Heeeeere's Kristin!

Hi all!

Yeah. I'm blogging again. I'm sure you want an update. Why else are you reading my blog? Ha ha.

So it's been three weeks since I've blogged, and the only thing I can think to really write about is Halloween. I know there has to be more stuff than that. Maybe I'll think of it while I write.





My roommates and I decided at the beginning of the semester we were all going to be Poodles girls, so we made it happen. Kelsee (the blonde one) did all of our hair and make up. The other picture is our dinner that night :-) Kelsee made meatloaf, and shaped it like rats. Then she got creative. Lol. We had a lot of fun with that. I decided not to go Trick or Treating that night because I still had to go practice bassoon for the day, and I just wasn't in the mood. Apparently there weren't a lot of people handing out candy, anyway. We also had a dorm party that night, but besides my room, there were two other girls that showed up. Ok....fail.

And I'm sure it goes without saying that of course I've done lots of dance stuff. I've actually gotten to the point where I can work around Wednesday nights, so I have been going to Swing dances on Wednesday nights. Kendall- a buddy from swing and ballroom dance- and I have been working to nail the stuff we learned from the swing workshop last month. He's also come up with a couple of his own dips. They are way fun! I've found a couple of dances I don't care for: two step night club and American rumba. Two step night club is basically a glorified teacher shuffle, and the American rumba is a rip off the waltz.

I've found a funny website, too. Well, actually, it's from a video that another friend posted on facebook. It's called improveverywhere.com
My roommates and I had a blast watching some of the stuff the other night. Those people are crazy!

I am also officially legal. I voted in my first election this year. ha ha. Now I get to complain ;-) Actually, my absentee ballot came in the day before Election Day, and I had to get it send out that same day because it had to be post marked before Election Day. I guess I have to start caring about politics now. That's sad.

Well, I know this was kind of short, but I don't have a lot to talk about. Upcoming events include: dancing, Thanksgiving break, and bassoon studio recital. But that's for later. Can't blog about what hasn't happened yet! :-D

October Review

It's the end of the month, and I've hardly blogged at all! Sorry about that. Things have been kind of crazy! Imagine that. I'm busy in college. Who'd've thunk it?

I have of course been continuing with all my dancing stuff. What would I do without my dancing? I definitely like ballroom better than swing, but it's all fun. :-) Recently I've learned somba, more Vienesse waltz, more tango, blues, and other things that I can't think of right now. I wasn't sure about blues at first, but I love it now. Plus, I'm meeting tons of awesome people through all these social dances. :-)

Speaking of dance, yesterday (10/23/2010) I got to spend pretty much all days at a swing workshop. We had our regular workshop 10-12 then lunch at Jerad's house. When we got to the dance studio, our group was pretty much the workshop. Lol. There were a couple other people, but BYU-I swing kids was pretty much it. This workshop was taught by a professional couple. We started off by learning shag, which is something I've never even heard of until I got up here. It's ok, but I don't think it's my favorite. So after we were done with shag, we spent a few hours learning Lindy Hop technique. That was fun. My swing friends were ready to pee themselves with excitement at everything we were learning. I can't remember anything specific we did for Lindy, though. My brain was exploding from information overload. It was great! :-D The last thing we did was Tandum Charelston. I have a new found love for Charleston, but I wasn't very good at what we were doing. I hope we do some more of it at our regular workshops on Saturday mornings. When the workshop was over, I went back to Jerad's for dinner with some other people. They're hilarious people. Weird, but hilarious. We had about an hour, and then we went back to the studio for a dance with a live band. Epicness! I had so much fun! It was a long day, but I won't complain about getting to dance for 10 hours!

Ok, so yeah. I love dancing. Just in case you missed that. :-) We had a temple trip on Friday morning at 6...in the morning. That was an early day, but it was good. We had a huge turn out. The bishopric said it was the best turn out they've seen in a while. Hurray BYU-I 86th ward!

Earlier in the month, we had a stake dance. I don't think I've blogged about this yet. Ha ha. Maybe I had. If so, you can just skip over this. It's just like stake dances back home. Pretty much the same type of music (and a lot of the exact same songs) and no one really knows how to dance. Lol. That's ok. We had a lot of fun, anyway. Just not as much fun as swing/ballroom dance. Ha ha.

