UMW: a seedier place than you thought. (I think there's some Die Hard in here)

We were back at school for the 2nd semester. I got a job cooking for children at this orphanage that looked straight out of Dickens. They were completely ungrateful, as I didn't make them macaroni and cheese for every meal. I wasn't just there to keep them fed, though, I had to keep them protected from some bad guys. I made some friends among the other workers there, one of them was a guy who always wore a trench coat and a fedora. One of my best friends there was dating this guy too. He broke some rules, and made himself an enemy of the place's management, who made some deals with the aforementioned bad guys with guns who were always milling about. This guy with the fedora was to be shot on sight. So we all started wearing fedoras.
I had to go to classes too. My gym class was in the individual exercise rooms, not the tennis courts. We had to work on our upper body strength.
These thugs started following me and my friends to my classes.
German literature promised to be very interesting, we were going to be reading science fiction, and we had a field trip planned. For Buddhism, I was supposed to have done this workbook, but I hadn't. It was the first day of classes, so I didn't even have the workbook.
I'd started carrying a gun. One day I was eating in Seacobeck and noticed the bad guys at the door. I snuck out ahead of them, wearing my fedora, and ended up in a room filled with people I didn't know. The room looked like the Combs lobby. Half of the people in there were wearing fedoras. I supposed more people had heard of whatever-his-name-was than I thought. I sat in the corner with my back to the entrance. I pulled my hat down over my face. I heard the guys enter, and turned around to notice one of them pointing a gun at me. He was the only one armed. I took out my own weapon and pointed it at them. His 2 friends seemed a little alarmed, and they told me that I wasn't allowed to have a gun on campus. I looked around at the room and snorted. "How many of you people are carrying guns?" All of those wearing fedoras, and some who weren't, took weapons of various shapes and sizes out of their pockets. I made a mental note to tell Reece about this. The bad guys were outnumbered significantly, so they left.
After class I exited out the back of Combs. College avenue was a snowy street lined with brick buildings, it also looked like something out of Dickens. There was an old-fashioned movie theater across the street a few buildings down playing Scott Pilgrim. I thought to myself, I should buy that movie using my gift card. Then I woke up.

Next semester instead of last

It was the morning of the first day of classes. I didn't have class til 11, so I got up at 8:30. I spent an hour or so talking to Matt about Spongebob before deciding to get ready for class. The shower was unavailable, so I still had to wait. I waited and waited. We weren't in our same apartment by the way, we were in the same old building that looked vaguely like Taunusstrasse 8a, except my room was much bigger and had more impressive windows. We had a patio in almost the same place as the UMW apartment, so while I was waiting I took a walk. The door didn't lead to a parking lot, but instead to a huge expanse of grass and a forest. I was certain I was alone, but I didn't realize I wasn't wearing anything but my underwear until a bunch of girls came over the hill to yell at me. "This is the last time we let you get away with such indecency!" I didn't recall ever doing this sort of thing before. The one who accused me clarified that she was talking about the time I wore a short skirt outside. I was still in my underwear, and I excused myself to go inside. One of the girls mentioned to me that it was after 11:00, and I was going to miss class.
I went inside, and was able to get dressed and 20 minutes of class left. I wasn't able to shower. But this building was further from Combs than the usual apartment. By the time I got there I had indeed missed class. So I went to Herr Rotter's office to apologize and ask what I missed. He wasn't in his office, a woman was. She told me to go through the double doors at the end of the hallway and then go left. This part of Combs didn't exist before winter break. I went through and found the office she spoke of. It was barely bigger than a closet (figures they'd do that to Herr Rotter). Rotter wasn't in there either, but there was a girl about my age sitting at the desk with her back to the door. She identified herself as his assistant, and said she'd give me the work I missed. First I had to take the quick quiz Herr Rotter had given, it was a single question about the dative case and the subjunctive. I got it right. Then I received the syllabus, a leather-bound notebook with a picture of an owl and my name on it, and a pile of scantrons an inch thick that I was to work through over the course of the semester.
After this I walked back through the building, thinking I'd go to the book store for a binder to put these scantrons in, then get lunch at the nest. As I walked through the hallway-that-does-not-exist, which was now full of students, I noticed there were little divots in the walls. I asked a student what these were for, but he ignored me. Then the door I was heading towards started moving forward. The hallway got shorter and shorter very quickly, I was going to get crushed against the opposing wall if I didn't get out of the way. I ducked into a classroom, one that had been on the other side of the double doors when I first went down this hallway. I noticed others ducking into those divots. My question answered, I woke up.

Obviously inspired by The Magicians.

I got a letter. But I hadn't picked up the mail, Madeline had, and she'd thrown the letter away thinking it was somehow related to me getting bad grades, or a terrorist attack, I can't remember. But she thought the letter was somehow bad. I yelled at her, saying that it might have been my paper graded by Niebuhr. Mom took Madeline's side, saying that I should've checked the mail if I thought I was getting something.

