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 :-)

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