Shin Splints, Blisters, and Thunder Thighs

There is so much walking to do here at BYU! There's the giant hill to walk up to get up to the main part of campus, there's walking around between classes. There's just a lot of walking. I'm not used to doing all this walking, so in the first week I got shin splints. Not fun. That just makes walking much harder to do because it hurts every time you take a step! I also made sure to only wear shoes that I knew I was used to wearing and that had never given me blisters before. Well, surprise, surprise! My shoes that had never given me blisters before, and that I'd worn nearly every day in high school and over summer gave me blisters. Thankfully I have a nice big box of band-aids to help cover any blisters and hopefully prevent new ones. The "Thunder Thighs" part of this title hasn't happened yet, but it's sure to happen from all this walking we're doing. On the first day of walking up the hill from Helaman Halls to the main part of campus, Kayla, Catie, Vera, Paige and I noticed that it was really giving our thighs a workout! So now, whenever we're all going up that hill together we shout "Thunder Thighs!" because we can feel our thigh muscles really working. Hopefully all this walking will help me burn off all the calories from the delicious food here!

First Day of School!

Classes started today! We no longer are having dance parties every night, we now have homework assignments. We're all exhausted from staying up so late all the time. I really do need to go to bed earlier. I was tired in between classes today, so I took a nap.....on the grass. It felt really nice there and I made sure to set an alarm on my phone so I'd wake up in time for the next class. The alarm woke me up and I kind of jumped and there was a group of girls walking by that laughed at me and gave me a weird look, but whatever. They're just jealous that they didn't think of the idea to take a nap in the grass. Because today was the first day of school I had to take the traditional "First Day of School" picture. So here it is:

Maybe it's slightly dorky to have a "First Day of School" picture in college, but I don't care. My friends enjoyed taking pictures with the sign too! Here are some pictures of them!

Ok....so maybe it is a little dorky. Kayla looks cute, but the rest of them are acting like dorks. Haha

Classes went well today! I think they all should be great classes! Today I had Geology, Calculus, Biology, and Writing. Tomorrow I have Book of Mormon and Calculus, and Thursdays I have a Civil Engineering class. Hopefully this semester will be fun and not too much work! A kid who came to BYU from China told me I had an Asian workload and I was crazy for taking so many classes like that and not any "fun" classes. Well some of those classes seem like they could be fun! Of course there are definitely some fun classes that I could take that I'm not, like social dance or underwater basket weaving, but I'm not taking those! Maybe some other time.

Today was also our first Family Home Evening as a ward and we don't have our "families" assigned yet, we had a big ward meeting and, of course because this is BYU, we did speed dating. This has to be the school that pushes dating the most out of any other school around. It seems like nearly every announcement for anything relates to dating. Some things I've heard:
"Here is the schedule for the movies we're showing that fulfill Great Works requirements for the Honors Program. They're all free, so guys, find a girl and get a free date! Maybe go to the Jamba Juice next door afterwards!"
"Your freshman mentor will give you a pass that gives you $2 admission to some of our programs that would normally cost much more. So guys, you know what that means! You can take a girl out on a $4 date!"
"There's a pretty good restaurant in the MOA. It's kind of fancy. It would be a good idea for a date"
"I know you all are enjoying this dance, but it's starting to rain out here, and if you go into the Wilk there's a dating game just waiting for you!"
"The campus floral store works on your meal plan! Guys! That means you can buy flowers for a girl and take her on a date using your meal plan!"

Oh BYU....

But anyways, the first day of classes was good! My professors all seem great, and I don't think I'll have too much work! I think that I'll definitely plan on taking many naps in the grass though because that felt nice!

