Cool New Phone! How's it Work?

Not surprisingly, androids and iPhones were among the best selling items over the holiday season. For some students this will be the first semester with a phone capable of virtually anything, for others this is the next upgrade in a long line of technological disappointments. Regardless of your scenario, there are a few ways you can make the most out of your phone to try to make this semester even better than the last! Next I'll outline a few different apps that I have found to be a huge help staying on top of everything from day to day.

One of the best apps around if you're interested in taking notes digitally. Featuring cloud storage, superior organization, and an incredibly easy user interface, Evernote is every college student's best friend. Notes are easy to create and edit, but my favorite part is the notebooks to sort notes, pictures, and other files. Simple organization is a seemingly minuscule feature a lot of other note-taking apps I've used in the past lacked. Cloud storage allows for access to your files anywhere, so you're no longer stuck to one device!
Dropbox and Google Drive are a couple alternatives also worth mentioning!

Ever feel like you're on a social media Ferris wheel with all of the different sites you use? Buffer brings it all together in one app so you can spend more time catching up or staying current and waste less time switching between every account. Buffer will work with just about any other app and even has to option to schedule your tweet updates and posts so you can stay active without even being on your phone!

In my opinion, the biggest contender to Pandora for streaming music. Instead of listening to just a genre or station based off of certain artists, with Spotify you are able to create a library, playlists to share with others, access your music from multiple devices, and play specific songs you're looking for. My favorite part about Spotify is that streaming music from your mobile device is now free! A recent change that has kept my headphones rockin'. Whether from your phone or computer, Spotify is a great way to get in the zone with whatever music you desire.

If you're reading this first sentence to decide whether or not to keep reading or skip the boring finance part, do yourself a favor and keep reading. Even to an accounting and finance major like myself personal finance isn't exactly my idea of a fun time. However, it is an extremely important lesson that is better learned while we're young! Toshl Finance combines animation and practicality to start forming the right habits to ensure financial well-being later on in life!

The technology available is our ticket to an endless supply of resources to make our lives better. Instead of using your new phone as the fuel to your Candy Crush addiction (...not that I would know anything about that), try something new to help yourself out. Maybe you'll even be able to keep your new year's resolution!

Exercise on Campus!

In order to maintain a healthy lifestyle, it is important to incorporate exercise into your routine. There are benefits for exercising now and in the future. Starting the habit of exercising now makes it easier to continue the habit later in life. 

I've come up with 5 top reasons why it is important for college students to exercise.

1. It helps control weight
• A change in diet, daily schedule, or just overall environment can make your body react in strange ways. Stress is another huge component that can make your weight fluctuate.
2. Improves your mood
• When you exercise your body produces endorphins, which make you happy. If you are mad at someone or stressed about a class, take a 30 minute walk. You can listen to music or call your mom, but whatever you do...get moving. It'll make you feel better.
3. Boosts Energy
•  It seems like you would be super tired after exercising and it's true, you probably will be. But once it becomes part of your routine you'll realize that you have more energy. 
4. You'll start sleeping better
• Probably because you're so tired from exercising right? Nope (well, sometimes). The healthier your body is, the easier it is to relax. 
5. It's just fun
• Personally running 5 miles is never something that has appealed to me or sounded like fun, but the first time I ran 5 miles was incredibly satisfying. In order to qualify as "fun" I take Zumba or exercise with a friend. Some people can read while running on the elliptical.You can make it fun for you and sometimes even be productive. 

Working out on and around campus is really easy. The Klotsche Center and Pavilion is open most of the year and has convenient hours. It has everything including a weight room, track, basketball/volleyball courts, a pool, racquet ball, and classrooms. The classrooms hold group exercise classes. There are GroupX classes like Zumba, Guts and Butts, Group Cycle, Kickboxing, and many more. All of those classes are free as long as you are a full time student.

The Klotsche Center also coordinates Intramural Sports. If you played a sport in high school and want to continue, this is a great way to do that. You can form a team with your friends or use it as a way to meet people. All the information about Intramural Teams can be found on the Klotsche website.

If you don't know how to get started when it comes to exercising or you need some personalized help, Klotsche has personal trainers. They will work with you to come up with a program that is best for you. I can say from personal experience that this is an amazing resource to use.

UWM also offers classes called Sport and Rec classes, which are one or two credit courses that only last half of the semester. Those classes range from rappelling to organic cooking, flower arrangement to outdoor survival, tango to bowling. It's a great way to have fun, earn credit and get exercise into your daily routine.

If you are living in any of the Residence Halls you'll have access to a small exercise room. They aren't as extensive as the Klotsche Center, but if you just want to run on the treadmill or lift some weights it's really nice not to have to leave your building. Make sure you check those out once you move in.

All around Milwaukee are different biking, walking, and running trails. This is a great way to get moving outside and see a lot of different parts of Milwaukee. Here is a website that had different routes planned out http://www.walkjogrun.net/running-routes/USA/WI/Milwaukee.

Exercise is a huge key to maintaining a healthy lifestyle. There are many benefits, mentally and physically, so remember that when debating whether or not to go to the gym. Exercise is beneficial now and later on in your life.

