Collge....so far

After my mom dropped me off and left with my sister, college really began. It was kinda weird knowing I wouldn't be seeing them for about 3 months. But once all my roommates arrived I began to settle in. We all had our hundreds of bags of groceries that we attempted to fit in our cupboard space which was pretty interesting. We all got our rooms set up, and then we had a thing called "Get Connected" where we are put into groups. Our group was pretty lame! hardly anyone showed up, and we also had a hard time finding them, so we as an apartment went to most of the activities alone.

(Virginia, Rebecca, Me, Saisha, Rachel, and Emily)

The first couple of nights we all stayed up super late talking and getting to know everyone. Something I learned here is that if you leave you apartment door open, you will meet lots of people. We had many people just drop in and introduce themselves and many of those people we have kept as apartment friends :)

Church was an interesting experience. Its weird going to a building where I have classes and having sacrament meeting in those strange desks. This is also my first time going to a singles ward, so that in itself was very different. My ward has 3 relief societies and 2 elders quorums.

Monday was the first day of school. I had three classes that day, all of which I have to hike up to the top of campus. I usually give myself 15 minutes to get there so I am not late. So far i think my classes will be very fun with not too much stress. The workload is the only thing that I worry about. Another interesting thing is that we open each class with a prayer, and most of the time we talk about something churchy in class. I have read many articles written by general authorities for homework already. That night we were assigned our FHE brothers, and it just so happened that it was the apartment that we had introduced ourselves to one night when we were bored. Kinda ironic lol.

The rest of the week went well.I tried to manage my time and get everything done before 12 AM but that has been kinda difficult. With all these people I keep meeting, and things to do its hard to just sit in the apartment or Library doing work. I have gone on many late night walks with people just to get out of the apartment. Tillamook ice cream runs have also been pretty popular with my aprartment:). I have also stayed up late with roommies but it wasn't so bad because my classes don't start till 11:30 most days except for Wednesdays when I have an 8:00 Book of Mormon. We have also set up a ping pong court on our dinner table and have had some crazy competitions with roommies, random boys, and our apartment brothers (my roommate's Fiance and his brother who have been over every day since I have been here).

With only being gone a week, I haven't been too homesick because I haven't had time to sit down and think about it until last night and I can honestly say I miss having parents around! For the past couple days I have been complaining that my tailbone has been hurting. Sitting in classes has been difficult and hard to concentrate because I was too busy trying to not hurt myself. I couldnt even sleep on my back without my tailbone killing me. So after a while I texted my mom and she said it was probably just a muscle spasm or something and that I should stretch and just be careful. Stretching was THE worst idea! Only warm showers seemed to help. My mom told me to look on Web MD to figure out what could possibly be wrong with me. The first time I looked I found nothing that sounded like my symptoms. Then the next day I was just sitting there doing my homework when I just randomly decided to look again. I found this thing called a pilonidal cyst which match my symptoms perfectly. As sad as it sounds, I cried a little because I knew it meant going to the doctor without a parent. Saisha, my best friend of 8 years, walked with me to a clinic that I found online. Worst idea ever lol. Walking just irritated it more. But once I was there, they got me in quickly and I told the nurse what I thought I had and she moved me to a room with "better lighting". She had me change into these shorts and had me lay on this table. The doctor finally came in and I think he knew how uncomfortable I was with the whole thing and he tried to keep me as "modest as possible" lol. Four painful shots later I was numb and couldnt feel a thing while he drained the cyst. He said that it was about to pop, which kinda made me glad I was there when I was. Now i am all bandaged up and in pain. I have to go back in for the next week to keep getting it packed with gauze. I got a blessing from some elders in the ward and the relief society president brought me cookies that night. I had a good friend stay with me and bring me pizza while my roommates went off and had their friday night fun. Word definitely spread like wildfire and I am so glad I have such great neighbors and ward members!