Courtney's Journeys: February 2010

The masses have been insistently requesting a new post (and by masses, I mean my mom, but hey, she's very important), so here it is, finally. :-)

This should probably be obvious given my lack of an update for four and a half months, but law school is quite hard. (Ok, that's just my excuse for not updating, but it IS hard!) I don't recommend it. Unless you realllllly want to be a lawyer...and I think I do... I have three out of four grades posted so far (yes, it has been almost two months since the end of finals), and things are looking pretty good -- I'm just happy all my hard work paid off! I got an A in Legal Rhetoric (the horrible writing & research class that ruined my life last semester), so that was pretty exciting. I also got an award for getting a 95%+ on the Legal Rhetoric final - it's called the "Certificate of Excellence in Recognition of Outstanding Performance on the Research, Citation, and Writing Strategy Exam, Fall 2009." That extremely long name makes it sound much cooler than it really is, but I suppose that's the point...

In between the reading and researching and writing memos, I did manage to have fun occasionally. We had lots of visitors last semester, which was great!! I think I'm going to break this down mini-Christmas-card style...

OCTOBER:

Tim's Delta Chi brother, Pat, came to DC for work for a few days, so he stayed at our place one night. We had a lot of fun, and he even took us out to dinner on his company's dime! :-)

Another one of Tim's Delta Chi brothers, Mike, also came to DC for work in late October. He stayed with us for several days, and it was fun having another roommate for a while! He cooked dinner for us one night while we did our homework - I wish we could have a personal chef more often!!

My friend Loren (who I met in Panama) was also in DC visiting friends and family in October and he stayed with us one night as well. I don't have a picture from when he was here, but here's one of us in Panama:

A couple girls from my school had a Halloween party, which was a lot of fun. My friend Claire and I went as Sarah Palin and Ann Coulter -- the super team for President/VP in 2012! ;-)

Tim was Justin Timberlake (people over 40 may need to google him to understand) --

NOVEMBER:

Another friend I met in Panama, Keith, was in town in early November so I got to spend some quality time with him too!

In mid-November, my good friend and roommate from college, Mary, visited for a few days, and that was awesome. Among other activities, we ate this delicious slice of pizza:

Then, my parents and brother came to DC to spend Thanksgiving with Tim and me! We had a lovely week of family time and exploring the city. We visited some museums, ate at a few nice restaurants, and had a yummy Thanksgiving meal at our apartment. One highlight was ordering an eight-pound turkey from Safeway and getting a 22-pound turkey for $8! (Who says DC is expensive??) [Speaking of grocery delivery, since we're big-city folk now, we get our groceries delivered from Safeway right to our front door! It's pretty amazing, I must say. Right now we don't even have to pay a delivery fee because the Safeway near us is under construction so they offer free delivery to nearby residents.]

Right before we dug in to Thanksgiving dinner --

Tim and me at the Christmas tree in the Smithsonian castle --

DECEMBER:

The first half of December was devoted to studying and taking finals. Those two weeks were quite fun, let me tell you...

I flew home on December 18, so I got out of DC just before the big snow storm hit! My three weeks of Christmas break were pretty busy trying to fit everything in, but it was wonderful to spend time with friends and family away from school! I spent the first week or so in Oklahoma visiting with my mom's side of the family. (I can't find pictures from that...they must all be on my mom's camera.) There was a pretty crazy snow storm there on Christmas Eve, so we just hung out at Grandma's house a lot and got in some good family bonding. :-)

After Christmas, I spent about a week in St. Louis visiting with Tim's family and some friends in the area. For Tim's birthday (December 28), I organized a surprise birthday party at Growler's, and a bunch of his friends from high school and college came, and we had a great time!

This is me in the Snuggie that Tim got me for Christmas (you may laugh, but I know it's really because you're just jealous on the inside) --

For New Year's, we went to a little get-together at a friend's house for a couple hours, and then went back to Tim's house to play games with his cousins. Happy 2010! :-)

JANUARY:

After New Year's, I spent a week back in mid-Missouri visiting with my parents and friends from home, and running a bunch of errands. This is my good friend from high school, Nadia, and me:

My classes this semester started on January 11, and I'm already feeling overwhelmed! I'm currently taking Legal Rhetoric Part II, Property, Constitutional Law, Criminal Law, and International Law. The first four are all required classes, and International Law is my elective class. WCL lets (or makes?) first year students take an elective, and I'm glad I get to take IL since I would like to work in that area someday.

On January 30 & 31, I participated in a moot court competition for first-year students at my school. Moot court is basically like mock trial, except at the appellate level, so you argue your case in front of a panel of judges instead of a jury. (You also usually have to write a brief, but we didn't for the 1L competition.) The competition was a lot more fun than I expected, and I even made it to the semifinals! I'm going to try out for the school's team at the Qualifying Tournament in a couple weeks, so wish me luck!!

FEBRUARY:

You have probably heard about the ridiculous blizzard that is hitting DC, right? Tim and I have both been off school all week, and I'm expecting tomorrow to be canceled as well. We got about two feet of snow on Friday and Saturday, and the roads weren't cleaned up by Monday or Tuesday...then Tuesday afternoon it started to snow again, and now it's still snowing and/or blowing the snow around at about 30-40 mph. I'm currently watching chunks of ice ram into our windows... I appreciated the snow days at first, but I'm starting to get a little cabin fever and I'm almost missing school...that's how you know I'm going crazy. Anyway, here are some pictures of our very snowy neighborhood --