Life on the Eastside

I love it here, end of story. I have awesome suitemates, great new friends. I'm even liking my classes. Well, most of them. Physics has been surprisingly good, boring on occasion, but not bad. Italiano has been exciting and fun, completely draining of all my free time, but still super cool. Statistics, well, blah, but I guess it'll be applicable to my future in health care? On the plus side my statistics professor is pretty funny, it could be a lot worse. Meditation- the techniques discussed in class and the readings assigned have been really great, I was skeptical at first but I'm definitely getting attached my newest hobby. Ease into fitness has been good, it makes me really really sore because it's far from easy (aerobics, strengthening, yoga, weights...), but I'm loving it. Kayaking is by far my favorite class, it's with a guy named Kim who is hilarious and the whole class is 9-4 on three sundays and that's just it, you're done and you had a great time and you got a credit. This Sunday will be our third and last class, we'll be kayaking downtown Milwaukee (sooooo excited!!!).

As far as activities go I've only had time to try out a few different things so far- Blackat ultimate frisbee which was a lot of fun but too much of a time commitment, Intervarsity christian fellowship, and italiano club (so fun!). I also plan on getting involved in some volunteer work, the sailing club, and the republican club... Among others, I'm not really sure yet. We'll see what all I have time for :)

Oh and I voted!! Twas pretty exciting. I went downstairs, when I hit the address part of the registration form and tilted my head the man behind the table immediately spat out our street address, this made me giggle. Apparently no one who lives here remembers it! And then I put little lines for my selections and the paper got sucked through the machine and made a little victorious bbbeeeLLEEEP. The end. :)

Arrivederci! :)
Tina

Class Confusion

Class Confusion from Kelly Kloth on Vimeo.

Reasons to learn Chinese

你应学习中文

（you should study Chinese)

I know this is completely random, but I figured now, before classes start, would be as good a time as any to try to convince you to add Chinese to your schedule. I'm not sure if Chinese is full yet or not, but you could always just go to Chinese and add it when someone drops it out of fear, because they will ;)

1. It's pretty impressive to be able to talk to Chinese people in Chinese, even just a little.

2. The grammar is SUPER simple, I kid you not. Always put time first because it's most important.. "I'm having dinner tonight" would be written "tonight I am having dinner"

3. There are no tenses or genders or any of that nonsense, it's very pictorial.

4. Questions are grammatically simple. "You are a dad" turns into "Are you a dad?" simply by adding a question word ("ma") on the end of the original statement... So your sentence would literally translate to- "You are dad 'ma'?" This works with pretty much every question.

5. You do have to spell things correctly in pinyin form- 你好 is ni hao. But this is just a way to spell things out in letters so they can be sounded out, there are no spelling tricks.

6. You will be incredible memorization skills after you take it. I promise you that.

7. It sounds really cool when you start speaking in dialogues and it looks really cool once you start writing short responses from memory.

8. You'll occasionally be able to tell when someone's tattoo is incomplete or grammatically incorrect, even if they have no idea. Or if it's just plain embarrassing and ridiculous.

9. Chinese professors are generally pretty awesome.

10. It's a very sing-songy beautiful language with the intonations.

11. Around 20% of the world speaks various dialects of it. I'd recommend simplified Mandarin if you're going to learn Chinese. Cantonese seems to be the other big dialect.

12. Awesome people take Chinese; the longer you take it the more awesome people you will meet!

13. Time is also simple. Put it in order from biggest to smallest unit- year, month, day, part of day...

14. Once you know your numbers you know your months!- month one, month two, month three... For instance February (my birthday) is the second month. 二 means two. 月 means moon (month). So February is 二月. It's just that simple!

15. Once you know your numbers you also know your days of the week- day one, day two, day three.

16. Numbers are simple-ish 一二三四五六七八九十 See how 一 has 1 line, 二 has 2 lines, 三 has 3 lines, 四 looks like a mustache in a box, 五 kind of looks like and upside down 5 if you squint, and 七 looks like an upside down 7? Ah yes, not so bad. 十 is 10 and if you want to make a number like 12 it is simply a matter of combining the two- 十二 Easier than Spanish I tell you!!

17. If you are a visual/audio learner, like me, then this is the perfect language for you!

18. Periods look cool, they look like a tiny soap bubble- 。

People often ask me why I took 2 semesters of Chinese in the first place. They wonder if I have some secret interest in the culture or if I am planning a trip there. Nope! I just didn't want to take Spanish anymore and I needed a foreign language for college applications :-) I still have no plans of traveling to Chinese or putting the language to use, but I'm still glad I took it.

Chinese is mostly just time consuming memorization and it's hard to catch back up if at any point you start slacking, so if you are taking it make sure you have the motivation/time to really dedicate yourself to it.

Hope move-in is going well for everyone! The back of my dad's truck is filling up and I am almost done. Tomorrow is the big day! If there isn't room for my bike I will just ride across the entire state of Wisconsin (and part of Minnesota) alongside my parent's truck on the highway. Just kidding!.... although I did just buy that helmet, maybe we could rig something with a water skiing rope? ;-) ha.

Tina