1/14 Jake's journal - This semester

 So, classes again.  Yeah, still taking them.  Mr. Housman says my only chance to get anywhere is to keep taking classes and hope I can get some university to decide to take me.  Almost certainly the U Jess is shooting for.  But there are four just on Ellie Island I can try for.  They won't even look at boys until they've got an associate degree, so I'm working toward that.  I've got a science class, an ag class that I might actually learn some things from, and a history class that I almost certainly won't.

We're doing once-a-month in class, and my first day isn't for a couple weeks.  If you're closer to the main campus they expect you in class more, but for most of us it's remoting in.  Our vidi wall is absolutely brilliant for that.  I usually make the professor and board full size, then fill the rest of the background with some nice view from somewhere.  Today I did a grassy field on the mainland.  Seems like it was New Mexico or Brazi or something.   

It's one class a day this time, Monday, Wednesday, Friday.  Applied science, history, and today was ag.  Starting with dirt, apparently.  We went over the 11 soil orders, and I suppose they all mean something for other places but the only ones we have around here are anthroposols and cryosols, but you can't really call anything around here a cryosol anymore, though they still list places that way.  I'm looking forward more to the electro-mechanical parts of the class.  We're supposed to do a 'field trip' to the plains, to see some of the big equipment they use there.  

Nat, Arti, and I went up to the ridge yesterday.  We biked the first part of it, and hiked to the actual ridge.  It's winter, so there really wasn't that much to see, but the moon is up all the time now.  We saw a bunch of shooting stars, the aurora were pretty, and town looks nice in the dark from high up.  Sparkly little lights instead of grungy walls.  The moon reflecting off the harbor water was kind of blinding, intensely beautiful.  We even got a quick flash of the ring at one point.  On the other side of the ridge you looked down on the receiver for the area, and for a while you could see a warm glow as the receiver was powered up.  The glass house wasn't really visible from where we were, but we saw it some on our way up.  It's like a stack of shimmering crystal when there's aurora above it.  They say diamonds look something like that. 

The other amazing thing is that from up there, above the fiord, we could see a glow off to the south.  Looks like the sun will get here some day.  It gets pretty old in the dark all the time.