Well, that's it for now. I've got to go do other productive things before fun stuff later. :-)

You Know, I'm Running Out of Witting Comments for Titles

Well, I'm in one of my favorite places on BYU-I campus: the laundry room! Ok- I'm kidding, it's not one of my favorite places. It actually reminds me how much it costs to do laundry, and that is kind of depressing.

Anyway, it's been a long week. I went to swing dance workshop last Saturday morning, which was fun. We learned the 20's Charelston (forgive me if I butchered that). It's interesting, but took some getting used to. I also went to ballroom workshop last night- lots o' fun there! They taught us Viennese waltz. I had been wondering if there was a different between that and the regular waltz. Is there ever! I really like it, though. They also taught us Rumba, which was very similar to Cha Cha, so I picked up on it fast since they had already taught the latter. In general, I think I like ballroom better than swing, but I'll still do both. :-)

What else? Well, I've been practicing bassoon for at least an hour every day. Some sessions go better than others. It's just a long time to practice, especially in one sitting. But I love my master class. Dr. Adams has signed us up for a Star Recital in November, so we're preparing for that. And on Wednesday, I got to see a contrabassoon for the first time. Might sound mundance, but I've always wanted to see one! It was super exciting. Contra is so low! ha ha. Loved it!

Last night, I was purusing MSN, and I saw an article about Cold Stone giving away free ice cream. Anna and I looked at the article, and we were like 'We are going!' It was a girl's event for Make-a-Wish. She wanted to have her own ice cream flavor and the biggest ice cream social ever. I rather liked her flavor (it was an apple pie kind of flavor) but not many other people did. Oh well, Their loss!

General Conference is this weekend, too. I'm staying on campus, but my roommates and I are hoping we can just watch it from our dorm or the lounge because we don't really want to go to the Taylor or Hart building. Our first options sound much more comfy. :-) And I think our final concensus was that we are not inviting any boys over.

Ok, I don't really have anything else to say, so I'm going to just end this...

The End :-)

My Life as a Freshman

Hey there!

So here I am blogging again. I'm getting good at this! :-D Hurray! Now you can keep up with my oh-so-exciting college life.

So anyway, I guess you want to hear about that oh-so-exciting life. I've been to a couple of dance workshops. On Thursday night, I went to Ballroom. That was cool. I learned how to waltz (better) and the cha cha. I love the waltz. That is one of the best dances ever invented. And of course it did help that the dance instructor was way cute! He tried out for the dance team, so he's way good, too. I got to dance with him a lot because there weren't enough guys at the instruction. Ha ha. It made me happy. :-) On Saturday, I went to the Swing workshop. They taught the Lindy Hop. That was one I had never done before. Although, let's be fair- I only know West Coast swing dance. It was interesting. We did this "Connection Exercise" where the follow had to close her eyes and let the lead...well, lead her around. I did not like it at all. Being blind sucks. The point, though, was to be able to respond to his "commands" if you will, just by his touch. Lindy Hop was fun!

Oh, let's see. Ok. FHE (which is Family Home Evening for you non-Mormon folk out there). On Monday, our ward got together at my bishop's house and met our FHE groups. There are nine groups in my ward. My FHE brothers are all RM (which is Return Missionary for all you non-Mormon folk out there) except for one, who just got his mission call. We'll see how that goes. When we were in the group, it was hard to talk to them. It reminded me of the slow dances where you're trying to talk to the guy, but you're forcing conversation on him. Not fun. So we'll see...

Ok, what else should I write about? I'm sure classes aren't that interesting to you ;-) No one cares about school, anyway. Hey. Friday night! Ha ha. We went to the apartment of one of the guys in my ward because they invited us for dinner and games. Dinner was good. I'm so proud of those boys for cooking. lol. The first game we played was...for lack of a better title 'The Number Guessing Game". One person is in the center with a spray bottle (but we didn't have a spray bottle; we used a cup of water) and thinks of a number. He or she goes around the circle of people, and they have to guess what the number is. You don't want to be the person who gets the number, though, because you get sprayed (or splashed) in the face. So, I get in, and only put a little water in the cup. The guy who got splashed proceeded to fill the cup with (roughly) five ounces of water. The cup was a quarter full; I kid you not. Guess who got the magic number? Yeah. Me. I was dripping and drenched, but I thought it was hilarious! My rommates told me that they were glad it was me because they would not have handled it well at all. So then we went to the next game. It was called 'What If'. You write down a question that starts with 'What if-' and someone else answers it. It was a funny game.

