Community Congregation Cornucopia Carrots

Why hello. I didn’t see you there.

Today I stumbled upon a beautiful day at home sweet Whitworth.

It was a quite conducive to frisbee and outdoor studying.

Don’t believe me?

{oh hiyro little worm on my Western Civ notes}

And in case you were wondering.

I have gotten really good at frisbee.

Like for real. Look out kids.

This is Cara and I on our first day of school:

And this is us today.

Sometimes in life school kills you.

Not really. That’s just us doing pilates in a 4x4 allotment of space.

It was all fun and games until Cara decided to join me.

Then it was a lot more fun and games.

Don’t ask why we didn’t move to a more spacious arena.

We make the rules. And we follow them.

Keep it Real

Sara Nicole

p.s. I promise that in the not too distant future I will write more than the random fragments of my life. I have the inspiration, but as of now, my normal human brain power is directed toward college.

Three Cups of Tea and a Traveler’s Mug

The third weekend of college.

Let me walk you through it:

Step 1: shower parties. so fresh. so clean.

Step 2: dorm hopping- n. the act or acts of a group of people moving around to every dorm on campus to experience the local “prime time” flavor.

Step 3: ultimate spoons, tortilla making, piñata creations, guacamole etcetera etcetera.

Step 5: chick flick friday. the highlight of every week.

Step 6: homecoming. we won!

Step 7: morning hiking with Kristin Hopper. So nice we did it twice.

Step 8: phone call to mommy. WHAT SHOULD I DO WITH MY LIFE?

Step 9: churchy pie.

Step 10: bakery and frisbee with the ladies.

But mostly I just did homework.

Oh, and recreated this gem:

With these gems:

{Paco, Vu-Doo, Rucas, Panda}

It’s certainly not too early for those nicknames.

Keep it Real

Sara Nicole

Quick quick slow

This morning I awoke from my slumber and decided:

Hey! it would be a great day to build a community in the greater Spokane area.

Lucky for me, that is precisely what we did today.
In fact they loaded almost the whole school into buses to go build us some community.
It was almost like making new friends.

In my case, that meant doing some sorting at Goodwill.

You know, learning how to seperate the dalmation figurines from the Chinese acrobatic plate spinners.

But most importantly, it meant no morning classes. hazzah.

Oh, and the bus driver backed into a truck in the parking lot. But he still doesn’t know it.

So overall, solid Community Building Day.

But that’s not all.

Tonight I got to rekindle my love with salsa dancing.

And delicious Mexican food.

All those hours in my basement with my Spanish class learning to merengue and mojito really paid off.

Although, tonight was no comparison to the time my Spanish class friends and I drove two and a half hours to a salsa festival and embarassed ourselves in front of all those pro Dominican salsaers.

That did, indeed, actually happen.

On that note:

Two girls with minimal skills seeking frisbee team.

Keep it Real

Sara Nicole

Crying over spilled pasta shells

This weekend I went camping in the Northern Cascades with eight other Whitworthians.

{this photo courtesy of alina}

We had nicknames like Jiffy Pop, Wilder Woman, Jay Tay, Twisp, and Pretzel Whore.

Although, it may be too early to start using them in real life. Never stopped me.

It was more than exciting to actually leave campus and see some of the city that I live in.

We learned that people do exist other than college students and professors.

Oh, and it was really pretty and stuff.

I think the most important thing to take away is that, in general, bread on people is, like, funny.

It was strange to be pull back into the Whitworth parking lot and be “home.”

But, a good strange. It feels like home here more and more everyday.

Meanwhile back at the ranch, Duvall had a nice time at their pod party.

And there is laundry to be spun, homework to be done and "virgin pinecones" to outrun.

Fun.

Keep it Real

Too True to be Good

In case you were wondering.

These are the steps to doing laundry Whitworth style.

1. Walk to HUB.

2. Buy $3 laundry card.

3. Add extra for the actual laundry

4. Walk back and realize that laundry now costs $1.75 a load.

5. Walk back to HUB to put more money on laundry card.

6. Go to ATM. Withdrawl minimum $40.

8. Add $1.50 for on campus ATM.

9. Wait in line at info desk to get change.

10. Watch acapella group.

11. Buy $1 granola bar at café after info desk rejects your change request.

12. Put money on card again.

13. Walk to McEachren Hall on other side of campus for change.

The machine rejected your $5.

