(note: i'm sorry this took so long to post -- i had some difficulty with my serendip account last night and couldn't figure out how to get in, but it's fixed now!)

every winter, my mother and my sisters and i make cider sachets. we cut out squares of gauzy cotton, fill them with cinnamon and cloves and bay leaves and orange peel, and tie them with white threads of string.

every winter, we make the cider. my brother stands on his tiptoes on a stepstool, looks over the edge of the metal pot, and drops a packet into the juice. we leave it on the stove, boiling, for hours at a time.

every winter, the house is noisy with laughter and chaotic with children and constantly filled with the scent of cider.

Water is life! Water is LIFE! I love water so much. I have a jacket that reads "DRINK WATER" on the back. Everyone knows my neon green water bottle. There is nothing I love more than a glass of crispy-fresh ice-water. But also hot water, with a squeeze of lemon to wake up my immune system. Or have it fizzy! I've grown up on San Pellegrino. I am always leaving class to use the restroom... Water is life! 

I chose my username because I really like Greek mythology and I love music. I've sung in a few chorus' and I've also played a few interuments so it seemed fitting to choose that name. I took the picture that I chose for my profile. It is of my dog, Rino, when I went on vacation with my family. He had just taken a forced swim lesson and was drying off on the dock. I remember he was nervous about going in the water but still came in because my whole family was swimming and he wanted to be close to us. I chose this picture because it was the last family vacation before college, a sort-of farewell vacation. My dad, my sister, my dog, and I drove up to Maine and rented a cabin for a week. This is a tradition that we've had for two years.

Well, since you're wondering... yes I have traveled to many, many places in the world. I chose the quote "I haven't been everywhere but it's on my list" as my icon because one day I want to be able to say that I've been everywhere. So far, I've traveled to Canada, Puerto Rico (visited family), Mexico, South Korea, Egypt, and South Africa! 5/6 trips that I have been on have been with other students my age. I hopelessly fell in love with traveling after I made my first trip to Puerto Rico when I was 8 years old. Ever since then I have always wanted to fly on planes and travel anywhere I wanted if I ever got the chance. I really, really, want to travel all across Europe one day! Of course, studying abroad is most definately on my list!!

ever since i can remember, i have been flying. airplanes make me queasy and uneasy and my dad always made me drink apple juice, as if its saccarine sweet taste would quell my anxieties. it was only a few years ago that i started drinking ginger ale. it made me feel like an adult for some reason. the perfect combination of sweet and spicy. 

I grew up drinking three or more glasses of milk every day. Sometimes I'd stir in the Hershey's, but most often I would drink it plain. As I grew older and moved out of the Dairy State I realized that milk-drinkers were few and far between. It was actually one of the first things I noticed when I moved to Bryn Mawr, because eating in the dining halls provides an eerily public display of what we eat and who we are. My dad described me once as a milkfed Midwesterner, and I definitely realized what that identity meant at college. Coming to school I realized more and more about the realities of the place I grew up - it was not the warm, welcoming place that I was raised to believe but rather a tense, sweep-it-under-the-rug kind of social scene.

Last night I had an hour long conversation about coffee milk. Myself, another classmate with Rhode Island roots, 3 others. My biggest struggle with coffee milk is trying to find the words to describe it: 

     -Like yoohoo, but coffee flavoured

     -like if you had coffee with no bitterness, just heaps of sugar and cream

     -no, I promise it's not caffinated