Holy Hell

So these past two weeks have been somehow both uneventful and overwhelmingly stressful at the same time - ah the joy of the end of the semester! I've have several papers that, while interesting, were also a bit like pulling teeth. Who knew that Palestinian nationalism was not just intuitively obvious? Go figure!
Seriously though, most of my time has been spent holed up in my room, drinking obscene amounts of tea, instant coffee, and decidedly non-instant hot chocolate (think milk, a sauce pan and cocoa - aka a great way to short-term procrastinate), and reading never ending amounts of literature on the world at large. Some part of it is actually extremely liberating though. Since going to IU, I've been so focused on biology that I kind of forgot that there was in fact a larger world out there. Between Middle Eastern politics and Southern African archaeology it's been wonderful to start thinking big picture again. I remember how much I used to enjoy spending my highschool study hall hours just surfing wikipedia to learn about whatever interesting event caught my fancy at the time. It was so nice to feel somewhat broadly-based. I feel like this semester has to some degree, albeit maybe only termporarily, re-awakaed that in me. Even all of this blogging and non-science paper writing I feel has somewhat shaken me out of a sort of biology induced stupor. Mind you, that doesn't mean that I can wait until next semester. Organic, phyics, and mycology all at once? Hell yeah!
Sorry I haven't written about the Cederberg rock paintings. If you ever really want to know, just ask me when I get home and I'll give you an earful. There's so much worth saying, and I'm not sure that I could even really do it justice via this format. Fascinating stuff though, and you know you can count on me to get excited to talk about it!
That's about it for now. Hopefully it won't be so long until another post, but I warn that this particular wave of intensive academia won't be over until next Thursday...

Love and miss you all!