One AMAZING weekend!

Well, I wasn't very sure it was going to end up that way... I have a wonderful study buddy that God has blessed me with. Her name is Anne, and we work diligently every night of the week on homework. Anne has an undergraduate degree in business, and after working for a number of years decided that she hated her job and couldn't do what she was doing forever... So she is happily married and back in school, getting a Master's in Math with the ambitions of teaching college math.

So, needless to say, I spend much of my time giving Anne knowledge from my undergraduate background in Math. She has little to no mathematical foundation, so I am just going over the fundamentals and explaining theories and reasonings as we go over homework. Now, this isn't a one way street, as much as I help Anne through our homework, she is able to go ask our professors questions when I don't understand something. You see, with my job, I cannot go to any office hours that my professors have, but with Anne having backed off to a part time and very flexible job, she can go any time needed. So.. we are a great team.

After a long and daunting Thursday night we still weren't finished with the Numerical Analysis homework that we had started on Monday. Thankfully our teacher is so nice and graciously answers our questions. Most of the time, the methods aren't hard, just extremely time consuming. So, with Thursday being a total of 15 hours of work logged on our homework we decided to call it a night, and finish on Friday.

What's the problem? Well, I had planned since Monday to go home Friday right after work, and even worked over so that I could get off at 2:30pm on Friday. I had plans to spend time with my family before they left today on a two week vacation. I was going to attend my high school football game, and the TROY game, eat dinner with my friends after the game and do homework before the game. Thursday night was definitely a break down, and I called my mom to tell her that I just couldn't make it home for the weekend. I had too much homework, two more subjects were just waiting on me to get started... I hadn't been grocery shopping or had the chance to clean this week. So reluctantly and with many tears, I stayed in Tuscaloosa.

Friday after I got off work Anne and I worked on homework and finished around 4pm. Both of us having had terrible weeks, with tests that we spent hours studying for, and still didn't do well on... Mine was Stats and hers was Differential Equations. We were worn out, and super excited to finally to have finished oru homework for Numerical Analysis. We walked to Dr. Zhao's office together to hand in our homework with smiles on our face from ear to ear! As we handed our papers in Dr. Zhao, he returned our smiles and we high fived each other when we got out of his office. He is our favorite teacher, because he is so sweet and straightforward. I honestly never thought I would say that I little Chinese man was my favorite teacher. But hey, the University of Alabama works miracles. ;)

Well, after that Anne and I were ready to treat ourselves. Really, we had a horrible week, and worked very hard.  So, Anne being a local and knowing the town, etc. decided what we should do. We went to this wonderful little place in Northport called "Tips and Toes" and we both got manicures and pedicures!! If felt wonderful to just relax after goign 90 to nothing and then full blast. It was a great end to our week, and we actually had time to sit and chat with each other, and not have homework shorten our converstation.

Saturday I slept in a few hours from my normal 5am wake up call and then layed around the house and watched TV for the early part of the morning. I haven't turned my TV on in over two weeks... turning it on was a small victory. Then, I did what ever girl who needs a little boost does, I went shopping. I bought some cute cardigans at New York and Company, they were having a buy one get one half off sale, and bought a super soft sweater that was also on sale. This was also my first 'Wells Fargo' experience. Our bank, Wachovia, converted Saturday, and then was official today. So part of me really was just curious that my card may or may not work. The rest of the afternoon was filled with washing clothes, Alabama and TROY football, both of which were gut-wrenching games, and homework. I finally finished my stats homework around 10:30pm... that's right, I started at 2:30pm.... haha Graduate School.. isn't it lovely??

Sunday I went to church and Anne came over and we worked on our Real Analysis homework. We finished that in a record of 2 hours! Needless to say we were exstatic! So, I finished my laundry, cleaned my room, went grocery shopping, and was able to have dinner with my roommates!! It was so nice to actually be able to spend time with them... I litterally hadn't seen them in a week!

So, I had a semi-restful and very productive weekend... And I am very happy about it. I have beautiful fingers and toes to remind me of God's blessings even when at first things aren't going our way. God knows best for us, and though times may be tough and decisions may be hard, He works all things for the good of those that love Him.