14. Get correct increments of change.

15. G0 to back HUB.

16. Correctly put money on card.

17. Do laundry.

18. Repeat.

That’s right. $7.25 for a load of laundry.

I’m glad I got that off my chest.

But, I am waaay excited for camping this weekend.

K.I.R.

SN

Wireless Pogo Sticks

First off:

I have forgotten how much I missed this.

Impressive, eh?

Sicky is sick.

(Sicky = Cara)

It’s my fault. oops.

On the plus side, we are going to tackle every episode of Friends from Season 1.

Some don’t think we can do it. And they are probably right.

Other than that, it turns out that today, the sixteenth of september two thousand and ten, is a great day.

For one, the ice cream and jazz social.

{Mary, Emily, Sara at the ice cream and jazz social}

For two, I just discovered the study room at the top of the stairs, and it is way conducive to learning.

Also, I really love my leadership night class.

So much of Whitworth’s focus is on diversity, relationships and accepting people where they are. It was really a truly amazing experience to hear everyone’s testimony as well as share my own. It was great to see that in a place that doesn’t appear to have much diversity at face value, I surely have so much to learn from people.

AND when I got back, some friends on my floor decided that the rain warranted some quality puddle jumping. So, it doesn’t get any better than that. Unless it does. lulz.

Plus, the Weepies album is really floating my boat right now.

Ohhhhh!!! and every night there is an activity in each of the dorms

such as karaoke, board games or my personal favorite: researching diseases.

Long story short,

I thought you might like to see me

with my hotdog boat.

Art is easy.

Keep it Real

Sara Nicole

Hace demasiado tiempo

I hope you pardon my tardiness with this post.

There are several important and unexpected things to report for this week:

1) I feel as though I have finally earned the right to use college ruled paper.

2) My roommate drank a gallon of milk in two days.

3) My hot pink shoes are in the mail. boo yeah grandma.

But on an equally serious note, I love college. Like for real.

To quote Relient K “Someone please save us. Us college kids.”

but nope. not me.

I mean, sure, they don’t supply nearly enough cards for Saturday night bingo and we spend our life savings on laundry. You know what they say though, mo money mo problems.

For starters, I was pleasantly surprised to find that I love all my classes.

I just added an extra night class and I could not be more excited.

Plus, there is a dance party in the lounge every night at fourteen minutes till ten. Woot woot!

To catch you up on some other Whitworth happenings, last night was

Stewart lawn dance!

For you Prescottonians, it was basically like a rave except with less glow sticks and perspiration.

This is the before shot of some of the Duvall hunnies.

Afterwards I played “puno” in the lounge and watched Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants with a couple of my new friends, Mary and Emily. It really satisfied our tummy.

Also:

-I made a new friend when we both showed up to the same class that we both have a month from now. oopsies. It’s not surprising if you think about it.

-My podmates and I are really proud of the brand new non-generic brand of toilet paper we found in the outside the Fred Meyer’s parking lot.

- I keep forgetting to eat meals. It throws my internal and external stomach out of wack. Ask anyone.

-Doing laundry is much better when you’re at college because there are many more laundry songs involved. And while you’re waiting, you can play the piano. Playing 'The Office’ duet makes Emily and I giddy.

But, sometimes, we just have to take a step back and remember the days before we were sophisticated college women:

That’s pretty much all I can remember from the past week. Oh, except did I mention the great people I have met? I can tell it’s going to be a great four years. For now, it’s the weekend here at Whitworth. The sun is shining. The tank is clean. You could say we’re on a sabbatical of sorts. Problem is, as it turns out, there is homework in college.

So, I’m going to pull a Nike and just do it.

And by that I mean my homework.

Unfortunately for me, I’m already getting sick. They say laughter is the best medicine. False.

By laughter they must mean iron vitamins and cough drops. It’s all relative if you think about it.

Keep it Real

Sara Nicole

p.s. It’s not like we’re trying to sleep or anything. Really, we’re just shooting the breeze down here. Sometimes, I just wish the people that reside in the room directly above us would invite us to run on their indoor track or do gainers onto their bedroom floor. How did they even get that high dive into their dorm room?

