I’m so happy — I’m done. Woo! My partner and I dropped in semis, which I am pretty happy about. We beat some good teams. I think we could have advanced to finals actually, but we were exhausted. Anyway it was great, and I’m happy. A lot of people know my name now, which was disconcerting for a
while until I realized that winning made people a lot more likely to give me stuff.

I should probably sleep now. Yay everything. I’m glad I don’t have to panic about debate any more.

Still at camp. Things are wild and crazy and debate-y all the time. I am running out of money. I have to debate tomorrow after dinner, so I’ll be up late working on that. Life is mostly debate and eat and sleep over here, with some half-assed correspondence on my part with everyone back home. Camp has made me love everyone more, as well as instilled in me a healthy respect for those who do not breathe debate.

The one caveat is that my good friend Julia has just developed mono, and given that we’ve been terrific pals for the past couple weeks I probably have it too. I won’t be showing symptoms for another month or so. I am relying on my Russian constitution to get me through this.

This place is great. I am loving Coon Hardy debate camp, the way McDonalds alleges young, trendy people are lovin’ their hamburger lumps. I like the people here — they’re all interesting and cool and quick on the uptake, and I love that I spend ten hours a day getting better at debate.

Today I spent a couple hours researching General Handy’s pleas for more C-17 cargo planes. I am sure there is some wonderful crackpot out there who is positive that if we do not increase our strategic airlift capability right this second, the American military is in danger of disintegrating into its constituent molecules. I’ll find him, too. Also I went to Kafein and got me some coffee. Kafein is a beautiful, stylish little coffeeshop that gets straight to the point: they sell a drink called a Double Dumbass with eight shots of espresso in it.

At any rate I’ll be back in more than a month, because I’m heading off to Europe (eee!) after institute.

I’m heading off to Coon-Hardy tomorrow morning at some ungodly hour. Please direct all correspondence to anushka at gmail dot com. I’d like you guys to email me your addresses again, for postcarding purposes, although I promise to actually come through on the postcards this time.

The photo place has been updated with a few things from this month. Off I go!

I updated the photo place with pictures from driving around Austin, ages ago, and I killed track5 with a pretty graphic.

Jason and I went out for sushi last last (last?) night and talked about the mechanics of people and change. The sushi was good. I am a master of chopsticks. We also stopped by the local Radisson hotel and demanded a toothbrush on a whim. Now I have three Radisson pens and infinite charm.

My wonderful, perfect father bought two wonderful, perfect cameras and let me pick one to keep. I chose the DiMAGE Z1 over the FinePix S3000, which I hope was a good call. I’m really excited. This camera is called an ‘SLR,’ which I understand to mean it will win me a Pulitzer very soon.