Conquered My First Marathon

I hope all is well back home. I can’t wait until I can come home and see everyone again. Only three months until then! And it will go by super fast, I’m sure. It has been a few weeks since I last updated so sorry. To tell the truth though, nothing really exciting happened since this past weekend so I knew my blog would just bore people (not saying that this won’t be boring too).

Saturday the 13th was our first home football game. On top of working 14 hours that day, I enjoyed watching the game, even though we lost miserably. We played the University of Utah and the final score was 58 to 10. That is terrible! But it was fun watching the game. With my job, we are not allowed to cheer during sporting events so a few times (when the Aggies actually did something right), I found it very hard to resist from cheering. It is a good thing that there were only a few moments that were worth cheering for. Then we played Idaho on the 20th and we won with a score of 35 to 17 I believe. Once again, I had to work but it was okay. Our record is 7-32 over the past THREE years! We stink so much!

The big news of this blog is to let the world know about my marathon. I ran my very first marathon on the 20th and enjoyed it. Well I loved it more when it was done. It ended up raining for about five to seven miles of the whole race: at the beginning and at the end. My time was 4 hours and 25 minutes. I placed 10th for my age division of 15-19 female runners. Overall, I placed 966 out of 2129 runners. Once I was done running my marathon, I had to work for seven hours, go to a play for class and then we had my roommate’s birthday party at night so it was a busy and tiring day but well worth it. My legs feel like they are about to fall off. It is terrible. I can’t walk up or down stairs without having piercing pains shoot through my legs. I am hoping that over the next week, they will recover. Because of my nervousness and excitement for the race, I only slept about 3 hours the night before so I ended up running longer than I slept, which is sort of sad.
This is me sprinting to the finish line. I was very relieved to see it!





You can barely see me in this picture. I am the one in the grey shirt right before the white finish line sign.





These are two of my roommates who came to watch and cheer me on. The other two roommates had to leave before taking the picture. Chelsea is on my left and Heather is on my right. I am proudly wearing my medal for finishing.



This is me after running. I finished about five minutes prior to this picture. I felt completely gross and could not wait until I showered.

I am getting laughed at a lot in regard to my accent. Supposedly we say our “a” differently. And the most common question I have gotten asked is “do you like cheese?” People think it is so cool to be from Wisconsin. I don’t see the glory of it all but whatever. Someone asked me the other day if it snowed in Wisconsin. I laughed hysterically and I think the person who asked the question felt stupid. I told her that it snowed more in Wisconsin than it did in Logan, Utah. They were amazed at that. I can’t believe I have been here over a month already. Time goes by when you're having fun!

Blah Week

Another week of classes has passed and I am glad to say that I survived. Nothing too eventful happened this week, which is sort of depressing.
We had our first Family Home Evening with our entire ward (church congregation) on Monday night. I am so excited to be in a community where I am able to attend those types of activities. It was a lot of fun and a great way to meet people in my ward. Pretty soon, we get assigned to our “families” and learn who our “parents” are. I’m excited for activities and lessons that we’ll have. For those who don’t know what Family Home Evenings are, they are a time set aside every week (traditionally on Monday evenings) for families to spend time together. Often, there is a scripture study/lesson, family prayer and then an activity that brings the family together. In college, since all of us are away from our families, the Church organizes the students into small “families.” There are “moms” and “dads” who organize the evenings.
On Friday night, I went to the Institute (this is a place/organization for college-aged students to take religion classes. They also host activities for students pretty much every week.) They had a Jello slide on Friday afternoon. Then at night, they had a mechanical bull and another dance and stuff. It was pretty sweet. Here are some pictures from the night. It had a big “Giddy Up/Western” theme.

This is me riding a mechanical bull!

Saturday I went to the USU women’s soccer game. I miss being able to watch athletic events and knowing the athletes. At college games/matches, I don’t know anyone so it changes how much I pay attention to the game. It would be more fun if I actually knew the people playing. But the good news is that we won! We played a team from Colorado and we won 3-0! But the sad news of the weekend is that our football team lost AGAIN. The score was 24 to 66. It is really depressing to come here and have a team that stinks at football. I honestly think the Everest Evergreens could dominate the Aggies.
And here are some more pictures of my campus, as I promised.

This is the Quad that is on campus. The University declared that they will never build upon this grassy area. It is quite nice. Often, there are people playing ultimate frisbee and other sports. And there seems to always be something interesting going on here too.

This is the institute building where I have religion class twice a week. It is also where our meetings/church service are on Sundays.

This is Old Main Building. I have one class in there. The A on top signifies Aggies. When the light is white, that means we lost at a sporting event, however when it is blue, that means we won. It is rarely blue. It will be more when Basketball starts though, I guarantee that!

Some kids on campus tried to break a world record this week. I don’t know if they broke it but I have a hunch that they did. These two kids had to teeter-totter for 100 straight hours. They had their set up (with a tent, food and all) outside one of my classes so I got to see it up front and personal. It was pretty exciting!
For those of you concerned, my ulcers are better. This week, I was able to eat a little more. And I run my marathon on September 20th (yikes, in less than two weeks!) so I am training like crazy for that. This week includes our first football game and we play University of Utah! Even though we’re guaranteed to lose, it will still be fun!