Do What? Duvall.

So, tomorrow is the first official day of classes.

Lucky for me I have the earliest class of anyone in the pod.

I am far from getting the hang of things here.

But I have learned to embrace the awkward freshman rituals.

I spent a good part of today helping put together the Dubopage (Duvall, Boppell and Village Halls) girls dance skit for “mock rock.”

We were defeated, but okay with it.

I do hope it is not on YouTube.

That’s all I have to say about that.

On the plus side:

We had another dance party tonight.

My advising counselor is so great.

Skyping friends from the laundry room is the way to go.

I take my gummy vitamins everyday.

So if that doesn’t shake your Tuesday blues, I don’t know what will.

Keep it Real

Sara Nicole

P.S. Oh, and as far as the Nadal/Verasco controversy goes. I am on team Nadal.

300 West Hawthorne Dr.

If I had to describe my experience at Whitworth so far in two words, those two words would be awesome blossum.

For example, our dorm room. awesome.

We hope you love what we’ve done with the place.

The swarm of 20 student leader that came and ate tortellini with us this afternoon. awesome.

Cara’s mom’s homemade cookies for the dorm. awesome.

Whitworth is cracking down on us. Cracking down hard. We have barbeques, welcome dinners and dance parties at all hours of the day, it seems.

No really, we love it here, but we still feel like we are at summer camp.

I guess freshman enthusiasm still hasn’t worn down.

For example, Cara loves it when I make us skip breakfast to get to church 15 minutes early.

She also loves it when I wake up at 7 AM and go for rides on my new craigslist bike.

Really, go ahead and ask her. Or don’t. The choice is yours.

We have this refrigerator sticker to commemorate our Dutch dairy farmer roommate. I think this says it all.

It’s also noteworthy to say that we had a formal tonight where we were escorted by the men of Baldwin-Jenkins hall. It was quite the hoot. We did get to bring back some cheesecake.

These are the freshman girls and leaders of pod 304 in the lobby before the occasion.

Oh, and Cara has a gift for winning T-shirt contests and I have the ability to win 30 consecutive games of rock paper scissors. Who knew?

It’s a skill that only comes in handy on nights like tonight.

I couldn’t stop laughing because, man, it’s funny.

We are off to be “traditiated.” Wish us luck.

Really, Keep it

Sara Nicole

Rubiks Cube Ointment Etcetera

I am pleased to announce that I am writing to you from Post Falls, Idaho, where I have stayed with my roommate Cara and her family for the past few days.

It would be hard to explain how much I love it here. Somewhere new. Somewhere beautiful.

My roommate, Cara is great.

We have so much in common that even our names rhyme.

So, well done Whitworth University housing department.

I really do love the Whitworth personal touches like the fact that you can ask your admissions counselor a question on facebook or when I call the housing dept. this afternoon they answer with “Hello, Sara?”

In all actuality, Idaho has been quite a culture shock.

Let me tell you what. In Mexico, they eat burritos. In China, they eat rice. In Idaho, they eat pitas. I have truly never eaten so many pitas in my life. Oh, and they grow purple carrots. Purple carrots shaped like HUMANS.

Let’s just say we got some quality laughs in way ahead of schedule. hot dang.

Keep it Real

Sara Nicole

Au Revoir

Goodbye Prescott. You have been good to me.

Keep it Real

Sara Nicole

The Day Before

I have honestly been so grateful for my extra few weeks here.

I mean, besides the fact that I have gotten to spend it with some of the greatest people, it has given me the opportunity to catch up on some of my long lost skills:

Lot’s of people don’t like yoga, but nope, not us. It’s important to note that we are both doing something different than that we are both doing different things than the guy on the screen. But, really I have missed Rachel.

I also got to spend one last day with one of my closest friends, Emily. She has been my tennis buddy for the past two years, and we have played together almost every single day this summer.

Here is a generic stock photo of Emily and Sara.

So here I am. My last full day at home.

I’m leaving the place and the people that have shaped the person I have become.

My bags are all packed and my summer homework is done. What?

Well, mostly done.

In case you missed something, here is my last 7 years in a place called Prescott, AZ.

Feel free to play Good Riddance or whatever other nostalgic song you can think of in your head.

Keep it Real

Sara Nicole