New Student Orientation

I've already been at BYU for a week, so I wasn't sure how fun or useful the New Student Orientation would be. The first day, after everyone moved in, each hall area had a carnival and dance party. There were a lot of games to play, a lot of food to eat, and too many people to meet! It was all pretty fun though! Then for the real start of orientation we were put into pretty random groups of people and forced to be friends with them because we had to spend all day with them. Whatever, my group was pretty fun and I already knew a few people in it from Late Summer Honors. On the first day of New Student Orientation we played games with our group to get to know each other and then we walked around campus and saw a lot of stuff. The library tour was when it actually started being a fun orientation because the tour guide we had was very enthusiastic about everything. Later we had a presentation about the honor code which was actually really, really funny! I think everyone now has the angels singing "That's against the honor code! That's against the honor code! That's against the honor coooooooooode!" stuck in their heads now. All that was fun, but there's still more fun coming up! After the honor code presentation we all went to the football stadium for a pep rally type thing. First we made a Y shape on the bleachers and then we did cool stuff like the wave and a weird swishy arm thing which looked really really weird. Well anyways here are some pictures of that thanks to the BYU Facebook page!

In this picture believe it or not, there are still people coming up to be seated in their spots! I was seated kind of in the very middle of the bottom part of the Y. Then finally, after a longggg time waiting, we got everyone up on the bleachers and into the Y shape!

We also have a time lapse video of the formation of the Y and the wave and it's all pretty cool!

Then after all the fun with making the Y we had a pep rally where we were introduced to all the freshman sports players. We saw the cheer team, some of the football players, some of the basketball players, some women's soccer players, volleyball players, and we also saw the marching band! Then we ended the whole thing with an awesome fireworks show! There's a video of that too!

That was pretty awesome. And that was just the first day of orientation!

The next day for New Student Orientation we met up with our groups again and then we continued on touring the campus. After that they had meetings for the major you were interested in, and at the engineering meeting all the different types of engineering tried convincing me they were the best. They all shoved papers at me and told me a bunch of information that I don't even remember now. Then there was an information fair where we got a ton of free stuff from all the different companies on campus trying to get us to buy their stuff. There was also a service fair where a bunch of different service groups were trying to get you to serve for them. A lot of the service opportunities looked really great, but I probably won't have the time to do most of them, and I'll just have to pick one or two to do. After that there was a banquet for women interested in engineering and that was pretty fun because I got to meet a lot of other girls who are also interested in engineering. My friend Mary from my Late Summer Honors class was there and she's a lot of fun!

After all this stuff was over, we had our choice of activity to pick. We could go hike the Y, go on a scavenger hunt, play giant twister, see the movie The Color of Paradise, go to the art museum, go to the dinosaur museum, or go to the planetarium. Mary and I decided at the banquet to go see the movie because it counts as one of the Honors program Great Works experiences. We decided to see if anyone else wanted to go with us, so we walked over the the building in Heritage Halls where Travis, Nick, and Austin were staying. First we went to Travis's apartment because he texted us and told us he was there. When we got there Travis was not there, but two of his roommates were. They were really funny and totally trying to hit on me and Mary. Well anyways, we then left to go to Austin's apartment to see if he was there. We knocked on the door and waited a while, but nobody answered. Then we went a few doors down to Nick's apartment, and right as we knock on the door Mary gets a text from Nick saying "I'm making brownies and my friend thinks she gets some but she actually doesn't! Ha!" So he couldn't come to the movie with us until his brownies were out of the oven. Then we hear a door down the hall open and close and we look over and see Austin sitting there, locked out of his apartment. He said he had been in the shower and was putting on clothes to answer the door, then he went outside to see who it was, but forgot his key and the door closed behind him. Mary and I felt bad for being the cause of him being locked out of his room, but it was also really funny. He had to run outside barefoot to try to find his roommate who had a key. While he was getting back into his apartment we found Travis and Nick's brownies had finished baking, so then we all walked to the movie together. The movie was actually a really well-made movie! It had a lot of symbolism and deeper meaning, and I really wish I could speak Farsi so that I didn't have to rely on the subtitles because I feel like some of the dialogue was slightly different in translation than it would be. We had a group discussion of the movie afterwards and it was really interesting seeing everyone's input on the movie. After that we went to the Friday Night Extravaganza and learned a bunch of new dances, then we got to eat ice cream! The ice cream flavor that the BYU creamery made for our class was called Seriously Chocolate. It was pretty much just chocolate ice cream with Oreo pieces in it. After all that fun we all went over to Austin's apartment to watch a movie, but then we realized that we wouldn't be able to finish it in time for the curfew of being in an apartment of someone of the opposite gender, so we just hung out and talked instead.

