Well, today, Friday, I finished my last exam. I SURVIVED MY FIRST SEMESTER OF COLLEGE! This semester has actually gone by really fast... besides the week before Thanksgiving break and this last week before Christmas break. At the beginning of the semester I was feeling really overwhelmed with college. I wondered what I had gotten myself into. I am sure almost all freshman in college think that no matter what school they are at. But, after maybe mid-term, I started to get the hang of college and I started to really like it.
Coming to Iowa State, I got involved in the Food Science Human Nutrition Learning Community. Any freshman can be in this if they are in Food Science, Culinary Science, Nutritional Science, Dietetics, or Diet & Exercise majors. There are learning communities for other majors as well, but I think the FS HN one does the most fun activities. There are 5 peer mentors that organize events for us and that are there for us if we need help with something. The events they plan are optional to go to - usually only around 15 people sign up for them. I like the small groups and that it is usually the same people.
Being in the learning community brings you together with others with a common interest, and in this case, food. And, working out and being healthy and, of course, other things. Together we have gone out to eat, done a workout class, and had some holiday parties.
The peer mentors planned a falloween party in October.
To eat, they served apple "nachos". We got to slice our own apple (they thought we might like to do that since we most likely miss working in the kitchen) and then add toppings. For toppings they had chocolate sauce, caramel sauce, and a snack mix. The snack mix was popcorn, pretzels, marshmallows, peanuts, candy corn, and chocolate chips. They had extra peanuts, candy corn, chocolate chips, and marshmallows for us to snack on separately or to add extra on our "nachos" too. One of the peer mentors also made sugar cookies that looked like candy corn. And, to drink, there was apple cider.
We decorated small pumpkins with sharpies and glitter glue.
We played extreme pictionary. Where we all got in a circle and had a piece of paper for the number of people playing. We started our stack by writing something on the top piece. We all passed our stack to the right. The next person read our sentence, put it on the bottom, and drew a picture describing the sentence. The next person wrote a sentence describing the picture. We kept passing the stacks around until we had our stack back with a little story book.
We got a tour of The Cafe here in Ames. The Cafe is a local restaurant that is well know around here and is DELICIOUS. As a learning community, we got a tour and then got to eat supper there!
This December, we had a cookie making Christmas party. We used one of the kitchen labs in one of the campus buildings. The peer mentors had made the dough for sugar cookies and gingerbread cookies and then we rolled the dough out and baked them. We also made monster cookies. We listened to Christmas music, decorated cookies, and had some hot chocolate.
This fall was SO BEAUTIFUL!
Some of us girls from my hall went to a nearby apple orchard one weekend afternoon.
We didn't get to pick any apple because we went a bit late in the apple season. The orchard had already picked all the apples. But, we did get to buy some!
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| Look at all those boxes of apples! |
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| This was a big cooler room to store the apples in. |
One of the workers (maybe an owner) gave us a little tour of the operation (it wasn't a planned tour). We got to see where they store all the apples for retail and the process they go through before being boxed, and how they make apple cider (they had the best apple cider I have ever tasted!).
It was such a fun afternoon.
We jumped on a big in-ground pillow-like-trampoline.
We played in the children's play area. They had farm tiling made into a slide that you could go down with a disk sled. There was a giant piece of farm tiling put on wood planks that you could walk in like a hamster. There was a petting zoo.
We went on a hay ride.
We went through the corn maze.
And, then we ended the afternoon buying some goodies in the little store.
I made a box for Operation Christmas Child.
The day started off very beautiful. Then, around 3 o'clock, it started to get really cold.
That night, I showered, got ready for bed, and went to bed at about a quarter to 10 (yes, I go to bed early). Right as I was falling asleep, a little after 10, I hear Soup saying, "Emily... Emily." I wake up to the fire alarm going off and girls running down the hall. The fire alarm goes off all the time (just not so late at night usually). Stephanie runs into the room to get a jacket and then runs out. Soup and I take our time to get bundled up to go outside and we are probably the last ones out of the building. We had to stand outside for a little while. My bed never felt so nice afterwards:)
The next morning, there was snow on the ground! The first snow fall - it was so pretty.
We dressed up for like 10 minutes on Halloween just to take a picture. Then Soup, Saniya, and I went out for pizza, went to Target and Walmart (I had to pick up my new glasses. My glasses broke, so I got a cheap pair at Walmart).
During Thanksgiving break, I received an email from the hall director saying the room I was planning on moving into was finally switched to be a 3 person contracted room. I moved in right after break.
The first weekend back after Thanksgiving break, there was WinterFest. There are lots of fun activities to do around campus.
Megan, one of my new roommates, Saniya, and I went to the Knoll for hot chocolate. The Knoll is where the president lives. The first lady of the university hosts an open house for the students (and I think public) to see the first floor of their house all decorated for Christmas and for homemade hot chocolate.
The hot chocolate was delicious! They also had lots of other Christmas treats out!
During WinterFest, there was an on-campus Jingle Jog. They say it is a 5k, but I can tell you it was not. It was more like 2 miles. It was very laid back. The start was signaled by the lighting of a tree. After I had been running a little while, I realized that there was no timing system, they weren't tracking us runners, and I wasn't timing myself (it started so suddenly). We paid, basically for just a t-shirt - anyone could have jumped in and done it, they just wouldn't have gotten a t-shirt. There was a fun finish to the race.
After the Jingle Jog, I met up with some friends at the MU. They had been there for a little while and done some activities. After I got there, we waited in line for a while to make an ornament and then made some ornaments.
After making the ornaments, we got a meal bundle and watched Christmas movies in one of the girl's room.
My connection group had a little Christmas party!