The next day I checked the mail myself, and found a hand-written envelope for me. The letter inside invited me to this creepy house for an interesting academic opportunity. I went to check it out. There were a lot of other people my age there. As you might have guessed, this was a school for magic, and I was to be a magician. I made a bunch of friends, but I don't remember what magic I learned.

I still talked to Reece online often. I wanted to go to the playgrounder meetup. I told my sister that I wanted to go to this sushi place in order to trick her into taking me there. I told her I wanted to take some of my new friends from the magic school along as well. Reece was pretty ok with it, Madeline agreed to it. After the meetup, Reece was going to come back with me to visit my new apartment. One of my almost-friend-acquaintances named Tom asked to go with us. I apologized and said that there was no room in the car.

We stopped at a hotel on the way to the meetup. It was also an old, creepy house. It kind of looked like Taunusstrasse 8a, but bigger. Once I settled into my room with my roommate from magic school, I called my parents. They were kind of annoyed that I was taking this trip, but I reassured them that everything was fine. It barely had an affect.

After I hung up on my parents, I went downstairs to party with my friends. It was around 3 in the morning when I got to bed. My phone buzzed again. I looked at the caller ID and saw that it was Tom. I answered the phone, and told him I was trying to sleep. He didn't say anything for about 10 seconds, then he said "HA! You are a grey magician now!" and hung up, leaving me very confused.

The next morning I asked my friends what Tom might have meant by "grey magician." They all had shocked looks on their faces, except my roommate/best friend, who looked unsurprised. They told me that a grey magician couldn't use magic without corrupting their soul and bringing bad luck. Tom must have worked a spell over the phone. I was angry and scared, and decided I needed to get back at Tom somehow. But Madeline refused to deviate from the plan to go to the meetup. Before I could argue my case for vengeance, I woke up.

All these dreams about exams.

It was the night before my Relgions exam, and I fell asleep while studying. The exam was at 7 AM, so I had to get up at 5. I got up at 4 to study more, I had to memorize a list of 5 rules for a nonexistent religion. One of the rules was to only wear sparkly clothes.

I left at 6 without eating breakfast. My mother caught me and forced me to eat a peach before going to the exam.

The actual test wasn't in the dream, but the aftermath was. I didn't fail the exam, but I don't think I passed it either.

Memories fading... curses.

First dream, I was challenged to a duel. The weapon was quarterstaves, and Madeline had to teach me to use one.
Second dream, there was some kind of criminal investigation, and I had to cooperate with this PI. Puppies were involved. That is all I remember. If I remember more, I will edit it in.

Not failing German, no worries.

I was late for German Civilization. I had to be on time, or I would fail that class. So I caught the bus to get from the top of College Avenue to the bottom. College Avenue was much longer than it actually is, so it made sense. It also ran parallel to a river and some train tracks. The bus only had one stop on College Avenue, and it was closer to the top than I wanted. I met my mother there and told her I was going to be late, hoping she would drive me there. But Mom didn't have a car. She started walking with me down the street, practically dragging me. We got on a train and went a little ways. Ahead of our train we saw a bright flash. It was a little confusing.
Then we were kicked off for not having tickets, and started walking again. A bus was stopped perpendicular to the sidewalk, we didn't try to go around it and just walked in one door and out the driver's side door. Well, my Mom managed to. I couldn't cross the bus before the driver came back and started the bus. The bus was a school bus, and it was filled with high schoolers. It began driving in the opposite direction that I wanted to go. I noticed a rocket on the train tracks, and thought oh, that's what the flash of light was. Then I talked to the bus driver. He laughed at me, but then helpfully drove in the correct direction and dropped me off at Combs.
I was 5 minutes late to class, but Niebuhr listened to my story and didn't fail me. I went back to the table I sat at. The arrangement of this classroom was like an elementary school, there were small tables instead of desks, and they each sat four people. Erin, Meredith and some chick from my digital storytelling class were sitting at mine. The girl with no name asked me if I was nervous about the online test I was supposed to do for today. I was surprised that this had been an assignment and started freaking out. Mer asked me if I'd brought all of the pop quizzes we'd been given. Erin asked me if I'd done the workbook. I started panicking, and said that I just need a B in this class oh crap. Erin looked at me and said that if I'd done the work I'd get a B but she didn't know if I qualified for one anymore. I was like I KNOW, then I woke up.
This post took about 40 minutes to write because I'm typing it on my father's goddamned Mac. It is worse than my Windows Vista computer when it comes to the internet. I can't tell him this though.

Yeah.

I was using a computer on a space ship to have an argument with some internet people, and then some robots that looked like my family members told me I had to translate everything I'd written for classes this week into Arabic. Also I baked cookies.