Snow just keeps coming! Now a possible flood?

This was definitely a great week to come back to school. After arriving last Sunday, a snow storm rolled in and added another 8 inches of snow to the ground. (That's not the good part) Unfortunately, because of all that snow the temperatures continue to stay really low. Fun fact: A year ago today...Grand Forks had a high temperature of 74 degrees, and no snow on the ground. Today, the high was about 16....it just shows how much the snow affects the temperature here.

We had our first snow day of the year this past Monday too! Because of heavy winds and lots of snow, they cancelled school. Usually when someone thinks of a snow day, it's a day to go out, play in the snow, and just have a blast! But because of how cold it is here, that day was spent sitting in our dorm room. However, every other day this week was beautiful weather. Still very cold, but clear skies and great to fly. Every day gets warmer and warmer and you can see the snow melting. I did hear that there will most likely be a flood this year though because of all the snow still on the ground. Being so late in the year, it will soon rapidly warm up and all the snow will melt very quickly, flooding the Red River. (the river that splits ND from MN) Grand Forks will not be affected as much but all the surrounding little towns might be in more trouble.

For the next two weeks, I will only have class Tuesday-Thursday, giving me 4 day weekends. Next week my one class is cancelled for Monday, and I never have classes Friday. The following week, we have the Monday off of school because of Easter. So hopefully these next couple weeks go by really fast!

I will be going home with a friend again for Easter just like I did for Thanksgiving, so I will have another great story to tell about the little towns of North Dakota in a few weeks. :)

I had a first experience of getting my foot ran over by a car as well this week. I have never had that happen to me before but it surprisingly didn't hurt as much as I thought it would. 

Other than that, just another fast week. I still have several more weeks until I hear a response about being a counselor at my church camp again, so I'm trying not to think about that too much. 

Let me know what else you want to hear about! Only a handful of weeks left and then I am done with my first year of college!

Cam

Got pushed into snow....

Not quite as good as the beach...but still awesome.

Behind Yet Again! I blame Spring Break!!

This was probably one of the best spring breaks I can remember. That is partially why I failed to write last week but I have a lot to talk about from this week!  Going from 20-30 degrees up here in Grand Forks to a beautiful, warm 80 degree sunshine in So Cal really made me realize how much I miss home. The cold only continues up here with no sign of hope in the coming days/weeks. I mentioned a few weeks back that weather was (seeming) to warm up and that we were starting to get 30 degree days, well I must have jinxed it because this next weeks forecast is reporting temperatures in the teens....STILL!!! We are coming up on April (already?) and we still can't get a day of decent temperature/weather. I leave Grand Forks a week ago, and come back to more snow and colder temps.  At least I was still able to be home for a week to not only warm my body up after a 5 month hibernation, but see my family and friends again.  Now it's time to go right back into the flow of things. Away go the shirts, and back come the snow coats.

One of the better days I have seen.

I went to the beach three times while I was home, all of them being beautiful days.  I managed to get somewhat of a tan as well which will hopefully hang on until summer in 8 weeks!! There were also a lot of nights being out until 3am (mom wasn't too happy about that :P) and hanging out with friends. So, my sleep schedule is way off and I have been lacking adequate sleep for several days. 

Gotta represent all the way from Grand Forks!

This past week, I was also fortunate enough to have my interview for the Us In The Son Day Camp counselor position once again this summer. For anyone that doesn't know, I have been apart of this day camp at my church every year since I was 5. I started off as a camper, then I became a volunteer when I was 12, then this last year I became a counselor.  This camp means so much to me and having the opportunity last summer to be a counselor was a dream come true. When I got home last Sunday, being in that warm weather and going to church that night really made me think of camp and how much I am looking forward to this year.

To answer the question my Aunt Debby asked a few weeks back regarding the weather and how it affects my flying, here it is.  When it is colder, the plane actually runs better, the performance is better, and I burn less fuel. It takes longer to warm up the engine to give us that good performance, but overall cold weather provides better flying conditions.  However, I am rarely able to find a good day to fly in this cold because there are always clouds in the way. What that means is that the ceiling (cloud layer) is too low to allow me to fly without being too close to the ground. So yes having cold "temperatures" are better to fly the plane, warm "weather" gives me better chances to fly. That's why Spring needs to hurry up! I am running out of time!

