Finally Finished Finals

First of all, pardon the above alliteration.  And second, I would like to officially announce the completion of my first semester of graduate school.  I had my last exam on Friday the 18th of December and despite the fact that it was another exam from the mind of a professor with no natural teaching ability and no compassion for students, I left the exam smiling because I am FINISHED!  Now I just get to sit and wait in dread for my grades to come in.  I am not sure when they do, but I am honestly not looking forward to that day.  You see, if I failed any of my exams, I will have to come back in September to retake them.  First of all, I have never been in a position in my entire academic career where failure was even remotely on the radar.  That is, until I came here.  So now I am absolutely PETRIFIED that I have failed an exam and will have to return in a cloud of shame and embarrassment to my favorite medieval city.  But it is too late now to study more for the exams I have already taken.  So I will just have to wait and see.  I promise to keep you posted.
On a slightly more exciting note, did I mention I was DONE with exams??  I mean done.  I mean I get two weeks off.  I am leaving for Germany today, meeting the Mattwigs and Ben at the airport and then the rest of the family gets in on Wednesday!  I cannot wait!  It will be so nice to see people I know again.  So I am very excited!  I just hope that all of this snow I am staring out at from my window will not impede my journey.  I will keep you posted on that too.
Anyway, thanks to all of you loyal readers who stuck it out with me over this first term.  There were highs and lows, there were rants and joyful outbursts.  I hope you enjoyed reading about all of it and I hope you will hang in there with me until June 21!

Peace, Love, and Waffles.