OK, I've got my "spring semester life" pretty much worked out now. I dropped Spanish 2201 because it was too easy and the teacher didn't spend as much time speaking Spanish as she was supposed to. After a few days of biting my nails, I got permission today to audit 2240 - the first class in the major/minor series. What that means is that I'm not officially registered so I don't pay for the class, nor do I have to write papers or take tests - I just go to class whenever I can and sit and participate - 'soak up the language' if you will. Today was the first day and it's working out well so far.

So, Spanish is worked out, my three linguistics courses are all fascinating, lifeguarding looks like it's going to NOT be dropped, math is, well, math, and I passed my 200-yard swim test with a 3:06 this morning when I only needed 4:30. So go me, and go UF for having awesome linguistics classes this time around.

Guess what - I just found out from a new (Dutch) e-mail friend, J, that my site is on Google now! If you type 'jess1only' - not that anyone would - I'm the first result! So go search for it! :)

I decided one other thing today - about Semester at Sea. Now that we're actually into the spring semester, it's not going to be that long until we have to choose our fall 2005 classes. I need to know before then what I'm going to be doing this fall - otherwise I'm going to end up stuck here with no schedule. Nothing is certain yet, but it's extremely unlikely that I'll be able to scrape another $10k together for Semester at Sea. My supposed 'full scholarship' only comes to about $4000. Add a $1000 CLAS scholarship and a $2000 UFIC scholarship, both of which I'm pretty sure I'll get, and we've got $7k, and I figure my parents and I together could make up $3k. So I've got $10k pretty much for sure, but I can't count on any of the other scholarships. If I get a fat one from Semester at Sea itself - one of the merit-based grants for $5000, say - then I might have a shot at it, but without that, this isn't going to happen.

I still need to make some calls and figure out WHEN exactly I'll know all this stuff, but the bottom line is, if SAS doesn't pan out, I'll go back to Utrecht for the semester. I can't go for the year because I have to graduate in the first week of May and the Dutch semester doesn't end until the beginning of July, but what I'd like to do is go do that 10-mile swim in Boston on 6 August, then fly from there to the Netherlands, stay until mid-December, then come home for Christmas and my last semester at UF. Money-wise, that's a lot more appealing - even with the horrible exchange rate, $1.36 = 1 euro! - but I can't shake the nagging, "You will never get this chance again!" thoughts about SAS, either. So we'll see. I'm going to give them a call as soon as I'm done here.

Which I suppose I am, now...