Homecoming Week

Homecoming was this past week, which was fun and exciting. My friends and I went paint dancing Monday night. We basically got in a paint fight and then danced for a while. While it was extremely gross at the beginning, believe it or not, I got used to it. It was not cool when I had to take two showers and scrub like mad to get all the paint off me. In the pictures are my friends: Heather, Chelsea and Alyssa.Friday night was the homecoming dance so my friends and I went and it was pretty sweet. Here are some pictures before the dance.Saturday was the game and the Utah State Aggies came super close to winning. We were ahead, 28-27 until the last two seconds when Fresno State kicked a 58 yard field goal and made it. So we lost with the final score being 28-30. It was sort of depressing since it was homecoming. We only have two more home games, which is weird. I still can’t believe that it is almost November!

Fall Break

The highlight of the past week or so has been the wonderful snowfall here on campus. As you can see, it snowed a little and some of it even stayed overnight. I only got pictures when it was dark out. About three days later, the snow had melted and now the temperatures sit back up in the 60’s. Thank goodness! I went down to Salt Lake City on Friday for fall break. I went to Temple Square again and also met up with some girls from USU who live in the same building I do. Then that evening, I met up with some people from BYU and we went to Nightmare on 13th, a haunted house in Salt Lake. The big sign outside it says it is rated #1 in America. I didn’t scream but I jumped a few times. The scariest room was the chain-saw room. All the walls are padded in white and there is no sign saying “EXIT” so we didn’t know how to get out. The chain-saw man, who freaked me out the most, had to show us. There was another part that reminded me of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Bellevue Hospital. It was an insane asylum and was sort of creepy. Every now and then people jumped out at you or things fell from the ceilings.
My roommates and I had a great excursion to Wal-Mart the other night. I received a gnome for my birthday from Sami Kordonowy, a friend from back home. We took the gnome with us to Wal-Mart and had some fun.

Gnomes are important to me because at the camp I work at, we go on gnome hikes and the children (most of them) believe that gnomes exist. It is great fun!
Homecoming is this week so there are a lot of interesting activities going on. The major events include the dance and the game this weekend, both of which I am going to. My friends convinced me to go to the dance so I might as well. Only about a month until Thanksgiving break, which is scary because then the semester is pretty much over by then. I am sad that I won’t be able to come home for Thanksgiving but less than two months and I will be home for Christmas break. We only have about seven weeks left of classes. Woo Hoo!

Birthday Weekend!

This past weekend was probably the best one here in Utah! It was filled with fun times and good memories. My friend, Janet come up from BYU for the weekend. BYU played USU Friday night in football. BYU of course beat USU but only with a score of 34 to 14. I thought we would lose by about 63 points so the game actually went pretty well for USU.
Saturday morning, Janet and I went hiking in the Wind caves up in the Logan Canyon. It was only about two and a half miles because we didn’t have much time. But it was cool! Here are some pictures of the Wind Caves.

Saturday night, since there was nothing better to do in Logan, we decided to go to the Logan Temple. Here are some pictures of it. Then Sunday, MY BIRTHDAY, Janet and I drove down to Salt Lake City for the Church’s General Conference. My friend who goes to school in Idaho, Jodi, met us there as well. It was really cool to be able to go to the Conference in Salt Lake instead of watching it on television, especially as my first General Conference. It was near the Salt Lake Temple so we took some pictures there too.

This is the conference center, where the Conference was.

Conference occurs twice a year for the Church and it is where the leaders of our Church speak to all the members throughout the world. It was really cool and was a great way to spend my birthday. I still can’t believe I am 19. It feels super old but I know it is just the beginning.

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!

Stress, School and September

Hello to my family and friends!

The first week of college classes breezed on by and I found enjoyment in the majority of the classes I am taking this semester. My Creative Arts class, which is basically a class to learn how to appreciate the arts, is okay. We listen to a lot of classical music so I enjoy it. I have seven performances to attend over the semester, including High School Musical- the play, an opera, a string quartet and a ballet. I am looking forward to a few of the performances (not the opera!). I absolutely love sociology. It is so engaging and relative to the world I live in. I love learning about the society and seeing how different parts interact. My Biology class is super easy, at least right now. And my physics, well, I knew I would hate it going into it so nothing has changed. My only education class is good too. Our first night, we had to write a song. It's nice to be with people who share the same passion of children as I do.

Other than classes this week, I did a lot of other stuff too. I went to the doctor on Saturday. I found out that I may have ulcers or at least the start of one. So now I am on two different medications and I have this nasty green liquid to drink every day as well. The doctor assumes it is a result of stress. Wow, our family just never gets the hang of handling stress, do they? At least I am not having panic attacks or hives like other members of our family. I haven't really been able to eat a whole lot because of stress. I am lucky if I eat twice a day. But with that, I have lost five pounds over two weeks. So hopefully the medication I am on will allow me to get back to eating more! The doctor asked me how much I ate before coming out to Utah and I said "A lot. I love to eat!" So I am excited when I will be back to normal again.

This weekend was exciting because I went to Salt Lake City and Brigham Young University. My best friend from Wisconsin, Janet, goes to school at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. So for Labor Day, instead of water-skiing, I went down to Provo and Salt Lake City. We mainly went to Temple Square in Salt Lake. Jodi came with us and her grandma provided us with a home-cooked meal Sunday night. I stayed at BYU and I got to see the campus and all. Here are some pictures from the weekend. We had a blast for sure!

And some of you asked so I delivered. Ask, and you shall receive! Here are some pictures of my dorm room as well as campus.

This is our "square" room. All it has is a bunch of shelves and a big mirror.
This is our living room! Recognize the refrigerator! It has gone through about 5 college students over the past 15 years and still works!

My side of the door room. My bed is the tallest possible!
Here are some outside photos of the college:

This is Block A. The story with this is that in order to become a “True Aggie,” you must kiss someone on the block on a full moon at midnight. The school sponsors these nights every few months.

This is my dorm hall, Richards Hall. It is pretty sweet! I like it a lot!

I have more pictures but this is enough for this blog update. You will just have to come back later (bribery, perhaps?). But I miss you all and hope you all are enjoying life back home!

Address Change

So the post office here is getting annoyed with me. when they emailed me my address over the summer, they said, Richards Hall apt. 113. they don't want that anymore.

It is...
113 Richards Hall
Logan, UT 84321
I have gotten a notice from them saying this so sorry!