Tonight there is another dance party! I think that will be my 5th dance party since getting to BYU 9 days ago. Even when there hasn't been a dance party there have been fun activities every night! I think all the fun activities will slow down a bit once classes start on monday, but I think it will still be a lot of fun!

College - Part 2

Now I have finally finished unpacking and sorting my stuff! Just in time too, because my roommate arrives tomorrow morning and I don't want her to think I'm a total slob. I managed to fit all of my clothes and shoes into my closet! Then I got some friends to help me put my bed on risers so I can have storage underneath. Here are some before and after pictures of my room:

Yay! It all fits! My bed is super tall now though. I have to jump to get on it! But now my room looks much nicer!

I also have to talk about the food again because I just love food. There is always pretty good food in the Cannon Center! But today there seemed to be a few mishaps there. During lunch we heard a plate drop and shatter, and then when Kayla goes to get some pink lemonade this happens:

The nozzle just fell off of the drink dispenser and into her cup of lemonade. She didn't know what to do, so we just left it there until one of the workers walked by who knew how to fix it.

I should also post an update on my late summer honors class. I had my midterm yesterday and that was one of the easiest tests I've had ever. It was easier than pretty much any test I had in high school because I didn't get multiple choice tests in high school. I got my test back today and I scored 100%! My final for the class is tomorrow and I'm hoping that it will be just as easy. I hope all of college is this easy! I really doubt it though, but the easiness is nice while it lasts.

Tonight we had a dance for everyone in late summer honors. It was kind of fun....but kind of not seeing as the ratio of girls to guys was 3 to 1. Large amounts of girls would congregate by the water and brownies during the first 10 seconds of a slow song, because by that time all of the guys were taken. Hopefully at the next BYU dance that I go to there will be more guys.

More people are starting to move into the dorms now. It's no longer just the 140 of us late summer honors kids. I was taking a nap today when a gaggle of giggling girls ran down the hallway and woke me up. I'm going to miss having the peace and quiet of only 3 people on the whole floor, but it will be fun to meet all the new girls too!

College - Part 1

The Late Summer Honors class that I've been taking is called Engineering for Earthquakes. It's actually a pretty fun class! At first it seemed like this class would be really hard, but after talking to some kids in the other classes I think that this one is pretty fun and easy! I mean, we build towers out of blocks and then try knocking them over by yelling right next to them. How awesome is that?! Other classes have to read whole Shakespeare plays and do a packet for homework. Our homework is to build a bridge out of paper. I think I chose a good class!

One of our tasks was building a bridge out of paper and dowels that could be able to support 10 pounds pulling down on it. If it did that, you got at least a 93%, if it didn't, then you just missed out on 70 points of a 100 point assignment! We had to do the calculations to figure out how much force each piece would have to take, and then we made pieces appropriate for the task they needed to do. This is what my group's bridge ended up looking like!

The skinny pieces were in tension and the cylindrical pieces were in compression. We did the math to be sure that they'd work and support the 10 pounds, and it did just that! We kept adding weight until it broke, and it broke at about 15 pounds.

And this is our bridge after it broke...

The class has been really fun so far! It's only a week long and I get a whole credit hour for it! I have my midterm test tomorrow and then the class ends on wednesday. Hopefully I'll still see some of the people from my class around campus because they're all really fun awesome people! I've had a good time making friends with the other students in my class as well as others that aren't in my class! On Saturday night some of the other girls in Hinckley Hall and I baked some brownies and had a little party where we invited people over to eat brownies and socialize. We even met some new people who walked past our building and smelled brownies and decided that they had to investigate where the wonderful smell was coming from! I've had a lot of fun meeting new people and making friends! The classes are really fun too! Only at BYU would you have a class prayer before testing out paper bridges to help ensure that it wouldn't break. Haha I love BYU!

Oh.....and something new I just found after I originally posted this! BYU is so weird! Look at these events on the sports calendar!

 Ok, so this one I can kinda understand just because it's a funny thing to do.....but the next one?????

"Kiss someone for 12 minutes today" ......seriously???? Ok, something is wrong with BYU..... Hahaha
And you know what the best part about this picture is? You can't see it in this picture, but it says 12.12.12, but they put it on November 12th, not December 12th!