And I think that pretty much brings you up to speed on things. I'm enjoying college for the most part; there are just a few little things I wish I didn't have to do (i.e. classes), but I'm making the most of it. :-)

Toodles!

Hello College!

So I have survived the first day of classes! I've done about half my homework, and plan to do the other half either tomorrow night or Saturday afternoon.

I love it here on campus. It's small enough that I can walk to all of my classes (despite the cold, dreary day we're having today) or anywhere, really. Orientation was tiring. It was three days of non-stop 'get to know you' things and campus policies. I didn't care for the games they had us play, but whatever. I'm settled into my dorm now, too. My bishop came yesterday to say hi to us and let us know what ward and building we're in. My dorm is also right in the middle of campus, so everything is relatively close. And since the school is owned by the Church, we get to say prayers before every class and have Devotional every Tuesday.

The temple is visible from almost everywhere on campus, and it looks gorgeous at night when it's all lit up.

As far as my classes go, I had biostatistics, science, and Book of Mormon today. I was feeling ok about biostatistics until I sat down to read the section for next class. I'm not really sure I understand it, but I'll go back and reread it, taking notes and stuff along the way. Most of it is definitions, and I think that's what's really throwing me off. I don't know about science yet; we just went over the Learning Model and syllabus today. Book of Mormon is going to be fantastic. I already love my teacher, Brother Orchard. I definitely need to not sit by the window again, though. It was too tempting to watch the people walking around on campus.

Tomorrow I have Spanish (we'll see how that goes), American Foundations, and band. On Saturday, we're going on an 'expedition' to go hiking somewhere close to campus. I don't know all the details, yet. Hopefully I'll get some good pictures for everyone while we're out.

So, that's day one of BYU-I. I'm really blogging right now because I'm bored. Maybe I'll go work on that biostatistics :-)

Keep in touch! Facebook, email, snail mail, w/e. It all works for me!

End of the Beginning

I have less than 12 hours before I am on BYU-I campus, and I'm so excited! I've been registered and had all my books for a couple of weeks now. I took me forever to pack, though. There was so much stuff to get packed up, and I didn't know where it was all going to go. We made it all fit, and that's the important part.

The drive out was loooong. We (Nikki, mom, Melanie Clawson, and myself) left Friday night about 10 o'clock and drove to Lincoln, NE- getting there about 1 in the morning. We stayed in this totally ghetto hotel. The elevator was tiny, and the wall paper was peeling in the hallways. Best of all, when we turned the heat on (they had the AC on for the first cold night of the season) it set off the fire alarm! My mom went to get a new room, and we almost had the same problem. We turned the heat on for about 10 seconds, and the funny smell returned. We decided it was best to leave the heat off and just huddle in under the blankets and catch a couple of Zzz's before leaving in the morning.

So on Saturday, we drove, and drove, and drove. Kind of like the pioneer children, only we sat all day. NE took forever! *death* I thought I'd be ok because we had movies to watch, but we didn't want to watch movies all day, so an audio book got put in, and omg...I thought I was going to die. Now I know why everyone hates driving through NE. I think we should just nuke it and wipe it off the map. We made various stops throughout the day just to get out and stretch. It was so nice when we finally got into the plateau/mountain area, just for a change in scenery. And we kept on driving. Soon, we hit the real mountains. It was awesome to see the road wind through the valleys with the mountains rising on the left and right. Of course, sitting in the car by that time was way less awesome. I tried every position I could think of to get comfortable, and it didn't work well.

Finally, we reached Brigham City. It was a little after nine when we pulled in, so we'd spent about 13 hours on the road. Traveling is apparently pretty tiring, though, because we all just went to bed when we got here.

