Epic no. II

Well I've been here for a week now! I can't believe it, it seems as if it's gone by very quickly and yet I also feel like I've been here for so long!
Okay... so Friday night was the first freshman thing at the college - a dinner and president speech thing. I was suddenly scared to death which I didn't expect. But it turned out to be okay except for when I fell asleep during the slide show of past college years because I still wasn't adjusted to the time change. :P
Saturday I was at the school all day to and I started to get to know some people.. we did some games and we had a sessions about school policies, study habits, that kind of thing... we had to write a 2 page placement essay which was all right but not exactly fun. And the freshmen went and painted a newly-opened homeless shelter thing which was cool, because, you know, who doesn't have fun getting paint all over themselves and everything.
Sunday I went to church and then just hung out all afternoon, went swimming with my uncle and aunt (who totally don't seem like an uncle and aunt)... my uncle is a sherriff and he wears a scary uniform everyday but he is really nice and goofy so I can hardly picture him being all intimidating with the prisoners he has to transport back and forth to the court room everyday. But apparently he's good at it... and my Aunt is awesome fun - I'm going to her house tomorrow and we're going to watch CSI and eat and she's cutting my hair (I will finally be rid of that paint from the first week of August that's on the ends).
Anyway then monday was the freshman reatreat which totally rocked. We drove up big bear mountain to a really rustic cabin up at 6,000 or so feet - it wasn't way out in the middle of nowhere, there was kind of a little town around, but it still felt like getting away. The first day we went kyacking (sp? - yes, I go to college!), which turned into swimming when some of the guys tipped our kyacks... and then onto these alpine slides where you ride down a course on this funny flat roller thing... can't really describe it but yeah it was hardcore. I was a little too wimpy to go full-throttle after one guy did and scraped the skin off his elbow and knee. That evening we played cranium which was of course a ton of laughs... then the guys left and all the girls watched 'the wedding planner'... which I hadn't watched in about 5 years and it made me cry. :'I So cute.
I woke up about 2 hours before anyone else the next morning (thanks to the time change) at 7 am and went out on the porch to do my devotions. It's amazing because in a place like that it is so easy to be fully focused on God and worship Him - the scenery is incredible and it's just so peaceful and perfect. Then I went jogging along the lake and by the time I came back other people were starting to wake up, so we ate a huge fattening breakfast and then went hiking to work it all off. And I mean hiking. It was a mile up, practically vertical. The altitude was thinning pretty quickly so people had a hard time breathing - we all sounded like Darth Vadars. ;) The guy who was leading the hike (our Dean of student life, Mr. K) kept getting off track so we'd have to go part of the way back down and then up some other way and it was super-tiring. But after an hour and a half we finally made it to the top - we had to scramble up some steep scary boulder formations then and there was this little pine tree growing right out of the rocks (which was determined of it) and there the climb was all worth it because you could see so far - the gorgeous clear blue lake, the other mountains, mile upon mile of trees.
Thankfully the way back down was slightly easier - it only took about 1/2 an hour. We were all gross but we had to hurry and eat lunch and then pack for the ride home. Which was an event in itself...
I was riding in a car with four other people and after about 30 minutes of driving down the mountain, suddenly things started to smell funny and the next thing we knew our brakes were gone! But we pulled over with the emergency brake and the hood was pouring smoke... I thought it was going to catch on fire and explode (yeah, I really know a lot about cars, eh?) but anyway we had to call the people ahead of us and they waited for us further down because there was nowhere to turn around. So we had to sit by the side of the road for about 20 minutes in the boiling sunshine waiting for the brake thinggummy to cool down so we could make it to the other car. Which was a crowded ride back to the school.
People here tease me about saying 'eh' and 'washroom' (instead of restroom)... it's fun though. There's student from all over the states so there's all different accents going on - it's pretty cool.
We had a dinner with the upperclassmen last night, and I met and rode home with the guy I'll be commuting with all year (Nathanial) and he was really nice. It's a long drive back and forth though - I'll be going about a 1/2 hour each way.
And today (wednesday) we had more sessions and orientation junk and registering and filling out forms and signing things without reading them carefully and I am kinda tired!
We have another dinner thing tonight - the president's dinner. And then tomorrow afternoon is my first class. I don't know whether to look forward to it or not, the upperclassmen have gotten me a little scared with their stories of how hard the work can be and what mistakes they made and all that.
Pray for me :)
And email me guys, tell me about what's going on back home, send prayer requests, photos of you, all that jazz.
And if you're wondering about photos, I've got some up on my facebook now so that's the only site I really know how to download them onto.