'ello Governor!

We've landed and have had two great days in London. Pictures and stories will be put up tomorrow...hopefully

Peace & Quiet

All we thought about while (trying) to study for finals this last semester was how much we wanted to be out hiking and enjoying the nice weather. Monday we finally got a chance to do that. We packed up our tent, sleeping bags, and some food and headed out to the North-South Lake campground in the Catskills.

After getting out to the campground, we setup camp quickly and briefly admired the view.


You could see the lake a little between the trees. After setting up camp, we headed out on our first hike. The trails themselves were beautiful, but they didn't compare to the views we had along the way. Our first stop was Artist's Rock.

Yes, that's the Hudson in the background there and I'm pretty sure we drove through this area on the way to the campground. From Artist's Rock, we pressed on until we came to Sunset Rock on the other side of the ridge.

That's North-South Lake below us. We stopped here and just enjoyed the view for awhile. We would've stayed for sunset, but neither one of us trusted our footing after sundown. We did take a detour on the way back to admire the view from Newman's Ledge.


Not a bad view at all. After the ledge, we headed back to the campground for the night. Unfortunately, we didn't really think about sleeping (beyond the sleeping bags), so we had nothing between us and the cold hard ground but our sleeping bags and it got cold that night. The next morning, we grabbed a bite to eat and headed to Wal-Mart in Catskill (about 5-10 minutes from the campground) to pick up an air mattress. After a short catnap on the new mattress, we headed out to explore some more.

This time, the trail was much harder than the previous evening. In some places we had to scale large piles of rocks, but it was completely worth it. Our first stop was Ashley Falls.


After climbing up along the side of the falls, we followed the stream to Mary's Glen.


From Mary's Glen, we climbed up until we came across another set of waterfalls. Once again, we had to climb up along the side of the falls, but we managed to get a great picture on the way up.


The next day, we packed up camp and headed down the road just a little to Kaaterskills Falls. Kaaterskills Falls is the highest waterfall in the state of New York (taller than Niagara Falls). When we visited New York last summer before the big move, we saw the top of Kaaterskills Falls, but the road to the bottom was closed and we weren't sure how else to get to the bottom. This time, we had a chance to explore the bottoms of the falls.


This is just the very base of the falls at the very start of the trail. We still had a steep hike ahread of us to reach the big falls.


This is just one example of the some of the rock piles we had to climb. Eventually, we reached the falls themselves. They looked even more impressive from the bottom of the falls.


The upper portion of the falls is 175-feet high and the bottom portion is another 85-feet for a total of 260-feet.

Overall, it was a nice getaway and it was great to be able to pick up and go in the middle of the week. Next post will likely be from London!

And that, my friends, was our first year of law school.

His and I took our last final of the year yesterday. I wish I could say it went well, but it was property and, um, yeah. Unlike last semester when we had nothing to do but sweat our grades, we have enough to keep us occupied because we leave for Africa in less than two weeks!

1 Down, 3 to go

His and I had our first final of the semester today, Con Law. I spent days pouring over my 50 page outline, my 10 page mini outline, my flash cards, and looking back of 70 pages of notes. And what did I realize when I sat down to take the test... what a waste of time. Our test didn't touch on half of the stuff we learned over the semester. I spent so much time agonizing over the O'Brien test and the evolution of the Brandenburg test. Two HUGE developments in first amendment adjudication only to not even have a place on the final where I could mention them. I would say out of the 1000+ pages for that class the final covered about 250. My goal for the Con Law II is to figure out which 250 pages are going to be covered.

I'm pretty sure that I can infer that His' test went better. Why, you ask. Because he actually said he enjoyed the first question. He has most definitely drunk the Kool-Aid.

Our African Oasis

To ease some worried minds here is the website of where we will be staying in Africa:
http://bidsgroup.com/
If you look through the pictures you will notice that they have a waterslide. I'm not sure why I'm so excited about that but I am.

We are paying the same thing per month for our apartment in Africa as we are for our "hotel" in London for a week.

Can finals be over already?!

Goodbye Cruel 1L classes.

I can’t believe that my 1L classes are over. It feels so weird. We had a few highlights on the last day of class. My first class crim law ended without much ado. She stopped at the end of a sentence, 15 minutes before class was suppose to be let out, said “good bye” closed her book and left.

My next class was Con Law. My Con Law professor looks like a Con Law professor. He’s bald with a little bit of grey hair, he has a beard and sports spectacles. He wears, everyday, a sports coat, a v-neck sweater and a tie. 10 minutes into class two students walked through the front door wearing the sports coat, v-neck and a tie. But the kicker was they had SHAVED their heads to resemble his hair line and dyed the rest of their hair gray. For the first time all semester he was speechless. That class ended with an attempt at a pep talk and our assignment for the first day of class in the fall.

Then it was off to property where we had a little bit of a party. Our professor brought in dunkin donuts and a few classmates made some treats. We were also allowed to bring in spouses, parents, kids, etc. I brought His. My section really enjoyed our property professor so we bought him a coffee mug (he is an addict) that said “I own Blackacre” (which is hysterical to anyone who has read a property law case book, but I’m guessing many of you haven’t so just take my word for it). We also attached a pretty clever conveyance with the mug but I won’t bore anyone with that. It was heavily footnoted and demonstrated what true nerds we are. He ended class with kind of an emotional speech about life and law school and everything (I think he actually convinced someone to not come back). He was very appreciative and complimentary of our class. I'm gonna miss that crazy guy.

And then there was Contracts. I hate this class. I hate that it is at 3 o’clock. I hate that I have to wait around for it. I hate the I spend more time reading The Grapes of Wrath then I do rules and law. I hate that I can’t ever hear in class. Well, I’m not alone in this feeling of hatred because our professor feels the same way towards us. After a day full of emotional goodbyes her response was “It’s been a long year”. You have no idea.

His and I are busy studying for finals right now. His is working on his con-law outline. I just finished mine. After reading 1200 pages for that class this semester I was excited that I got my outline done in 50 pages. I feel like I know more about the first amendment, especially freedom of speech, then I ever wanted to. But if you ever have any questions about how you can proscribe proscribable speech or how to get away with putting up a Christmas tree on public property (dancing elephants anyone?) I’ve got the answer for you.

On top of that His and I have signed up to be the TA’s for our trip to Africa. It is turning into a nightmare but that’s another post.

Last Day

Can't believe it's the last day of our first year of law school already. It's Property, Contracts, and Crim Law for me. Hers has Crim Law, Con Law, Property, and possibly Contracts. We have a week to study for our first final, which is Con Law. After that, we just have one day between exams. We're finished with finals on May 16. Perhaps we'll have the time to blog more at that point. Until then . . .