I love shopping especially in Utah

Fridays are my days off from class. I need to learn to use them a little more productively. Hayley had class at 8 so I was awake when she left and figured I'd go to sleep for another hour or so and then get up. When I finally did wake up it was 11:30. I never sleep in that late. I'm always that awkward kid at sleepovers who is up early and has to wait around for hours before anyone else gets out of bed. I guess I was totally burnt out from having so much fun every night. I had a whole plan to get ahead on all my reading assignments and clean my room, but none of that happened. Instead I went to lunch with a couple of friends from home (I did get some laundry done though) and then went shopping with my roommate and some of our new friends on our hall. I always love shopping, but shopping in Utah is fantastic. The sales are a lot better, there are way more modest clothes, and they have pretty much all the same stores as there are on the East Coast plus a few better ones. Even the thrift store (DI) was nice!  Grace found a really fancy dress that looks like its never been worn for 15 dollars. Hayley and I have promised each other we won't go shopping for at least another couple of weeks because we both spent too much! I'm glad I have a shopping buddy though :) The biggest problem with shopping here is trying to find things. I've gotten so lost just driving around. The grid system is good in theory but when there is 800 N in Provo and 800 N in Orem only a mile away its so easy to be on the  wrong one. Also when people give you directions they only tell you to go North, South, East, or West they won't tell you any landmarks and they hardly use left and right either. Street names are also pretty much useless because they are all numbers. One of the only ones that isn't is University but for some reason they felt the need to make both a University Ave and a University Parkway which are two different roads that go in different directions but are in the same city. I can navigate around Boston so well, but I am totally lost here.  When we got back from shopping there was another dance party going on at Helaman field. They sure like to have dances all the time here. Once again we only went for the free ice cream and we made out like bandits. They gave us an entire box of ice cream sandwiches to take back with us! Good thing we had just learned how to make our freezer work about 20 minutes before. We danced to a few songs, but both Hayley and I aren't really into dances with tons of people (we can't figure out how dances will happen in the winter they have all been outside) and our ice cream was melting. 

 Hayley smuggling the box of ice cream out of the dance!

Football home opener!

Thursday night was the first football game. BYU crushed Washington State 30-6! It was really fun too. We were worried because just before the game it poured rain so we thought it would rain the whole time. Luckily the rain only lasted for about 10 minutes and it was dry for pretty much the whole game! Everyone in the student section stands up for literally the entire game. The boys in front of us scolded us for sitting down during a time out. I also need to get better at the BYU fight song. I don't really know any of the words, but I have an all sports pass so I'll have plenty of chances to learn it! There isn't really any professional sports teams out here so everyone gets super excited about college football! It was also nice to be at a big game where no one was drunk :)  We were exhausted by the end of the game. When we left it was after 11 and the 4th quarter had just started. This first week has been so much fun but so busy!

 Roommates <3

 Because it was raining when we walked over I decided not to bring my nice camera. I regretted that decision when it didn't rain the entire time.  

 The crazy student section!

Fireworks before the game!

First day(s) of school!

I love all of my classes! I think they are going to be a lot of work, but it will be completely doable and probably even fun. I've learned so much just in the first few days, and I'm totally enjoying it! I am once again grateful for my Worcester Academy education because I feel pretty prepared academically. Everyone on campus is super nice. I've been totally lost probably 3 or 4 times and each time an upperclassman has walked me to the building I was looking for after I just asked them to point me in the right direction. My professors are all great too! My Writing teacher has even invited us to her house to present our essays to each other at a dinner party. The best part of learning at BYU though is that we get to talk about the gospel in all of our classes, not just religion class. In every single one of my classes we have had at least a short discussion on how the gospel or a particular scripture relates to what we are learning. It motivates me to learn more and to do better. The professors aren't just teaching us so that we can go out into the world and make money. They truly want to helps us get as much knowledge as we can because we will be able to use it both to help others in this life and have happiness in the next.  There is no separation of church from anything. I've always felt like the gospel was a part of everything I did (or I at least tried to make it that way), but now it is totally obvious that God truly does have His hand in everything. 

The BYU campus is so beautiful! I'll never be sick of looking at this everyday!

Sunday is my favorite day

Honestly before I came to BYU I thought that there would be nothing to do on Sundays and that I would be bored out of my mind all day, but this Sunday was so much fun. It was so great not to have any work to do, but I was busy all day. We have 9am church (yes we were late on the first Sunday we'll have to work on that). Church is so quiet with out any kids. Its so weird. After church I took a short nap, we had a hall meeting and then I went to Hayley's grandparents house for dinner. Two other girls from our hall Grace and Angel came too! Hayley's family is so nice, and I got to meet three of her cousins who are also going to BYU. 

Angel, Hayley, me, and Grace after Sunday dinner

After Sunday dinner we went to ward prayer. There were yummy snacks and we got to chat with other kids in our ward. There are 160 of us so its probably going to take me all Semester just to learn everyone's name. After ward prayer we went tunnel singing. Apparently its a tradition at BYU. Everyone gathers underneath the big tunnel near the Marriott Center and sings hymns. I guess tunnels have really good acoustics. There were literally hundreds of people underneath the tunnel and outside it. Near the end everyone sat down and each person who had recently received a  mission call had the opportunity to stand and announce to the group where they were going. Everyone clapped and cheered for each person who was going to serve a mission. It was amazing for me to see how much support there is for missionary work. After the missionaries were all done announcing their calls we sang  Called to Serve. It was an incredible experience. The best part is it happens every Sunday night!

This picture is kind of dark but to give you an idea of how many people there were I took it after a whole bunch had already left. 

Orientation!

