University of New England: Alyssa Fastnacht

Fun Fact: My last name, Fastnacht, means Eve of the Feast which refers to Mardi Gras. Hence the title of this blog! (I actually started this yesterday, but had to go to work so I couldn't finish it til tonight.)

I am having so much fun at school right now and I am in a spectacular mood, so I decided to blog a bit. I just got out of work about 45 minutes ago and am now contemplating what to do with all of my energy. I can barely sit still. This past weekend I went up to my friend Kayleigh's house in Old Town, ME. We had a really good time. Friday night we went to see Coraline 3D. That movie was so good, but it honestly had me scared. I would not suggest a child under 10 seeing it. I actually jumped out of my seat. After the movie we went back to Kayleigh's and watched Quarantine. SCARIEST MOVIE I HAVE EVER SEEN! (I haven't seen many scary movies, but this one honestly kept me awake for a good amount of time after going to bed.) We slept in til about 12:15 Saturday morning, got up, and had some muffins that Kayleigh's mom made us for breakfast. After getting ready, Savanna, Jenny, Kayleigh, and Kayleigh's sister Riley and I all went to the mall in Bangor. Go figure, I saw like 3 or 4 people from UNE there. So we shopped around for a while at the mall and then headed over to Old Navy and then went back to Kayleigh's house to wait for some of her friends from high school to come over. For dinner, we went to Margaritas (service was slow, but the food and company was really good). We stayed at her friend Katie's house that night and the next morning, Kayleigh's mom picked us up and her dad brought us back to school. My parents went away this weekend to Ogunquit, so on their way back they picked me up, brought me food shopping and then we went out for a late lunch/ early dinner at Olive Garden (my favorite restaurant). It was so good to see them because I had really been missing them as of late. A couple of hours later they headed back home to pick up my siblings. I got back to school and wished for a snow day.

Guess what? My wish came true. Yesterday we had a lovely snow day. I slept in til about 11:15 and when I got up, I pretty much didn't do anything. I did some homework throughout the day, but overall it was a very lazy day. Fine by me. I don't have classes on Tuesdays so I had another day off today too. Again, I was quite lazy. At 2 I went over to the campus center to watch the unveiling of UNE's new logo. In my opinion, it is much better, and the viewbook is really cool. A couple of months ago, I was asked to go to this meeting where we picked the layout of the new viewbook, so it was pretty cool to see it all done and ready to go. I think it's all much cooler and sleeker than it was before. After that, I had work from 5 to 11, and now I am going to work on my article for the newspaper and read some more Twilight (I'm hooked, what can I say?).

Here are some pictures of my weekend and the new UNE logo (it's not great quality because I took the picture of the water bottle I got for going).

Posted by Alyssa Fastnacht at 12:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I have been a little bit homesick lately. I miss a lot of the aspects and perks of living at home. Mostly I miss being able to go out whenever I wanted to because I had access to a car. It's harder at school because you have to take the bus or have a friend with a car in order to go off campus. I miss driving around, and I miss going to concerts. I really want to go to a concert. Lately I've been craving really loud music. I need to go see some live performances. There are some local bands that come to The Hang and play little mini shows here, but I want a huge venue with a ton of people jumping up and down and singing along with the cute, sweaty lead singer of an alternative punk band. My iTunes just isn't doing it for me anymore.

So this weekend was Valentine's Day weekend. Most people on my floor were gone with their significant others. One of my roommates had her boyfriend up and the other one went home for the weekend. Personally I spent Valentine's Day with most of my friends from school because none of us have significant others, and that is a-ok with me because we had a good time just hanging out together. I went out for dinner with my friend Jenny, her parents, and her little sister who is 8. We went to a restaurant in Portland. It was nice, but service was slow. I had a really good time with them and then I came back to the dorm and Jenny went with her family to stay at a hotel for the night. I sat in my room alone for a while until my friend Erin got out of work. Then we waited for our friends Brianna, Savanna and Kayleigh to get back from the movies. Everyone hung out in my room for a few hours listening to music and sucking helium out of a balloon, and that was the extent of our Valentine's Day.

Today I had RA group processing day. We got separated into groups or tables and did group bonding/ problem solving activities. It was a lot of fun, but a little nerve-wracking. The whole time we were there we were being evaluated by existing RAs as well as the Area Coordinators. I have two interviews this week coming up. I have my interview with the Area Coordinator on Tuesday and I have my duty interview on Wednesday. Hopefully they will both go well because I really want this position, and not just for the money. Maybe one of you reading this will be my resident next year. Who knows? Wish me luck!

Posted by Alyssa Fastnacht at 10:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Hey guys!
Hope everything is going well with the college application process. I've been pretty busy for the past week and a half. I feel like I say that every time I blog. I guess I'm busy a lot huh?

Anyways, there haven't been too many things going on around campus, but we have some pretty cool things coming up. We have Condom Bingo on Wednesday night, Friday is our Senior Date Auction where you can go and bid on a senior who will take you out for dinner, Saturday is Valentine's Day and on my floor everyone has a little bag with their name on it outside of their room to hold Valentines. It's kind of like second grade all over again with the cheesy valentine cards that have funny sayings like "Valentine, you're A-PEELING". (My valentines are crazy monkey themed.) It's a cute idea though. We are all having fun with them.

Classes are going pretty much the same. I had two exams in French and Chem/Phys on Friday that I did much better on than I had been expecting, so that was a nice surprise. In my Music Appreciation class we are learning to play a version of Ave Maria that is supposed to be played in a round, so it sounds pretty cool. I decided to do the Student Fitness Challenge, so I'm doing my best to drag myself to the gym. I've gotten into some kind of routine, so it's not nearly as bad as I had anticipated. I find myself wanting to go back to the gym twice in a day because I feel so much better afterwards.

Last night, my RA had a program. It was a "Love Shack" building competition. She gave each team a gingerbread house kit and we had to somehow turn it into a Valentine's Day themed "Love Shack". There are a couple finished products in the pictures down below. It was fun, but pretty difficult because the icing was really sticky.

I have almost everything squared away for Body Image Awareness Week, so that's exciting. I am working on an article for the March Nor'easter News issue. It's about the Freshman Experience. So basically I'm writing a lot of what I'm writing here.

This weekend my friends and I went to see Push and the weekend before we saw Defiance. Push was alright, pretty strange though. Defiance was really good, but wicked sad in some parts. We took the bus, which is free transportation so I'm all for it! There's about four or five of us in my group of friends who have a cold right now, so we all have mini pharmacies in our rooms for all the cold symptoms. It's become a joke to all of us at this point because we all hang around in our lounge pants and sweatshirts on the weekends with our cold-eeze and blankets and watch tv until we actually have to do some work.

That's about it for now, so take a look at the pictures of my fish and the "Love Shack" competition. Good luck with applications!!

This is my fish Derrick. He's pretty cool, I'm pretty sure I talked about him in my last blog. But now you can see him too!

These are some pictures of a couple of the "Love Shacks"

Posted by Alyssa Fastnacht at 8:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)