So I was supposed to have an 8:00 class like I do every day, but for the second class in a row, the teacher is sick. Wednesday and Friday I got my 8:00 block free. Today I got up at the regular time so I could sit and eat breakfast and watch tv to my little heart's desire. And now it's 8:30 -- still too early to leave. I have my first real clarinet lesson this morning. Wish me luck.

Yesterday morning, our teacher let us out of the first hour of our class so we could go up the hill and watch them put Angel Moroni on the Rexburg Temple. It was raining, so I wasn't sure if they were still going to do it, but I went up anyway. "A gold-leafed statue of the angel Moroni is slated to be installed atop the single spire of the Rexburg Idaho Temple on the 183rd anniversary of the appearance of the angel Moroni to Joseph Smith: September 21, 2006, at 9:00 a.m." And at exactly 9:15 the Angel was on top of the temple, and by 9:20 they were lowering the crane. Very cool, I have to say. It was like campus froze to watch.

Kimberly and I have decided to go see a movie tonight -- or at least do something. It's about time for a girls night out. I'm excited.

In other news, yesterday was our first hail storm.

It hailed like it snows in CT. Probably at least an inch in less than 1/2 an hour. It was crazy. First I was just standing in the kitchen, still groggy from my 3 hour nap, when I hear this whooshing noise, and look out the window to see it's hailing like crazy. I ran and grabbed my camera, put on some shoes and a coat and ran outside to take pictures of our first wintry storm.

About an hour later I had to leave for class and it was still raining so I rolled up the bottom's of my jeans so they wouldn't get all wet, and ran out the door. (I left the apartment at the time the class was supposed to start). I saw Kimberly on my way back and she said to watch out for the river up on the road you need to cross to get to campus. I got up there, and ran across the traffic, to the other side, but was marooned in the middle of the street by the giant river, a car's length wide from where I was standing to the sidewalk. There was a girl stuck on the other side and we just kind of looked at each other. I looked around, and started to run up the street to get across where maybe it wasn't quite as wide, but there was no hope. I went through. It was honestly about a foot deep at it's deepest part, and had spilled up over the sidewalk. There was a guy standing on the other side of the street wondering how he was going to get across, and as I waded the river he says "Are you serious?!" "I have to get to class!" I yell. "Good for you!" says the guy.

I was wet up to my knees by the time I got to class. I walk in completely soaked, my hair is dripping wet, my jacket's soaked, so is my backpack, and my legs are completely wet all the way up to my knees. I just kind of stood at the door and looked at the professor and said I was sorry I was late. He said it looked like I had been out making slush angels. And then this lady in that class (yes, a lady) walked in and said she was sorry she was late but the roads were so bad and there was this huge puddle right by the parking lot (the one I WALKED through). I had no sympathy for her.


I have just decided to buy Kimberly a cow bell to wear around her neck. Not that she's a cow by any standard, but because my desk faces away from the door, so I'll be sitting at my computer and then start talking to her only to find out that she left the room 10 minutes ago. She's sneaky, that one. So to solve the problem, I am going to buy her a cow bell and make her wear it all of the time so I know exactly where she is. Our guests will wonder "What is that noise?" "Oh, Kimberly's drying her hair."

Well that is all for now. I have to meet with my quartet at 6:30. And then Kimberly and I are going to paint the town red. (Don't tell anyone)

I guess it's been a while. Today is a pink kind of day. Maybe because I'm wearing pink, but somehow I don't think so.

So I got up at the usual 6:30. And, feeling extra tired today, stayed in bed until 6:36. I know, what a rebel I am. I finally got up and went and got ready, and left the house by 7:30 which was none too soon since I still had to walk the 10-ish minutes to class and then study for the quiz we are having today. (We have one every day for this class.) And I'm rushing to get there so I have time to study, and I round the corner, and see the sign on the door. "Brother Linford is ill today. Class is cancelled." This is where I dropped my books and went skipping and singing all through the building. Okay, not quite, but you get the idea. WAHOO! (P.S. This is the same teacher that quoted Nacho Libre in class the other day.) So I ditched my backpack in my instrument locker and came home for breakfast. Cocoa Roos. Mmm... And I watched a little Today Show but was lost interest when I saw Meredith. Ick. And I cleaned up my room and made my lovely bed. Anyway, so now I'm home enjoying my hour of free time. I have class again at 9, and then a free hour, and then class at 11 and then two free hours and then class from 2-4 and then all the free time I could want until my date tonight at 9:00. Yes, I have a date. I'll let you know how it goes.

