The First Week

The original intent for this post was to be a blow-by-blow replay of my first week of classes. But in reality, I am actually at college still, and I have actual homework to be done, so it's gonna be a quickie.

For starters, I love my classes. The only one I don't exactly love (Math 1010, duh) isn't even too bad, because it's the same math I took in 10th grade. Plus, there are four other people from my high school in there, and one girl that I went to Freedom Academy with and I really like her. The rest of my classes are Psychology 1110, Art 1050 (aka Photography), and two freshmen courses that are required. My Tuesdays and Thursdays are AWESOME... I only have math, which is from 10-11. Then I get to spend the rest of the day catching up on homework from the day before. Joy. (:

Second, I absolutely LOVE living in the dorms. I used to be kind of embarassed by that, but now I like to rub in my friends' faces the fact that not only do I not have to cook for myself, I live less than 4 minutes away from my first class (walking), but I also make it a regular thing of making new friends every day. I do have my little group of friends that I hang out with on a regular basis, but I still can just walk by the common area, see some people watching TV, and just go chill with them and be friends after an episode of Family Guy.

It was still a fun week, though. On Thursday night, I got to go see The Maine perform in St. George with my friends Kyle (friend from my floor), Starms, Mark, Kevin, and Chandler. The ride there was...... interesting. And the concert itself was AWESOME! I really love The Maine. I had only showed them to Kyle the day before the concert, but then he went all crazy and was like "alksje;lfajsldjs I LOVE THE MAINE!" so he really wanted to go. It was an adventure indeed. (:

Me and Kyle in the middle of the action.

Unfortunately, this is the best picture I have of the actual concert. There was too much jumping around to be able to hold my phone/camera still.
So basically, it was a successful week. We're awesome.

College...

For anyone that hasn't read my dad's post on our family blog, I'll let you know now: I'm finally all moved in at college. Today is Sunday, and I arrived here on Thursday. And in those few days, I've gotten to be better friends with several people that came here from my own high school, and I've also made a ton of friends on my floor. In particular, I have a group of friends that lives on my floor that include me, one other girl, and three boys. We've all gotten to be pretty good friends, which is awesome because none of us have ever had any previous connection to the other. Two of the boys aren't even from this state, so they came here knowing absolutely no one. The four of them think it's silly that I can pretty much walk anywhere on campus and see someone that I went to high school with. (:

Alright well I'm actually getting ready to go to church, so this is going to be a short one. It'll be interesting to see what it's going to be like to go to church in a Young Single Adult ward... /:

But first! Some photos for your viewing enjoyment.

This is the Carter Carillon clock tower. I took this while there was a seemingly endless stream of freshmen walking underneath it from west to east. The idea is that after that first day, you don't ever walk under the clock tower until you graduate, then you walk under it from north to south (or south to north...?). Then there were walls of people on either side clapping and high fiving. It felt like a freaking rock star.
My cute, cute bedspread, courtesy of my cute, cute grandma. (:

All the freshmen got shirts and we got to tie dye them. Mine was legit. (:

My RA (Resident Assistant) decided to decorate the hall with monsters. This is the one for my on my dorm door. (: It's because I am just so double smiley!

Heck Yeah Summer!

I know this is a really stupid looking picture, but whatever. The point is, this picture is from.... ready?

Warped Tour!

That’s right folks, I went to my first Warped Tour this year! For those of you who don’t know what it is, it’s very simple: it’s a tour. With bands. The end. The girls and I have been planning on going together for an extremely long time now, but it didn’t quite end up working out that way. On the way up to Salt Lake, it was me, Brianna, Chanelle, her boyfriend Kelin, and my friend Carter. It was kind of a random thing to have Carter there, but he really wanted to get a ride up, so we were willing to tote him along.

We decided that we’d rather go up on Friday (the concert was on Saturday) than get up at like 5 am on Saturday to go, so everyone loaded up Chanelle’s van (which, by the way, is the only vehicle I ever want to take on a road trip again. It is AWESOME) after I got off work on Friday and headed on up! My dear sweet kind loving brother Keith and his equally fantastic wife Rachelle were gracious enough to allow me and my four friends stay in their house for the night. It was really kind of a last minute thing, so I really appreciate them putting up with us, despite my lack of planning. (:

The next day, the boys (Carter, Kelin, and Keith) stayed at the house while Rachelle, Brianna, Chanelle, and I headed for the Gateway to do some shopping, since Chanelle had never been there. We met up with Chelsea while shopping, and eventually were able to successfully kill a couple of hours before Warped Tour started at 11. When the time came, we all headed back to the house, said our goodbyes to our incredible hosts, and took the van to the fairgrounds. For some reason, we decided to park the van behind someone’s house that was offering parking for $7. I’m really not sure why we chose to park in a sketchy lookin back yard, when there was a perfectly good parking lot at the fairgrounds, and it only cost $5. Weird.

