School Again

Dear Everyone,

Well, I'm back at BYU! Thanks to the amazing courtesy of my awesome friends Sister Pusillo and Uncle Jared, I managed to move all six boxes of my worldly possessions to Provo. It took me about two hours to move into my 15x20 bedroom, and now I'm all settled in. I'm rooming with my best friend Heidi Soderquist (who I met in Freshman year and who's helped me ever since), Heidi's cousin Elen, and her soon-to-be-cousin-in-law Tasha, who's engaged to Heidi's cousin Austin (there are five Soderquists or soon-to-be Soderquists in our complex--there's also Austin and Austin's sister Michelle).

Centennial 2 is really great. It's like the cheapest, simplest apartment complex in Provo, but it means that the residents are really humble and know how to pinch pennies and live responsibly. I love my ward so far. We've got lots of fun activities planned these next few weeks to get to know each other. Today we had the dedication of the first ever Multi-Stake Building. It was so cool--with 100 offices for church leaders around Provo and the best organ in Utah Valley. Our stake president offered the dedicatory prayer, and it was beautiful. He has a way with words. He also has an unconscious way of delivering them with a very loud voice, so that every time he gets up to speak, all the people nodding off in the congregation snap to attention and look around, startled. It's hilarious.

School is going well, too. It was so weird going back. For some reason, all I could remember about being a student was that the teachers were mean, the classes boring, and the homework out to kill you. I'd somehow managed to suppress any happy memories of school, so I was very nervous that first day. But now that I've gone a whole week and have seen all my classes, I can honestly say that my teachers are super nice (it helps that half of them have college-aged children--they're sympathetic), the classes fly by because they're so interesting to me, and the homework isn't bad.

I've managed to stay on track with my homework so far. On Friday I managed to do every single assignment, so now I have the whole weekend to just relax. I'm sure I'll have much less free time once i start working. On Tuesday I'll be introduced to my boss on the Gardening staff here at BYU. It should be a fun job, though I will be praying for little snow this year so I won't have to get up early morning for snow removal duties on the weekends.

Tomorrow I'm going with Heidi's whole extended family to the Brigham City Temple Open House. It should be super fun. As much as I wish I could hang out with my own extended family tomorrow, Heidi's family is a pretty good substitute. I feel like they're my cousins, too.

Something interesting about this weekend so far is that Tasha rescued an injured magpie from the road. She named it Pika, and it's currently living in a cardboard box in her bedroom until Animal Control can come get it on Tuesday. It keeps freaking me out when I'm home alone and I forget that it's there and hear it shuffling around in Tasha's room. :)

The football game was pretty good, if a little late. I went with Heidi, her boyfriend Steven, and a bunch of Freshman friends. It was so fun to catch up with all of them, and they were all amazed and impressed that I stayed up until 12:30 and watched the entire game. It was too entertaining for me to get too tired. Then Friday night we all ate ice cream at Steven's apartment and played Mafia and stayed up until 1:30.  Since i had a class on Saturday morning i couldn't sleep in, so I didn't really catch up on my sleep until today. I need to get into better sleeping habits. :)

Well, that's all I can think to talk about this week. Hope it's entertaining. Thank you for your book ideas so far for my Print Publishing project. I'll let you know by Thursday night what I decide to do.

I hope you're all having a great week and that you enjoy your Labor Day weekend! I love you!!

---Carly