Friday Night
Tonight was fun and productive: I finally got to see friends who I haven't seen in a long time and for once had meaningful and unrushed conversations (which seems to be so hard to come by these days). After IVCF (which was great!) I had a nice long chat with Amy and Megan, two very cool ladies. Following large group I headed over to Meg & Trish's apartment where they were having a casual dessert and drinks party. Meg showed me her pictures of Uganda, where she was studying abroad for the past three months (yes, I'm envious!).

Cartography
The neatest thing of all was in their dining room where they had a World map, a map of the Phillipines and a map of the United States on their wall. On each of these maps were tiny post-it notes. Everyone who comes over gets to place their name and a little message on a country, state or other certain place where they've been for over a month (or which is very significant). I placed my notes on Oregon, Nova Scotia/New Brunswick/the Isles de la Madeleine, India, Iceland, Alaska and the Bahamas.
I've always had a fascination with maps and geography, even though I'm such a typical American who really is pretty ignorant of many countries in the world (note: this will hopefully change soon with me taking three geography classes this quarter!). My apartment bedroom has one wall covered with maps as wallpaper. Some are geologic maps of Brazil, but most are topographic maps of Japan from the war. I think that these ones are especially cool because they all say For use by War and Navy Department Agencies Only, Not for Sale or Redistribution.