What a week!

HELLO FAMILY!!!!! How's everyone doing back there in freezing cold Nebraska? Can you believe that the east coast has gotten over 6 feet or more of snow and over here on the top of the mountain we can't even get more than 2 in. at a time??? That's not very sustainable for ski resorts...

Hey, I'm also pretty sure I updated the blog last week too. Hmph. Well, what can you do?

Alright, so between the 16th and the 23rd there wasn't alot of interesting things going on, just normal school and work stuff. This past week though has been really, really hard and fun, so I'll try and walk you through it all...

Alright, well, the first major development happened on Monday. In my Poli Sci 170 (that's International Relations), I had my first exam and geography quiz. I'm pretty sure I aced the exam but I didn't do so hot on the geography quiz. I had spent about an hour or so on an online map quiz game putting the correct countries in the right places, and by the end I knew where all the countries went. I wasn't prepared though when they handed me an outlined map and told me to start labeling the 20 states, regions, and waterways in under 5 minutes. Maybe I was thinking there was going to be a word bank or something, but I couldn't answer about 3-5 of the 20 questions because I was used to hearing the name of the country and then putting it in, not naming the country off of a blank map. So I learned my lesson in that regard.

Air Force is just as tough as normal, actually, it's much tougher now because our new PFO (Physical Fitness Officer) goal is to have everyone get a 96 on the PFA and to make out Det. the #1 in the region and nation (apparentaly our region [the NW] is the top in the nation, and our average PT score was like 90 something, and the #1 Det. was in Washington with something like 95-96 or something. So if you're #1 in the region, you're #1 in the nation), so we've been doing alot more running, pushups, and general nastyness. Thursdays are what I like to call "pain-days" becuase we're too tired and sore to think of anything more clever. Most thursdays we have to do 200 Push-ups, Sit-ups, flutter kicks, jumping jacks (2 jumping jacks = 1). We also try and run 17 laps (Most don't even run) and other body breaking stuff. And we're supposed to get this all done in 49.5 minutes (or as most as we can) as a flight, so it's pretty tough, but it's a good work out all the same.

Well, more detail than I wanted to go into for Air Force, I was up really late tuesday night working on the next geography quiz and a 1.5 page reading question about why democracies don't fight each other. I am happy to say that I did much, much better on the Geo. quiz (I think I got 100%) due to changing the dificulty where they show me the outline of the state and I have to type the first 3 letters (It was Europe, then Middle East, now Asia and Oceania). Then thursday night was heck (essentially in a nut shell, after my 6 am PT, I have classes from 9-3 with only a 1 hour break at 2 for lunch, and then I have band from 7-9, so I only have about 2 hours to do Friday night's homework) because I was up till like 1:30 working on a 5 page current events paper about the role of State Power and Influence between China and the United States. But I pulled off a really good paper, so it was all worth it!

Saturday was Ice-skating with the ward along with my usual 6 hours or so of homework. Ice skating was a blast! We ice-skated for an hour and then did broom hockey for an hour. I had a lot of fun! I was pretty decent (I only fell once because I was trying to whip someone) and a couple people were commenting on how I made it look “natural”. Of course, it didn’t feel natural to me (The skates were pretty good, but they killed my arches, plus the ice was rough (no Zamboni) so it was hard to skate without feeling like you were tripping over cuts), but hey, I’ll take that complement! The broom hockey was fun (you don’t wear skates, just your shoes) and there was about 30 people all with sticks, slipping and sliding on the ice going after a single ball trying to get it in a goal. Because there was so many people though, it made shooting hard because everyone would bunch up in front and just push and whack. But it was fun because since the ice was rough you could run on the ice without slipping, and then you could slide! It was a lot of fun! Plus, I had a bunch of people tell me how involved and intense I was! (It’s called broom hockey, so I wasn’t afraid to push a few people around!) But it was a lot of fun!

The other really cool thing that happened on Thursday (yes, my heck day) was that I got to go and play Laser Tag at this really cool place called Laser Assault. I'll try and describe it the best I can for you. Now the outside of the place was next to a bunch of semi-run downed Mexican Shops, so at first it seemed like it was going to be a really cheap and lame place. But first we got these awesome laser guns-- instead of shooting just a dot, it shot a really bright and strong red beam so you could see exactly where you were shooting and who was shooting back at you! Now, try and picture this, you walk in like you would at any other laser tag place (kinda curves around a bit) and it's pretty dark in there with glow in the dark paint. The room is huge! with about 100-200 feet across and two stories that wrap around the entire room (width was about 50-100 ft). There are fog machines in random places to make the room more intense, there are discarded oil drums, platforms, and random walls placed all around for super intense hiding behind, running, and dodging. They have cool music playing the background (my favorite was Through the Fire and the Flames) and they had ramps, mirrors, ledges, islands, and wooden slits and railings to shoot through. And like I said, because they beams were straight lines, you could see exactly where you were shooting and where other people were shooting at you! Oh it was alot of fun! I almost ran into the Colonel a couple of times, but it was a blast! And for groups of 10 or more it's only $6 for an hour! It was super fun!

So that's about it for the week. I normally won't write this much, but this last week was the most hard and most fun week of the month, so it needed some extra room for an exposition dump. I'm going to update this every week and I encourage the family to do the same. This could probably count as a Duty to God journal, plus keeping this for family records would be super beneficial for all of us! Now, as promised, the next post will be a full detailed account of President Obama's State of the Union address, his main points and promises, and what I felt about it. I do this because as a politically active family, it's only fair to judge a person based on what they said they were going to do and not on any pre-existing judgments or views. So I hope you enjoy it and I'll talk to you guys soon!