On Sunday night John's apartment (Viking Village 105) had my apartment over for dinner. Only 3 our of 6 of us went, but it was cool nonetheless. Chris made steak and potatoes. The steak was amazing but the potatoes were kind of hard, which is kind of ironic that you could ruin baked potatoes even though you're in Idaho. They practically cook themselves up here. The boys made Kool-Aid, the weird invisible kind (which I didn't know existed) but tried to pass it off as water. We made cake, which was AMAZING, and they think we poisoned it. After dinner, we played card games. Namely spoons (at my request) and then Oh Heck, which I sucked at. Then they got invited to La Jolla 306 to play card games so they walked us home. Chris said we should do it again sometime and he'll cook something else. Should be good.
Playing card games, Kimberly and I forgot about Stadium Singing and forgot to go. Next week.

Monday night our ward had a Family Home Evening social at the park. I played football with some of the boys from 105 and in the process punched John in the face. By accident. But it still makes me laugh. It was fun even though they never passed to me because they (rightly so) thought I couldn't catch.

And yesterday I got a calling. I am the official Visiting Teaching Supervisor. Go me.

Well I better be going, my class starts in 15 minutes.

On Monday Kimberly and I decided to go to the Beginning of School Dance where we met some nice kids, and also some very strange ones.... 'nough said. Before we went, I decided I wanted to trim my bangs since they had grown out, so I did. And then Kimberly fixed them.

Tuesday was the first day of school! I left my apartment twenty minutes early to make sure I made it to my 8:00 class across campus, and I did, but it didn't meet in that building. They had changed the class schedules since I printed mine so I was ten minutes late for my first class ever at BYU-I. Oh and I auditioned and was accepted into the University Wind Ensemble. YAY!
Yesterday afternoon Kimberly and I got bored and made macaroons. (sp?) They were made of honey, coconut and an egg.


It was quite the production. They were pretty good too. Then our Relief Society President and our Bishopric came over to visit with us. Unfortunately, saying that you're a prospective music major leads them to ask what you play. So they know I play the piano. Let's hope I'm not stuck as choir pianist again. After that we were bored, so I talked Kimberly into going to visit the boys' apartments across the street. We found these two kids that were in my orientation group and invited ourselves over. They were watching The Office so we watched a couple episodes of that and then went home. Good stuff. Before I went to bed I thought I would write in my journal, so I went to find it, and couldn't. Now, looking at the pictures on my previous post, you can see that my room is not exactly big enough to lose something. I finally found it wedged down behind my bed. Kimberly and I tried unsuccessfully to pull my bed and the 4 full drawers and cubby it's on top of away from the wall. I finally got it out with the end of the mop and by then I was too tired to write anything.

Today I figured out how to rig our shower curtain so that water doesn't leave a giant puddle next to the tub, like it has been for the past four days. I feel very proud of myself. I had my first Wind Ensemble rehearsal today. It was like being at Regionals. It's going to be like that every day! It's going to be cool.
Now I'm home for lunch and have to go back to class at 2:00. It's peanut butter and jelly # 2. I just drank the last of my milk. :*( I was surprised to find that I myself, ALONE, drank a gallon of milk in 5 days. I didn't realize I drink that much milk. So now I have to go buy some. It's not the buying part I mind, it's the walking home in the sun with my gallon of milk that's getting worse by the second that I mind.


Well I better go, I'm already a day behind on my homework. And school started yesterday. Yeah.


(If you're bored and reading this, why not send me an e-mail!!! meganedickerson@hotmail.com)

So I know you've all been waiting for this.
My address here is

65 S. 1st W. #207
Rexburg, ID 83440

And if you want my local phone number, (I don't get free long distance as originally thought) I guess you'll have to ask for it.

Today was fast and testimony meeting at church. For those of you who aren't LDS, that means that we fast for two meals around the first Sunday of the month and donate the money we would've spent on those meals to the church to help the needy in our church boundaries. In addition, in our Sunday services, the time is turned over to the congregation for them to voluntarily bear their testimonies -- what they know to be true about the church/faith-strengthening experiences they've had. So we went to Sunday School first and then Relief Society (the women's Sunday School class) and then Sacrament Meeting (the LDS version of "mass"). This kid came in and sat next to me during Sacrament Meeting, so I started talking to him. And then at the end of the meeting he stands up... he was probably 4'8" or something. He was SHORT. I laughed. Don't worry, he didn't hear me.

Then I tried to update my blog from yesterday. I got frustrated with that so I took a nap instead. I woke up at about 4 and then went to play the piano in the lounge. A couple of girls came and knocked on the door while I was in there. One was carrying a piano showtunes book, so I said I was done, but instead she asked if I could play the song. So I sightread it (it was easy) and she says "What are you doing tomorrow?" Apparently her friend is going to audition for the "Show Choir" tomorrow and she was supposed to accompany her, but decided that I should do it. I forgot that there's more orientation stuff tomorrow, but I'm going to leave my phone number so she can get a hold of me while I'm out tomorrow. It should be interesting.

I took some new pictures of my apartment and my roommates. These are pictures of my half of the room.

