to 9 pm!

(Some of you know - I complain about it too much!)

* This was anticipating the opportunity to take
** It ended up being the Women in Physics topic - when it is posted online by my professor, there will be a link to that page.