When I walk out of my grandma's house, I get to see the mountains, and it makes me so happy! I'm looking forward to being surrounded by mountains for the next four months! I've learned, too, that the elevation does some weird things to your body. Ankeny, IA is about 805 ft above sea level. Brigham City, UT is 4436 ft above sea level, and Rexburg, ID is 4865 ft above sea level, so we've still got a few hundred feet left to climb. Anyway, back to my weird facts. As you get higher, you loose your appetite, and your bladder becomes more active (the food thing was really obvious yesterday: I hardly ate). Also, you apparently loose weight when you're at higher altitudes. Studies have shown that you can do nothing and still lose the pounds. Yes, I researched all of this. I was actually looking for something else, but I came across all this wonderful info.

Tomorrow, we're leaving at 5:30 in the morning (MST) to head up to Rexburg. That will give me pretty much all day to get unpacked and stuff. Thankfully, I think I'm on the first floor of my complex. I'm way excited to meet my roommates. We've been talking all summer, so it'll be good to finally meet them in person. :-)

Ok, well, that's my exciting life right now. College is within my grasp, so that'll probably be the next update. BYU, here I come!

Let's Try This Again

So this is about the third blog I've tried to do. Maybe I'll actually post on this one. Ha ha. Anyway, I guess I'll tell you about my summer, even though it hasn't been the most exciting.

I've pretty much been working. I babysit for the bishop's neighbors (thank you Kathy!) Monday through Friday 7:30-1:30. They are pretty good kids, for the most part. On the bad days, I just remind myself that their parents are paying me really good money, so I can put up with them for x more hours. (That doesn't stop me from running out the door when mom gets home, though.) Sophie swims, so she's actually gone for part of the time I watch them. Recently, they've been on a Wii kick. I've had the pleasure of singing High School Music and playing Mario Race Kart and Winter Olympic sports on the Wii. Just for the record, I much prefer Mario Race Kart on the good old N64.

I also work at Subway. It's not necessarily a hard job, but I've sold my weekends to them, so I don't like it all that much. I do the closing shift, so I work from 5 until 11, but then there's still some clelaning and stuff to do. It's also a solo job for the most part. My evening person leaves by 7 or 7:30 usually, unless we're extremely busy. Then he leaves by 8. I'll admit, they're closing proceedure is a little weird. I actually have to take all the food down and do most of the cleaning before it technically closes. Reason is: we close at 11; they want me out of there by 11:15, which doesn't usually happen. So it's a job, but one I'm looking forward to leaving behind when I go to college.

I also started doing YSA stuff (which is Young Single Adult for you non-Mormon folk out there). We have a good number of YSA kids in my congregation, but we do an activity with the YSA branch in Ames every week. I love my YSA group! They're so fun and welcoming. I've missed out on some of the big activities because of work (like the camping/boating trip), but Thursday nights are great! We've played ultimate frizbee and frizbee golf, gone to the Science Center, made tootsie rolls, swimming and movie night at the Stake Young Mens president's house, and tie dyed shirts. I'm sure there are other things, but that's what I remember right off the top of my head.

A couple weeks ago, I also had all four of my wisdom teeth removed. I was expecting agony and misery after the surgery because of everyone's reaction when I told them, but it really wasn't that bad. Thank you hydrochodone! The pill was nasty, but it really helped with the pain. And thanks to Julie Watson for the advice that got me through the first day! I just chilled in my room for the first few days watching movies on my laptop and purusing Facebook. The worst part was my limited diet. I never thought I'd get sick of ice cream, but I quickly did. I got excited one night when I realized we had oatmeal I could make because it wasn't jell-o, pudding, or ice cream. I was slightly amused by that.

So now I've got six weeks before I leave for college. If you haven't heard yet, I'm going to BYU-Idaho. I'm leaving on Sept 3 right after the half time marching band show at the high school football game. I'm way excited to go out. I've been talking to my roommates on Facebook and can't wait to meet them in person. I also somehow managed to get all the classes I wanted at the time I wanted them at. I'll be taking Book of Mormon, biostatistics, science foundations, American foundation, Spanish, and music for my bassoon scholarship. In the mean time, I've still got a lot of preparing to do. There's a million things to get for my dorm, not to mention books and regular school supplies. I can just see all the money I made this summer slipping away as my list gets longer. Who needs money in college anyway? Oh...wait...

So, yeah. That's pretty much it for now. Maybe I'll get good at this blogging thing and actually update it occasionally. College life will be interesting to write about. :-)