So I've survived my first monday of my Freshman Year at BYU! :D
I enjoy all of my classes (so far), and I am beyond grateful to be here at this time. I know with such surety that this is the place where I belong. I am so grateful everyday to be where I am. So here's the updates of how life is kickin'.
Apartment 17:
I really like my apartment and all my roomates. They are all super sweet! My actual roomate is Andrea. She is adorable, and we get along pretty swell. She makes me laugh constantly, and we have to do homework away from each other or we'll end up just having fun instead. She gets along great with Ben (who she has dubbed Ben Franklin) too, so we are quite often the three musketeers over here! This weekend I went up to Farmington with her to meet her family (and eat a yummy home-cooked dinner). She told me that later when her mom called her, she commented that we could be sisters, and we could. This is after one week people. Thus, no matter what happens, this year will be great because we will be rocking it. Another of my roomates, Julia, is a really cool RM from the Philippines. She is down to earth, easy to talk to, and a fun person to be around. Lauren is a sweet girl, I don'r see her very often, but when I do get to talk to her she is friendly and fun. Last is Susan. Susan is a seriously adorable Argentinian girl. She got engaged last weekend, so we wont be roomates for long, but we are all already having fun planning her wedding. I am going to miss this chick, but I really think that she's pretty great. She makes me feel super loved and she and her
boyfriend fiance made us delicious cinnamon french toast.
Fabulous. Fun facts: our apartment loves to watch movies, Andrea can't cook and thinks I'm a saint when I make her quesadillas, also, she tells me that I'm nice when I help her eat her food.
Apartment 25:
This is Ben's apartment. I also spend a lot of time here doing one of the following activities: watching football, eating, doing homework, watching boys play football on XBox while watching football, making food, heckling Ben's roomates, sitting around doing nothing, eating, sucking at video games, and watching football. Needless to say, I really like
watching football hanging out with Ben in his apartment. Also, all of my girl friends that I bring here say it is too much of a boys apartment here. I can see where they would say that considering the TV that's too large for the entertainment system that is now propped on cinderblocks, the HD monitor with a great sound system Ben has hooked up, and the fact that the central focal point of the room is the XBox. Their kitchen/cooking is such a joke; I love it.
258th Ward:
I really like our ward. Everyone is super friendly and inviting. It will be interesting to see how everything develops, but for now I am enjoying it quite a bit. Our first break the fast we went $40 over budget. I love my Relief Society President. She made me laugh when she made her "keep your ears shucked joke." Confession: I did skip FHE tonight because I was having too much fun watching football and doing homework (yes I'm a nerd). I also didn't want to go by myself. So yeah. But I do like out ward.
The Class Schedule:
Monday/Wednesdays/Fridays:
Residential Landscape Design- I love love love this class, especially now that we've started working on designs. I have Dr Allen, with Zak as my TA and I met both of them at Orientation, so I felt right at home as soon as I got to class. I can't explain to you why I enjoy drawing tree symbols and practicing lettering so much, but I really do. I seriously love it and it reconfirms to me all the time that I made the right choice in my major.
Living With Plants- This is my Plant Biology course. It is definitely not as fun, but we have a good teacher with excellent systems in place. It's plenty of work, but the structure makes it so that I really don't even mind. My teacher spent a lot of his life working with tomatoes, so they come up in class a lot, and he wears ties with tomatoes and other veggies on them frequently. I find it amusing. I really like the exercise we do each class where he gives us a picture of a crazy looking plant and we have to guess why it developed the way it did. Way fun.
Book Of Mormon (M/W Only)- Honestly, there is a HUGE part of me that wishes I had this class every single day. Today we basically spent a whole class talking about 1 Nephi 1:4. You go look up that verse and tell me things about it for an hour. My teacher is incredible and loving. You can tell that he really cares about our spiritual growth and isn't here to make our life hard. I feel like just today my testimony grew so much and I was learning things I'd never heard before. I am seriously already looking forward to having class again on Wednesday. Today we had a 300 word mini essay due and mine was 759 words without even trying. I actually stopped myself before I made it ridiculously long.
Intro to Landscape Management (F Only)- This is a class to introduce our major to us. I've only been once, but it seems like a chill enough class. I really like our textbook, we haven't been assigned to read any of it, but I'm pretty far into it. haha Since I don't know much about it, I'll write about my major. I really love my program and I've gotten to meet so many people in it already. ...Of course I keep becoming friends with people and then realizing they're married. Not that that's a bad thing, I just forget all the time that that's how BYU is.. Seriously, there's a lot of people I've met who are married. It doesn't actually freak me out, but yeah, it actually does.
Tuesday/Thursdays-
Beginner Volleyball- Well, there isn't much to say about this one! I love volleyball and I'm hoping to get better at it. I'm really irritated with how inconsistent my serves are, but most of my passes and sets are alright. The only time they're bad is when someone gives me a bad pass and I'm just trying to keep it from going out. Our time does a pretty good job though and I'm sure that we are going to keep getting better as the semester goes on.
American Sign Language- I really enjoy this class, even though it's the only one that stresses me out a tad bit. I think the only reason it stresses me out is because it's an evening class and it always seems to interfere with Landscape Management activities I'm supposed to try to attend. I love the way that our class is run. Our teacher never talks, ever, and we aren't allowed to either. We figure out what signs mean, which is awesome because then I actually remember them. The only problem is that I am awful at names and we practice asking people "Is your name (Blank)?" to practice fingerspelling names every class so far. I think it's going to be great though. I'm glad I signed up to for it and I'm hoping to keep getting better.
The Football!
BYU's game against UVA is not something I'm going to want to talk about for a long long long time, but the game against Texas was so flipping fabulous! Did you watch it? Because we balled so flipping hard. Also, Ben and I rocked the system, found out about the storm and delay from
inside Ben's apartment, didn't wait in line at all, and got fabulous seats (not to mention that we stayed pretty much dry throughout the game)! I had an awesome time, and the fact that I got to watch with Lauren (MY FAVORITE) made it even better! I screamed myself hoarse, and the win was so victorious that I didn't even mind staying until 2am for stadium clean-up.
