Independence Day... is a week long?!?

Hello there! I just discovered that there are people who celebrate American Independence for the entire week... shooting off fireworks every single night of that week. Isn't that wonderful? Yeah well anyway, This week has so far been a total blast! I'm gonna start with yesterday (Independence Day (July 4th)) and work back from there, because these past few days have just been super incredible!

So yesterday was ridiculously fun, starting from the hour I awoke to the hour I went to sleep, which was actually a respectable time unlike many people, regardless of the fact there were still classes today. So to start off my day we had a building game of ultimate, which was awesome! I learned that it's super fun to play ultimate... and my favorite part is definitely defense (as it seems with most sports I play...). I just find some sort of enjoyment in knocking down the other team's pass and making it difficult for them to advance, though I may be just strange... who knows? So after spending over an hour playing Ultimate I went home and proceeded to relax and chill... ya know catch up on that Book of Mormon reading I've been slacking on, since now in Book of Mormon 1 we're in the heat of the Isaiah portion of second Nephi. Anyway, after that at around 4:30 I went to a super sweet barbecue party where we had a 3v3 soccer game (which actually ended up a 4v4 later) going while they food was being grilled. The food was absolutely delicious, which I found impressive since most of the cooking was done by freshman. Then after we had all eaten we went and played volleyball in the sand pit for a couple hours, which was totally fun. Sadly the pit was only large enough for the teams to be 6 people each, so we ended up rotating teams often and only playing to 11. After Volleyball we had to do, as one person pointed out, our adult responsibility of cleaning up after ourselves, which involved cleaning up the food and moving all the tables and chairs back to their respective apartments, one of which was on the 3rd story (great idea right?). After all that the group dispersed, some going up to the Y to watch the upcoming fireworks that occur due to stadium of fire and just general jubilee throughout the valley, but I chose to stay behind and ended up showering then going to play some basketball for a couple hours, watching whatever fireworks I could see from the stadium across the street, which were super intense.  Then, unlike a great deal of college kids on a day they don't have school, I went to sleep at the incredible time of 11:30pm, since ya know... I had classes today starting at 9 (which I still barely got up for... it was tough).

Moving backwards to Tuesday, a day filled with not much going on, though I did get some stuff accomplished. I went on my first bike ride in at least a year, to a fabulous place for college kids to shop: Big Lots. I got me some super awesome flashlights for a few bucks, and some batteries for about a tenth the price they would have cost at the creamery. Aside from that though, I don't recall doing much on Tuesday... just the typical homework and basketball.

Then there was Monday, where all my classes were super awesome as it was the start of a week with a holiday in the middle. Then later that day I had my first ever experience in the BYU testing center. Which for those of you who don't know is this building next to the Joseph Smith Building, where basically half the second level is a huge room with a ton of desks for students to take their tests at. There is no time limit on tests there (so far as I'm aware), and it's basically open around 8 hours each day, so if you wanted or were able you could potentially take up to 8 hours on a test, though I'm not sure how that's even possible. My first test of the day I decided would be my Book of Mormon 2 test on the second half of Alma, chapters 30 through 63. I ended up getting a 92% on the test, which means I missed 4 questions, 3 of which I think I know what they were (accursed True/false) but the other I have no idea which it was. Then after taking a break for a little while to eat a sandwich (peanut butter and honey for those who wish to know) and refresh myself a bit on the material I went to take my ELA test, which didn't have as promising of an outcome. I got a 32/48 on the multiple choice portion, but one of the questions I had an issue with so I'm going to discuss that with the professor tomorrow. Anyway, what was really killer was the short answer part. It took a good hour and fifteen minutes to do a mere 5 problems, none of which were very easy. In addition to the already difficult part of that was that one of the proofs we had to do involved a concept briefly covered in class that's actually from like the last chapter of the book which we are nowhere near studying yet, and as such I totally forgot about. So in total it looks like I missed 16 points on the multiple choice, and 8 points I know I missed on the problem solving, putting me at a 76%, so I rather hope there's a curve of some sort, even a few points would be nice. Luckily though there's still 2 more tests and the final in this term, though I guess not so lucky since there's only a month left in the term, Yikes! After finishing those crazy tests I headed home to get some reading and homework done before FHE, which was super fun. We had a surprise party for one of our family members, who I think is the most hilarious person in our family, she's super awesome. Anyway, we had some tasty cake, and we played apples to apples which was a total riot with some of the things my family put down for green cards such as "pure"... yeah it got a tad strange!

I guess I can't fail to mention what happened at building meeting this past Sunday either though, as that was pretty important stuff that I need to get done before Saturday (oh no!). So at building meeting my wonderful RA roommate announced that he had a challenge for all of us in attendance, to go on at least one date by Saturday... which I didn't take too kindly, as I didn't exactly come out here to go on dates (at least not seriously) since I'm leaving for 2 years after winter semester. But, aside from that it was just a short little building meeting.

And so That's my week so far, not as exciting as some, but definitely exciting for me.

'Til Next Time,
- Jordan L. Nielson