Week 1

Monday-First day of school!!
My first official day of college was AMAZING!! I wore my Lion King shirt as a dare from JB and kinda rocked it;) I found all of my classes easily and felt super cool when I was able to direct a fellow freshman to a building (he was at the completely opposite end of campus!!). I got to come home in between my classes for 2 1/2 hours for lunch and then back up the hill. I had Book of Mormon and American Foundations in the morning and English in the afternoon. My teachers are all very nice and funny in their own ways. I absolutely love my English teacher! She doesn't wear shoes during class and because the first day was basically reading the syllabus she let us go a half an hour early! It was HOT HOT HOT!! Where is all this cold weather I was warned about?
That night we squished all six of us into a five seat car and drove to the bishops house. That drive was one to remember, lol. We made it safely and spent the night meeting people in the ward. The six of us started a volleyball game and met so many people in the ward when they came to join in. It was a great casual icebreaker activity and we all had a fun time.
Tuesday
I guess The cold weather rolled in while I was sleeping in. I had no classes Tuesday and when I woke up it was cloudy outside. It decided to start raining when I did my laundry that morning and then had a break when I went to the store. We dressed in our Sunday best and headed to devotional around 2pm. It was so neat to listen to the speakers and to be able to go to something so spiritually uplifting every Tuesday. When we came out of devotional it was raining a little again. We only live about a 8-10 min walk from campus but that amount of time for the weather is nothing. We started walking in a sprinkle which turned into a rain. We were about halfway there when the girl I was walking with says to me, "it can get any worse right?". Almost immediately after she said those words it poured buckets! We were already soaked so what could we do but laugh at the irony of what had just happened.
We got back to our apartment to find girls walking around the parking lot in running shorts and tank tops in the rain!!  I had two friends stop by from my seminary class this last year in Yuba. After they left we waited for the rest of our roommates to come back from campus. Everyone was home except one. We knew she should be home anytime and when we looked outside to see if she was coming the rain began again. I don't know how to describe rain that was heavier and harder than the buckets that were poured on us on our way home but that is how much rain came down. It was like hurricane weather and we could see that so much water was coming down that the whole parking lot was a puddle in a couple of minutes! The one missing roommate came running home about 1 minute after it started soaked to the bone!
We stayed inside for the rest of the night and at about 6pm I looked out the window to see a beautiful double rainbow that went across our entire apartment!

Wednesday
I had the same schedule as Monday but it was COLD vs the super hot Monday. It wasn't raining but it was cloudy and windy and at lunch I came back home for a second jacket.
In my Book of Mormon class the teacher asked us if anyone had gotten engaged over the past two days. No one had but it was scary to think that it is so common for people to get married here that it was real possibility.
The number of people who are married and who have kids already is still such a foreign thing to me.Almost every day I see some girl or boy pushing a stroller around campus or walking their baby up and down the halls. I did get the chance to go to a new class today in the beautiful Hinkley building. It was a class designed for K-6 teachers, but it is a basic how to teach art to kids class. It was really fun and I hope I get to add it to my schedule.
My English class was fun as always. We did short presentations on something that we are passionate about. People brought things like a soccer ball, a guitar, a paint brush, a book, sheet music, etc. Then they had to tell why they were passionate about this object. I brought my sketch book and shared that i am an artist and planning on majoring in art; possibly graphic design. Before each student came up my teacher said where they were from. There are about 6 kids from CA, a couple from the east coast, Washington, Texas, and then there were 4 from out of the country! They were from Canada, New Zealand , Peru, and Mexico.
When we came home from school we saw that the bishop had dropped by a pizza for us while we were gone! He is so awesome! Later that night we went to an apartment meeting with everyone from the third floor and got to know each other, eat doughnuts, drink hot chocolate, and just hang out.

Thursday
I got to sleep in because I only had one class during the day. It is my Child Nutrition class. I really enjoyed it, but yet again it makes me realize how young I am. There is a boy in my class who looked like he could be my age. When we shared things about ourselves he told us that he is married with FOUR kids! His oldest is 6yrs old!!!! There are two other people in the class who have young kids as well, and I'm sure a bunch of others that are married.
I have come to find that there is a very different scale of how "old" you are here. It is not based on age but on things you have accomplished in your life. The first is graduating from High school. This means you are fresh out of the water and as freshman you come with no knowledge of what it means to live on your own. Then there are the "engaged girls" who have either waited around for a while or got caught right up by a returned missionary. Somewhere in between those two are the girls who will date every boy and their roommate because "forget college" they just want to get married! On the other end you have the "returned missionaries". Some have had a little schooling before and some don't, but once they come back from their mission it doesn't really matter. These boys have now ALL been labeled as "on the hunt" for a girl to marry. It is kind of awkward if you are a girl who does NOT want to be "hunted" because the boys are all OVER the TOP friendly anyway and are very confident because they just spent the last two years of their lives talking to anyone and everyone who would listen to them. Not all of them act this way but are all labeled as so if they want to be or not. Then you have the "Newly weds". They walk everywhere linking arms and holding hands and meeting after class and posting pictures on Facebook and telling everyone how happy they are to be married. I know everyone goes through that stage but everyone around them just wants to tell them to SHUT UP because they are so annoyingly happy! Then you have the couples who are expecting their first baby. Walking around campus with pregnant people in high school was quite awkward but not really out of the ordinary. Here it is similar but different because you know that this couple is already married and made the decision to start a family. And last you have the married with one or more kids. These people, both men and women, can be seen walking around campus with strollers and baby bags, riding bikes with baby seats, and sitting with kids in the hallways. Now that i'm not used to yet. I do have some respect for thsese parents working so hard in school and supporting a growing family. Of course it also makes me seriously think about if I would want to go through that myself.

Friday
I only had one class today because my English teacher decided to go out of town so we got the day off. having gone to school for a whole week now makes me feel so much more confident. I got to spend the day with my roommates and we had a blast. I went grocery shopping for the first time all by myself, with my roommate, and I think we did alright. ;) That night we hung out and watched movies like Thor. It was a late night but was worth it. It is so fun every day to find out what things we all have in common and the different ways that we were raised.

Saturday 
Today was a day of homework and rest from the busy and tiring week. We didn't do a whole lot but I didn't feel like I had to be doing something. It is nice to just have a place that you like to come home to and feel safe and welcome.
The pictures of food were just two of the yummy meals we have made for dinner. Omelets where you use anything you have leftover in the fridge and Frozen veggie mix with Top Ramen. I figure if I have a whole case of Ramen then I should try to use it when I can RIGHT?? The cookies are the leftovers from the one's we made for the girls next door. We made a BIG batch and gave them some in return for the cookies they made for us.

The week has been great and I'm ready to take on another!