College!

I started college today! Yay! I'm taking a week long late summer honors class called Engineering for Earthquakes which gives me a credit hour. Today I moved into my dorm and met a lot of new fun friends! Then I went to class and met some more people. In class we worked on some basic physics stuff and had a little lab where we tested the tension strength of different lengths and widths of paper. I already have some homework, but it's not too hard. 

Some good news is that we located my missing textbook! I ordered one textbook on Amazon because it was cheaper there than in the bookstore, but somehow it got lost somewhere in the mail. The tracking system said that it was delivered, but I did not have it, so that was a problem. After a bit of searching my mom located my textbook and will bring it by tonight before she flies home tomorrow. 

Oh! Something else I have to talk about! The food! There is so much food here! I have to restrain myself or I'd get fat from eating all the good food here! Well anyways, I think college will be a lot of fun!

Exploring

The past few days I've been having fun in Utah, spending time with cousins, finishing up some college shopping and doing some fun shopping as well. I managed to find 2 new dresses that touch my knee! I keep getting too tall for all of my dresses. I also got some new pairs of boots to keep my toes nice and warm during the Utah winters.

Today to have a bit of fun instead of just sitting around the house I went exploring in the nearby mountains with grandpa and cousins. We found some fun springs with little nature trails around them. There were a lot of butterflies that we tried to catch and we were successful in catching one! After that the cousins had to leave, but my mom and my grandpa and I stayed to explore more of the mountains. We took a truck up a road that looked interesting. It ended up being really bumpy and going really high into the mountains, but it had a great view of the valley and the other mountains around. 

This was one of the cascading falls. There were quite a few that we passed by. The springs would come up out of the ground and cascade down the mountain. I thought that it was pretty cool.

This picture is a view from on top of the mountain road we went exploring on. Mount Timpanogos is in the background and it is a pretty tall mountain! It is the second tallest mountain in Utah and its elevation is 11,749 feet. These mountains were all glacial mountains, carved out many many years ago by glaciers. We saw some horizontal stripes on a lot of the mountains and we were wondering how those were formed and then we figured that it was most likely were the glacial deposits were as the glaciers descended. I had a fun day today exploring the mountains! Timpanogos Cave sounds like something fun that I'll have to do another day! There were so many things to do there. I'll just have to come back exploring again sometime!

College Is Expensive!!

Today I said goodbye to my brothers and sisters and my dad. My mom is staying with me in Utah until I'm dropped off at college next week. We waited to do a lot of my college shopping until we were out here in Utah so that we didn't have to transport all of it, so today, for my birthday, we went college stuff shopping! I had to spend my own money and I realized how expensive it all is! Towels and shampoo and bedding all really adds up to be a lot of money! I already bought one textbook, but I have to buy the rest of those. More money. Thank goodness I had a job this summer!

Family Fun

Driving out west has the benefits of being able to spend more time with all the family that lives in Idaho and Utah that I don't get to see that often. Yesterday was the Smith family picnic where I had fun talking with cousins, aunts, uncles, and grandma Smith! Today we went to Utah and I was able to meet some of my mom's friends from high school and their kids as well as some of my cousins on that side of the family! At both gatherings we exploded a watermelon using rubber bands and it is pretty awesome!

This is a video of us at the Smith family picnic exploding the watermelon. It's pretty fun! The explosion here was much more dramatic than the explosion with the Wood cousins. Today the watermelon took its time cracking apart before it exploded. This little trick has been quite the hit among family and friends. The only problem is that it makes half of the watermelon disappear into shreds, but it's a good sacrifice for tons of fun!

Now that I'll be going to college at BYU I'll see a lot more of my cousins! Yay! Lots more fun times ahead!

So I Got a Blog

Well this past week I've moved out of my house and packed up everything that I need for college. My bedroom has already been emptied out and claimed by William. I start my late summer honors classes in Provo on August 16th and then orientation is a week later. After that I will officially be a college student at BYU! I decided it would be a good idea to make a blog just because I can. Be prepared for a blog full of the amazing adventures of my life and stuff like that.