Ridin' in the jeep!

I was actually supposed to get back into GF yesterday, however I managed to miss my flight out of John Wayne at 7 in the morning therefore giving me an extra day to spend with family! They rescheduled me, free of charge, to this morning at 7:45. It was pretty much the best thing that could have happened. Usually people are upset about missing a flight, but in my case there was none of that! It is almost easier doing it that way. 

Here is a well thought out reason to why you would want to do that....let's say you need to be home by Sunday, however flights are cheaper if you go home Saturday. You buy the ticket for Saturday, show up with not enough time to make that Saturday flight, and they reschedule you for the next day. GENIUS!  Now it might not always be as easy to do that, but if you realize that it can be done, you should definitely try it. It worked for me and I didn't even mean to do it.

That is all I have for this week, I miss home already and I have only been here for 3 hours. Summer can't come soon enough!

Cameron 

P.S. I also went to my first concert this week too! Matt Maher performed at my church and I had front row seats! Not quite as big as a lot of other concerts but it was still awesome!

Matt Maher and The Brilliance

Couldn't get any better sunset pictures :/

Is it Springtime yet?!

In a matter of two weeks, the weather has warmed up by about 20 degrees. Just a few weeks ago we were still having negative degree days, and now for the past week and continuing on through this next week it is showing temperatures of high 20's low 30's. It's crazy how quickly the weather changed! Spring is right around the corner! It was clear skies most of the week with calm winds...two things I haven't seen much of since October!  So overall a gorgeous week of weather!



Another cool event that happened this week was frost on trees. Since it has been warming up, fog is finally able to form in the air. But since it is still below freezing temperatures, that fog sticks and freezes to the trees, making everything look white! It is really an amazing sight! Hopefully the picture is clear enough to notice all the frozen trees!  It almost reminds you of something you see on a Christmas card!

Unfortunately, I do not have any fun falling stories this week....I was pretty good about staying on two feet at all times.

In my last weeks post, I showed a picture of a huge poster that I had painted, I will talk a little bit about that now.  All fraternities and sororities have what they call "Philanthropies" which are events that a certain house puts on for the week. It helps raise money for a given cause (us Pikes do Breast Cancer Awareness). So for one of the sororities (Alpha Phi) their Philanthropy was to help raise money for Cardiac Care.  During that week, each fraternity selected one candidate. This candidate was to help promote and support Alpha Phi's philanthropy and at the end of the week, they crowned someone their "Heart Throb" who would then get to pretty much be apart of the sorority for events, dinners, etc. 12 fraternities, 12 candidates, only one winner. I chose to be the candidate for Pike. We painted a poster, made a video, and had interview questions for why I thought I should be Alpha Phi's Heart Throb. After putting hours of work into the poster and rocking my interview and video, it came down to one last event which heavily influenced the winner. This event was called Boot Hockey. It is Hockey without skates, only tennis shoes on ice.  All 12 fraternities were able to, as long as they had 10 players on a team, have as many teams as they liked.  Unfortunately, because of confusion with our teams and the number of players we were told we HAD to have on one team, we only had one team of 10. We find out day of that we could have had smaller teams, allowing us to make multiple teams and have a better chance of winning, but nothing we could do at that point. Another fraternity had won boot hockey and, because of that, their candidate was crowned Heart Throb.

It was a great experience and I'm glad I was able to have the opportunity to do something like that, but I wouldn't do it again. I put too much time and effort into my video, interview, and poster to have the winner be determined because of a hockey game. Oh well, I was able to create great friendships with so many people that will last for my many years here.

That's all I have for this week, Spring Break is next week! It will be nice to have a week off.  Continuing to count down the days until Summer!

Cameron

Observation flight with Devin!

Walking in the middle of the Red River
(Only other river other than the Nile to flow North)

Grand Forks