Hey everyone! It’s Maddy, back reporting for duty. Since the last time I wrote, I got through my first round of midterms, attended what some would consider a concert (I’d call it a claustrophobic death-trap), discovered that TOGA! TOGA! TOGA! is a real thing, and watched the sunrise shine upon Michael Cera’s beautiful face. So basically nothing out of the ordinary.

In an attempt to procrastinate doing work, I decided to check my Oxy email. Nothing out of the ordinary…movie screening in Mosher…Moodle is experiencing technical difficulties…Festivus celebration…

Wait. What? Other students celebrate Festivus?

It has finally sunk in that I live in a place where people can freely gather around a Festivus pole and air...

If you are abroad, you have to take advantage of it and travel to places near your location.

Since my last post, I have been all over Spain and Europe. IES Salamanca has taken us on trips to Zamora and Toro, Andalucia (which is Granada and Sevilla), and Toledo. These places have all been amazing and they each have their own little culture. One of my favorite places I visited in Spain was La Alhambra which is in Granada. The Alhambra is a palace and a fortress complex with an Arabic influence on the architecture. It was very beautiful and the detail on the walls was unbelievable. Another place I enjoyed was Toledo because it was similar to Salamanca. It was small enough where you can walk anywhere and that’s exactly what we did. We walked...

Hello everyone! It’s been a very stressful month, what with midterms, papers, and, oh yeah, I’m double majoring!

So that’s been fun. I’ve known I was going to double major since probably freshman year and so far it’s been going well. I’ve always been a good writer and such so I wasn’t too worried about having to write two theses this year (we call them comps, as in senior comprehensive projects). I’ve been trying a two-pronged attack where I write most of one in one go, then start on the other. It worked out great for the first one so I dived right into the second one and immediately hit a brick wall. It was partially the rather unhelpful non-advice I was getting from people that were supposed to be helping me, but that’s a...

We’ve all heard about how great Oxy’s location is. Our parents have told us, our peers, even the administration during the college application process. Twenty minutes to anywhere in LA, we were told, but many of us just stay on campus most weekends wondering what to do. Even I fall into this pattern, and I am an LA native with a car! Over fall break I decided that enough was enough. I was going to take that extra time to explore a new part of LA and see if Oxy was as convenient as it claimed. Spoiler alert: the answer is yes! In twenty minutes I got to the Upright Citizens Brigade in Hollywood, an improv troupe started by Amy Poehler. Yes, the Leslie Knope has her own improv troupe, and yes, famous comedians like Michael Cera and Aziz Ansari perform there sometimes. The show was hilarious and...