I came back to my apartment at about 5 and hung around until about 5:30 when I noticed everyone flocking to campus in church clothes at which point I remembered there was a fireside by the President of the university and his wife at 6:00. So Kimberly

(my room roommate) and I got dressed and rushed off to campus and made it with time to spare. The talk they gave was centered on families and the Proclamation to the World and how we should apply it to student life. But there was also a section about how we should be preparing to get married if we aren't already. I was wondering how long that would take. A total of 32 hours since I officially got to campus.

After that Kimberly and I came back to the apartment. I made my first bowl of Easy Mac of college life and we decided to watch a movie.

So we picked Joe Versus the Volcano since it was the only movie we have here that neither of us had seen. In the middle of that Geena (sp?) -- Kimberly's roommate from last year came upstairs to tell her she was bored. So Geena called this boy that is interested in Kimberly, and he said he was coming to take her to the "stadium sing" -- 9:30-10:00 on Sunday night people get together and sing hymns under the bleachers. So Kimberly ran and got dressed and then we sat down in front of our movie like nothing had happened, and Geena ran back to her apartment. A little later the boy came to get her and we acted like we were so surprised. Fun stuff. So she left and I was here by myself watching the rest of our lovely movie, but then Brittany (sp?)

came back and watched the rest of it with me.

I visited the girls upstairs for a little while before coming back to get the scoop on Kimberly's date.

These are my other two roommates (the third one isn't back yet).
Kayla

and Sarah. (it came out kind of blurry)



That's all for now.

College Life

(Written on Saturday September 2nd, edited Sunday)
My family got to Utah on Friday (August 25th) afternoon. Mollie and I stayed at Erin and Bryce's house in Provo, and my parents stayed with my grandma in Orem. On Monday Erin started law school and Mollie left for a BYU Leadership Conference, so I spent much of my time babysitting Will.


It's okay though, cuz we're buddies. He's just learning to walk and he's getting pretty good at it. The only thing is that he holds his left arm up in the air to keep his balance. It's quite cute. Unfortunately I didn't get a picture of that.


Will spends his days going around the house emptying out kitchen cabinets and pulling all of the books off of the shelves, turning the TV on and off and changing the channels and volume, except for when you put on Baby Einstein. Then he's perfectly content sitting on the floor glued to the TV.

On Friday morning, I checked into my lovely apartment here at La Jolla in Rexburg, Idaho. I walked in to find one roommate here who had lived here over the summer. She supposedly has a roommate that lived with her who has yet to be seen. While I was unpacking my stuff two girls stuck their heads in to say that they were dropping off some stuff but since they "were from around here" they were going to leave and come back on Saturday night to officially move in. This is a mystery because my mom said that the girls were supposedly from Washington, Oregon, Utah, Colorado, and California. Anyways, so I moved in the rest of my stuff and still I had no roommates. So we went to Wal-Mart a total of 3 times, along with every other freshman at BYU-I and then got something to eat. By 9:00 we were back and there were still no other girls in the apartment, and we didn't know when the one girl was going to come back for the night, so I went back to my Aunt Karen's house for the night. She lives in Chubbuck, Idaho, about an hour away. I got up bright and early this morning so I could be on campus at 10:00 for freshmen orientation stuff -- since it didn't look like there were going to be ANY freshmen (besides me) in my apartment of six girls even though I specifically requested freshman roommates. When I came back this morning, someone had moved into my room, so YAY! I have a roommate. She seems nice. I'm sure she is.

At freshmen orientation we mostly played games all day, and then there wasn't enough time for our group to get lunch. I met a girl named Ashley who was in my group. She's upstairs and one over from where I am and she has a whole apartment of freshmen and she didn't even request freshmen. So I plan on bothering them regularly. Then we went to a Ricks Showcase thing or something like that where they show little clips about the school and the history of it and how you can get involved. That seemed to go on FOREVER. And THEN we had a fireside thing where some administrative people talked to us, and then the President of the school talked to us. In one of the clips they showed at this fireside President Hinckley said of the students "It doesn't take geniuses to change the world. You're not geniuses. I know you're not geniuses. But all it takes is someone who applies themselves and tries hard to make a difference." And I'm thinking... well then! Nothing like high expectations.

So we got done with that and I met mom and dad at the bookstore to buy my last books (for a grand total of almost $400 spent on books this semester) and then say goodbye. Then I went back to my apartment and hung around until about 8:00 when the apartment of freshmen upstairs came and got me and we went to "I-Night(s?) Extravaganza" which was a glorified version of our high school's Project Graduation. They had a ton of inflatable games, and then roller skating, rock climbing (I originally typed that "climing" ... I hope it's just because I'm tired and not because Idaho is already eating away at my brain), DDR, laser tag, dancing, free food, and a place to take pictures and e-mail them to yourself or something. We went roller skating where Ashley pushed her roommate Cassie down "by accident". And then we sat around for a while talking. At about 11:00 we headed for our apartments.

Today for dinner I made my first peanut butter and jelly sandwich of college life, of many more yet to come, I'm sure.


I guess that's all for tonight since my roommate is trying to sleep.