I wish I could literally relive the entire day for you. It was just so incredible! Some of the bands I ended up seeing (if you don’t recognize some or any of the following names, don’t feel bad) Hey Monday, Every Time I Die, Reel Big Fish, Fake Problems (more on that later), Riverboat Gamblers, Andrew W.K., The Cab, Mayday Parade (also more on that later), and probably a lot more. And in between shows, you could always walk around to the bands booths, buy their stuff, and possibly meet the band. Or if you were REALLY lucky, you and your friends would just be strollin around and have some guy come up to you and start talking ridiculously fast about why smoking sucks, then find out he works for the anti-smoking TRUTH campaign. He was funny. (: And after only a minute or five of our time, we ended up getting free shirts and suspenders!

So about Fake Problems. Recently, they’ve become one of my favorite bands. They just have a really unique sound, and the guy has a crazy sounding voice, but in a good way. They also wrote the song "Heck Yeah Summer", which this post is named. They have another one that's awesome and it's called "Life's A Drink, Get Thirsty!" Anyways, Chelsea, Brianna, and I were just walking around enjoying the essence of Warped Tour when I heard a familiar voice. Lo and behold, Fake Problems! I had no idea they were going to be there. So we went to their stage, and there were only like 20 other people there, if that. So we were very close to the stage. So close, in fact, that while I got some video footage of it on my phone, you can see in the video that the lead singer (Chris Farren I think is his name) like acknowledge the fact that I’m taking video and play it up. It’s sweet! So I just have this video of him pretty much singing to me. Meanwhile, there was a guy walking around selling their latest album for $5. I thought “well I’m just going to buy this eventually, where it’ll probably be like $10. Might as well get it now.” So I did. After their set was over, we went back to their tent/booth thing just to see what kind of shirts they had, and what did I find instead? Chris Farren and Derek Perry (bassist)! I asked them to please sign my CD, and they were very excited to do so. Then, looking around and seeing that there wasn’t really anyone else at all interested in meeting these fellows, I asked if they took pictures. They both smiled real big and said “Well yeah! We’d love to take a picture with you!” So Mr. Perry moved aside the assortment of shirts to let me behind the table and into the booth, and we got this sweet picture!

Seriously, those guys were so cool. I hope they're at Warped Tour next year.

This was the CD i had them sign. The album is It's Great To Be Alive.

MAN I love those guys! That made the entire trip for me. They were really sweet, too. And I’m just gonna say this, but I did not expect Chris Farren to be that hot. Judging from his voice, I thought he’d be just like this grubby middle-aged man. But he can’t be older than MAYBE his mid-twenties, and he was very clean shaven and attractive. The guy from The Cab, on the other hand—total opposite. He has a really sexy voice, but looks like a cross between Justin Timberlake and an Ewok. (The JT part isn’t really a compliment.)

This is Fake Problems performing. If you can see Chris Farren's face up close, he looks just like my friend Keith. It's awesome. (:

We had predetermined that we were going to leave after Mayday Parade performed at 6, because a couple of people in our group needed to get home ASAP for various reasons. That story is a good one… Mayday Parade was one of the most popular bands at Warped Tour, so I’m really not sure why they didn’t get the main stage. Anyways, I sacrificed seeing Anarbor just so I could get to the stage that Mayday Parade would play on like half an hour early. First mistake. I got a liiiiiittle too close to the front, so I had the entire weight of everyone behind me shoving me into the people in front of me when the band came out. That was awesome and all, but also quite stressful. At one point, the lead singer said that he would give a high-five to any crowd surfers who made it to the front. That created a frenzy of people jumping on top of the crowd, most of them bashing me in the head/face with their nasty concert feet. At one point, some guy tried to pick me up and throw me on top of the crowd but I wasn’t havin any of that nonsense. After the first song, Brianna and I just had to move back. We ended up somewhere in the middle of the crowd which ended up not being too bad. Other than the whole “do I have a black eye from that one?” thing, the concert was pretty rad. Everyone was singing along and being awesome… man I love Mayday Parade. (:

We did leave after them, which ended up sucking for me, because Dropkick Murphys was at like 8, and they ended up being a sick concert. They did “Shipping Up to Boston” and “The Dirty Glass”, which are two of my favorite songs by them. Also, they allowed some fans to get up on the stage with the band at one point, two of which were my friends Chasen and Jod. But still, we had a fun drive home, which Chelsea came on this time. (:

Conclusion: Warped Tour is definitely something to look forward to next summer.

P.S. I move next week. Whoo!