Wednesday after FOL I helped my roommate move in. It didn't take long at all, and it was actually kind of fun! After that I got to go with Hayley to a fancy dinner at her grandparent's house to celebrate her grandpa's retirement. Her grandmother is a really good cook :) After that we went back on campus to start our orientation activities. Everyone living in Helaman was invited to go to a carnival and dance at the Cannon center. There was games, prizes, popcorn, cotton candy, and a huge dance! The dance was super crowded and noisy so we mostly just hung out outside. I got to meet a lot of new people, and everyone is so nice here I feel like I already have tons of friends! I'm really glad I went to FOL because there were a lot of people who I had already met or at least recognized and that made it easier to meet even more people. Thursday morning was the official start to new student orientation. To be honest it was kind of boring. There were a few helpful things I took away from it (free BYU creamery ice cream was one of them) but we felt like we were being herded around like cattle all day. One cool thing was that out of 5,000 freshman who were split up into groups of about 30 Ariana ended up being in my group! It was so nice to have a friend to be with for most of the day. Our night time pep rally ended up being really fun. We took a class Y photo, the cheerleaders performed, we learned the BYU fight song, and got to meet some of the student athletes. They also gave us all free t-shirts, and at the end they put on a fireworks show. 

Our class taking the Y photo. They call us incoming freshman 2012 instead of the class of 2016 because more than half of our class won't be graduating together :)

One of my favorite parts of orientation was finding these girls! Ariana and I hadn't seen Chelsea since she moved to Utah four years ago.

Friday was another full day of orientation. We started out with a morning devotional from one of the religion professors. It was really great; I'm looking forward to the weekly devotionals here. After that Hayley, Grace, and I ditched our orientation groups to go find our classes. We each walked through our whole schedules so we wouldn't get lost on the first day. That night there were a whole bunch of free activities on campus for freshman, but there were long lines at all of them. So we went off campus to Hayley's favorite snow cone place and then walked around the park right next to them. I'm such an ice cream girl I usually don't like snow cones that much but these ones were delicious. After that we went back on campus for another part of orientation. Once again we skipped pretty much the whole thing except the free ice cream. The BYU creamery is going to make me so fat! My roommate tells me I eat way to much ice cream. After we got our free ice cream we went back to our lobby and played games with some of our new friends. 

Saturday there weren't any orientation activities until night time so my friend Grace and I went to the temple that morning. The Provo temple is beautiful and totally different from the Boston one. There was a line of people (mostly BYU students) all waiting to do baptisms. It was so great to see tons of other people excited about going to the temple! I love the temple, and I'm so grateful that there is one only a mile away now. I'm going to make it a goal to try and go every week. Saturday night there was another dance, and more free activities for freshman. Hayley and I went to the dance for a little while, and then took advantage of the free bowling. It was fun, but we were all terrible! I think they should have put the bumpers up for us. After that we all went back to Helaman and played capture the flag and mafia out on the quad. It was super fun, and I got to meet even more people. 

FOL

Last week I got to go on the Foundations of Leadership conference at BYU's Aspen Grove. It was an amazing experience. Aspen Grove is so beautiful and the conference was the perfect mix of fun and spiritual. We had lots of devotionals, EFY style classes, team building games and other activities. Our group was exactly what each of us needed. Its amazing how when you have the gospel in common you can become friends so quickly. By the end of just three short days I can honestly say I love everyone in our group, and I look forward to seeing them around campus. We were group 25 or 2-5 as we called ourselves and we had an awesome rap for our cheer (someone recorded it but I'm not sure where it ended up). I had so many great experiences but I don't have time to write about all of them so I'll just tell you about my favorites. The dance on Monday night was probably the best dance I've ever been to! It was just the right size, there was good music, and pretty much everyone was actually dancing.  Tuesday during free time I hiked up to Stewart Falls. It's a beautiful waterfall! Some of my new friends and I actually went underneath it. The mountain water was freezing, but it felt good. Tuesday night was really spiritual. First we had a musical program, followed by a blindfolded activity about listening to the Spirit and testimony meeting. The testimony meeting was just in our small groups so everyone had the opportunity to share if they wanted to. I had never been to a testimony meeting that was so small before but it was really uplifting, and it was nice to be able to bear my testimony in a group I was so comfortable in. I think the thing that impressed me the most about the whole conference is that people who are just a few years older than me were completely in charge of the whole thing, and they were great at it! The two people who ran the conference were both seniors, and the group leaders were a mix of sophomores and juniors. I was totally amazed at what great leaders our counselors are, and how much they know about the gospel. One of our group leaders has both the Living Christ and the Family Proclamation memorized ( if you haven't read those or dont know what they are you can read them here and here). I was totally impressed; I don't even have all the scripture masteries memorized.  Wednesday morning we had one more class and then headed back to BYU. I was kind of sad to leave but unlike youth conference, EFY or Girls Camp everyone at the conference is going to the same place after. We'll be able to see each other all the time! 

Group 2-5 ready for this! 

game time

 So excited for FOL!

 Aspen Grove is one of the most beautiful places I've ever been!

 new friends

 my friend Mckenna and I at the waterfall

 Stewart Falls

 The three of us went underneath the falls together. 

 Ginger girls from group 2-5

Moving in!

Saturday night my dad helped me move into my new dorm room. I love it! There is actually a lot more space than I was expecting, and it's pretty nice. The rooms are long and narrow though so its hard to get a good picture where you can see what it actually looks like. Sunday I spent the whole day with my roommate, Hayley! We went to church at her grandparents' ward in the morning, and then had dinner with them. After that I met her other grandparents (both of her sets of grandparents live in Orem), and then we went to BYU. She showed me around campus, and I got to show her our dorm room. I really like her, and I know we are going to be great friends.