#9- Where's the extinguisher?!

Alas, here I am once again, doing my second post of the evening. Wow, the many things I do in a week! Haha. So during this intense week of RA training we've had so far (with another week and a half to go!), I've learned many things, the most fun of which being how to use a fire extinguisher.
Okay, so it's really not that hard. But I'd never done it before.
Everyone, I'm sure, has a general idea of how to use a fire extinguisher.
Step #1: break it out of the plastic box in the hall and take it to the location of the fire.
Step #2: Pull out pin on extinguisher.
Step #3: Aim nozzle-like thing at said fire.
Step #4: Squeeze handle until puffy white stuff comes out and the fire disappears.
Well, simple though it may be, when you have about 70 people watching you put out the nicely controlled fire, it can be slightly awkward. Especially when your extinguisher runs out of extinguishing liquid. Yes, mine ran out. Fortunately for me, there were a couple Campus Safety people there with extra extinguishers, refilling them. And also fortunate, I put out the fire.

#8- Check?

Well, here I am, back in Tennessee, back in the dorm, back in the heat. Yes, why yes I am. Although why I chose to come to college in this area of humidity is beyond me... Anyways, in short, I am here once again. I had to come back two weeks early in order to participate in RA training. After sitting in meetings, participating in semi-awkward-yet-fun icebreakers, trying to organize my room (yeah, still not done...), our first test of RA-like activities came about- night check.
Near the end of last year, all of us future-RA's had to shadow two different RA's doing night check to make sure we had a general idea of how to do it. Being an RA my senior year of high school, I thought I'd be prepared to do this, no problem. Well, it turns out colleges happen to have a few more girls in their dorm than my former dorm. It also turns out that we not only do first check, but also second check if needed, and it's just slighly more intense than in high school. Ha, kidding. A lot more intense. However, I would like to make this pronouncement for all to read- I have now done two night checks, and I have not screwed either of them up. Hallelujah!
This, I view, as not necessarily a "new" experience, but at the same time, it is new. I may have had some previous experience in this area, but this in itself was definitely new, and I am very happy to say that I have successfully completed my #8.

#7- State Travels.

I have always been one to enjoy traveling. Albeit, I didn't travel too much up until the seventh grade when my class took a trip to Washington, DC, but ever since that trip I have been racking up quite a few frequent flyer miles. However, along with my traveling to other countries, I've been doing a lot of traveling as I drive back and forth from my lovely home in Washinton (STATE!) to Southern. This is the third time I've driven across the country, and each time has been a different route. This has been purposeful, even though I usually end up taking the longer route... but by this time in two days, I will have been to every single state west of the Mississippi River. Excluding Hawaii and Alaska... but who counts those? Haha. The only two I haven't been to (and will be to by Tuesday!) are the Dakotas. Now, just to travel to New England... and Florida. And South Carolina. Mississippi, Alabama, Lousiana... Maybe if I get lucky, I'll have added a few more states by the end of this year. :)

#6- My Job...

This summer, my main goal was to find a good job. The day- literally- I got back to Washington from my road trip back from Southern, I was sitting in the dean's office of my old academy talking and visiting with my sister, when two of the deans came in and started having a conversation. Long story short, they offered me the job of being the dean for the summer right then and there. I accepted, and for the past few weeks I've been working at the academy, living in the taskforce apartment, and sometimes being woken up by campmeeting workers needing into their rooms at 1 AM. Now that campmeeting is finally over, my workers and I are preparing for all the international basketball camps that come through every week. Its been super busy, but I  have accomplished my goal of getting a summer job! (If I live through it...)

#5- So long, Starbucks...

I love coffee. Maybe it's because I am from the wonderful west coast, and the capital of many major coffee corporations is less than two hours from my house. (Starbucks, Tullys, Seattle's Best... just to name a few.) Maybe it's because my dad is a coffee addict who drinks practically two entire pots of coffee per day by himself. Or maybe it's simply because I am a college student who has to stay awake somehow. However, moving from my lovely home state of Washington to Tennessee, I noticed two things that drastically reduced my coffee-drinking. One, the closest Starbucks is about fifteen minutes away. Two, the coffee costs almost a dollar more. Now, I am not an addict like my dad. I drink no more than one cup of coffee every few days. But still... So for one of my 36 things, I decided to kick my caffeine habit for a month. Not just coffee- all forms of caffeine, soda included. Living on the Southern campus, this isn't too difficult, since caffeine is nearly a bad word among the conservative Adventist groups. However, I have a Friday ritual in lovely Collegedale, where every week I have my Subway/Starbucks Friday. Nonetheless, on March 28, I decided to kick my caffeine-intake for a month, til the day I left Southern.
Honestly, this sounded a lot more difficult than it really was. For one, my mom oh-so-kindly reminded me that I could still go to Starbucks- they do have such a thing as decaf coffee. And while Diet Caffeine-Free Pepsi with a squirt of lemon definitely isn't the same as Dr. Pepper with a squirt of lemon at Panera, it's not too terrible either. Still, when April 28 came around, I was more than happy to be able to once again partake of my Starbucks fetish- although, it was also nice to have my dad pay for it... :)

#4- The Zebra!

For those of you who don't know, this semester I'm taking an Intro to Photography class here at Southern. It's been my goal for a long time to have my picture voted as the best in the class, and while I've been in the top three a couple of times, a week or two ago we had an extra credit assignment that involved taking a color film negative and making a black and white print from that film in the darkroom. When I went home over Spring Break, I asked my mom if she had any color negatives left from the old, ancient days of film photography. She didn't. Therefore I went on a search through my room, hunting for any color negatives I'd happen to find. Fortunately for me, I did find a ton of negatives- all color! When I brought them back here, I looked through to find a picture that would be fun and also fulfil the requirements. Therefore, I decided to make a print of a zebra, a picture I took before I went into the 8th grade when I was visiting relatives in southern California. And wonder of wonders, when I turned in the print, more people voted for it than any others- I got first place! It was really exciting for me. And to top it off, I got 15 extra credit points!

#3- It's Full!

I've always been a writer of sorts, but while many I have tons of old diaries and journals from when I was little, none of them ever really called to me. I wrote maybe one-tenth of the way through a couple of them, but eventually got sick of it and gave up. So my goal- to make it through an entire journal of SOME sort. Last year I started just jotting down my random thoughts and stuff in a plain, boring spiral notebook. For some reason, I just kept writing... and last week, I finally, after over a year, finished filling it! While this may seem like a very strange goal, it is something I have never done before, and so I am pretty excited that I actually did it! Now, onto my second journal... :)