Week Two Begins!

As we enter the second week of VSA, our novels are well in flight. Now begins the hard part -  pacing our story  and coherently bringing our reader along the journey. To seek a better understanding of the foundation of our novel and where it's progressing, we created a plot map. And began asking ourselves questions and  setting tangible goals. How do we want to enhance our character dynamics? Where is this story going? What is missing? 

Since the beginning of VSA, Dr. Jan has been stretching our writing muscle. In an exercise, she had us assess our writing styles, then had us write in a completely opposite style. I'm an expository writer, I love description and dread dialogue. In this exercise, I left my comfort zone and wrote in dialogue, to my surprise I enjoyed it. Instead of simply saying that the streets were overflowing with voices, one can show this by documenting the dialogue of the many voices. Sometimes I can get lost in the mess of exposition, dialogue can sift through the confusion and cleanly present the information. From this exercise, I even began using dialogue in my novel. Steering away from our typical writing habits facilitates growth. 

On Monday we began our new ACE. This week I signed up for card magic and am lucky enough to have friends in my class - Hawi, Alondra, Meghna. I didn't have any skills with cards but have always wanted to learn, this is the place for me to be. We began with the basics, how to shuffle a deck and do a clean bridge. In the span of 5 minutes, I learned how to elegantly shuffle a deck, something that I had been attempting for years - I've never felt more accomplish. We also learned some new card tricks, which I will present to many and will get great pleasure from their perplextion. Although the magic and awe of card magic has now been forever ruined, I'm happy to be in on the secrets of card magic. 

Baffling our roommates with card tricks.

Monday night during soft time, there was a t-shirt making session on the first floor of our dorm. My friends and I arrived right after dinner to claim the best shirts and materials. I explored Google images for a while in search of inspiration, I came across an abstract triangular image painted on a shirt. For some strange reason, whenever I'm doing artwork I'm usually inclined to do something with triangles. I got masking tape and layed in criss-cross along the front of my shirt, to create small triangles in between the tape. I colored the areas in with fabric markers to create a spectacularly colorful triangle t-shirt!

My triangular t-shirt (left), Hawi's t-shirt (right), and Audrey!

On Tuesday night we had our very first Proctor Group Night. Our proctor group is made up of half of the girls who live on our floor, along with our Proctor Group Leader, Grace. We bundled up in comfy clothing and blankets and went to a conference room to dine on Thai food while watching episodes of The Office. A few days ago, on a whim, our ILC group decided to change our diets. Hawi, Audrey, and Anna all became vegan, while I became vegetarian (I love dairy too much). As a newly converted vegetarian, I ordered the Tofu Pad Thai. Our proctor group is made up of The Office fanatics, we knew most of the lines and even said them in unison while bursting into laughter at its ridiculousness. 

Enjoying The Office.

After an hour or so of being couch potatoes, we played a few causal riddle, guessing, and speaking games. It was nice to be able to bond with our proctor group over a frivolous TV show and games.