This post is way too shallow for all I need to say.

I am just going to try and recap.

La Vida- I showed up that morning to go to La Vida (met Kevin from Golden) and went for an 8 hour van ride to upstate New York. It was pretty awesome group of people for the van. It would not be the last of the random groups though. So here I find myself in the middle of the Adirondack mountains knowing absolutely no one. We did an ice breaker called "Fatty Llama" where you would walk around and they would call out commands and you had to find your partner and then do the pose. On of the poses was called "Ride the fatty llama" so you would jump on your partners back and run around.

We then had to dig through a pile of name tags and figure out which people were in our groups. I knew I was in Kayak but I didn't know who else was. I was the last one to arrive at our meeting place and I am not going to lie, I was dreading it when I saw the people. It looked like a very awkward group of people. We then did a scavenger hunt (which included singing ring around the rosie at the top of our lungs) for our "sherpas" (the guides/counselors).

Skip ahead through the strange ice breakers and team building. We get in the Kayaks on the 3rd day and start paddling. It took us forever the first day and it was just a lot of shallow converstations at first since no one really knows each other.

(Skip ahead a few days.)

None of us has showered or put on deoderant or have any idea what time it is and we're all dead tired of paddling all day, but at least we feel comfortable around each other (ecspecially since I told everyone to do the trust fall off of the ropes course. We had some pretty nasty food and then licked out bowls clean after every meal to clean them.

We had some really cool Sherpas Lis and Mike. They were pretty dang funny.

I won't go into everything about La Vida but here are the highlights.
1. We came to a point on the lake/river and couldn't go down it so we had to portage (carry our kayaks) through town. Just imagine about 12 college students who haven't shaved or showered in over a week walking down main street and stopped at a traffic light carrying kayaks. It was awkward.
2. While walking through one of the camp sites Caitlin suddenly felt a sharp pain in her leg. Then I did too shortly after and then again. We quickly discovered we were being attacked by bees and made a dash for our lives. My first bee sting ever. Good news: I am not allergic!
3. When you get back from La Vida to "Base Camp" they have you do a skit to share about your time. Our group did Kayak The Musical. It basically ended up being the greatest thing ever. The next day when all the other groups were making noise to show off our really humble/patient sherpa Mike came up and said "It doesn' matter how much noise we make, or how well we do on this race, because WE PONED THEM LAST NIGHT." We are now known as "that awesome kayak group that did the musical skit."
4. There was an 8 mile run/walk. I am proud to say I ran it all and in 1 hour 31 minutes. However, it has result in my knee feeling like it has just declared war on the rest of my body.

Note: I also did something called Solo days. You sit out in the forest by yourself for 2 days and 2 nights and fast (no eating). I also fasted from speaking for the time (that was really hard but awesome.) Basically one of the best experiences of my life just reading the bible, praying, listening, writing.

Also after the trip I had 9 best friends so it was really easy to be out going because I know that I have these people from La Vida to fall back on.

Orientation-
I got there a day before everyone on my floor (because of La Vida) so I spent one night all by myself. Met my roommate. His name is Ben (we have 4 guys named Ben on our floor.) He is the perfect roommate. Messy (like me) easy going (like me) funny (I hope like me) and brought everything anyone could ever possibly need for college including a fridge, tv, and air purifier. He is also a really heavy sleeper. He is basically awesome as is my whole floor of guys. I share a bathroom with 2 basketball players who are massive. I am 6ft and the shortest guy, it is a new experience.

My residence hall is on something called the Hill. It is set off a little from campus and is on top of a hill but I hear that freshmen who live on the hill tend to loose wait not gain it.

Orientation was essentially just strange. Every few hours I was with a new group of complete strangers. We did however go into Boston. I went to the North End (Little Italy) and that was awesome and an entirely new experience. Then that night they had a dance for the freshmen. It was a lot of fun. that is all I am going to say about that.

School
I am technically a "deciding major" but I am taking the biology classes which I am excited about but are also scary. The books are also ricidculously expensive ($140 for my biology book). I do have a pretty sweet babysitting job which I get paid $12 and hour for hanging out with these 2 kids and I get to borrow the ladies car to drive them around. I auditioned for a theatre job which would have been perfect but it is during the middle of the day and conflicted too much with classes. My biology class has a professor from Harvard Medical School teaching and we began with a song about biology. I am excited for my survey of calculus class, it looks really interesting. I really want to audition for "The SweatyTooth Madmen". It is the school's improve troupe and all the upperclassmen say I should do it because I remind them of the leader guy who did it and just graduated.

Funny things:
Out of 290 girls 23 of them are named Sara.
The ratio is 3 to 1 in favor of the guys.
Our police is affecionately named the GoPo (a play on Popo and Gordon Police)

I know there was not much depth to that but I need sleep.