Spring time at last!

I know I haven't written anything for several weeks....that was my bad entirely. I have been focusing a lot on school and last weekend I was home for my sisters confirmation!  But now that I have time to write an entry...there is a lot to say!

Last week my brother Josh came and visited me up here in Grand Forks.  He stayed for about 4 days and then the both of us flew home to California last weekend. While he was here, the weather wasn't the greatest. It was snowing one of the days and then in the 30's the remainder of the week, so unfortunately we weren't able to do much outdoors.  However, we still had a blast playing games in my dorm and Josh went to a few classes with me. He thought it was so cool how he could text in class and not get in trouble (not that I do :P) and even leave early if we wanted.  It was completely new to him and I could tell he was having a great time.  On Thursday, the day before we went home, I took Josh to a Styx concert. I mostly got the tickets so that I could go see them but I figured Josh would have a great time too! (Which he did)  This was the first concert I have ever been to and I definitely think it was a great first concert to attend.

Josh and I left Friday morning, arriving in California about 3 in the afternoon that day.  I had a great time while I was home but unfortunately didn't get to see all the people I wanted to. I knew that I was coming home two and a half weeks later for summer so it wasn't that big of a deal.  Also while I was home, I had my first meeting for Us In The Son this summer. We found out what color we would be this summer and I was fortunate enough to hear that I would be a Green counselor again! That just made me even more excited to come home in two weeks so I can get started with another amazing summer.

I have finally just about finished my flying for the semester! I only have my stage check left and then a few simulator lessons and I'm done!  I was able to get some decent weather to go out and fly and get my 3 solo flights done! I took a couple cool pictures of what it looks like in the air (it's pretty hard to do when there is an instructor next to you).

And now comes this last week, each day progressively getting warmer and warmer, leading into today where the high temperature will be 70 degrees! All of us up here in ND have been waiting for a beautiful day like this since October and I think we can finally call it Spring.  Last night my roommates and I went out to dinner and sat out on the patio! I'm happy that the weather is finally getting better but I'm also upset that it took so long to get like this. We are finally getting good weather and I have 2 weeks till I come home. So, while it is amazing, I won't be in it for very long.

I will make sure to have a couple more entries before summer rolls around. Almost done with my freshman year of college!

Cameron

Easter trip to Harvey and back into Winter conditions!

Well my Easter was a blast!  I went to Harvey, ND again last weekend but to spend Easter with the Marchand family this time! The last time I was there was for Thanksgiving, but I'm glad I was able to go there again and spend time with an awesome family.  It is so much fun getting away to a small town like that and not worrying about anyone or anything. I unfortunately didn't take many pictures while I was there this time, mostly because I took pictures of the whole town my first visit there back in November. If you haven't seen what the town looks like, check out my post back in November to see it all!  I did a lot of the same things while I was there this time; just hanging out, going to see a movie in the one movie theater, and eating delicious meals! Overall it was a fantastic weekend there. 

Don't hit the deer!

This week went by just as fast as all of the others.  I am making sure to not get behind in my classes and just power through the remaining 5 weeks of school.  English has definitely been my most difficult class this semester.  I have never been good at writing and the techniques the professor is trying to teach us are just absolutely ridiculous.  She pretty much told us that anything we learned in high school doesn't apply to this class. I find that very upsetting considering all throughout high school my teachers would tell me that this is preparing us for college. No more MLA format, no structure (meaning intro, body, and conclusion) and she pretty much makes us write about stories we have read in class.  One of the topics I had to write about were "What are the literate arts said to be good for?" I mean seriously? I don't even think she knew what that meant either. So I have been writing bogus papers for the whole semester just trying to get through this class. :(

And then Friday afternoon... 

Taken Thursday Afternoon...

So throughout this semester, weather has been continuously terrible (as you all know). Usually, weather is beautiful during the week and gets terrible on the weekends. That was the case for this week once again.  It was clear skies all week (around mid 30's) and a lot of the snow had melted away. Then starting last night, right as the weekend started, it snowed. Today has been terrible weather too and it's supposed to continue on till tomorrow. Then Monday's weather is calling for party cloudy skies and like 38 degrees. Are you kidding me?! Why can't the weekends have good weather when we can actually go out and do stuff? It is just upsetting and I am so tired of the Winter. 

I have just under 2 weeks until I will be going home for my sisters Confirmation! My little brother will also be out here visiting me the whole week before that! So I have something to look forward to soon. I just hope it warms up a little by then so that I can go out and do stuff with him.

What every day should look like here....

I register for Fall classes next week and I plan on adding another class to give me closer to 20 credits next year. After having two semesters of 16 credits, I realize I can definitely handle another class and it is also a benefit so that I don't have to worry about finding extra classes to take my senior year. Already thinking ahead :)

Still want ideas of what I can talk about in future posts!

Cameron

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

Frost "Nibble"

Well unfortunately I haven't taken a lot of pictures this week...I will put a few more up from my Chicago trip but other than that not much. :(  I have a few fun stories to tell for this week which should make up for the lack of pictures.

On Monday, I had a meeting to attend at Pike. There were still remnants of a blizzard moving through our city of Grand Forks, meaning there were about 40mph winds and it was probably about -25 degrees outside. I was planning on only wearing jeans, long sleeve shirt, and a light jacket to Pike because I was getting picked up so I wouldn't be outside any more than 15 or 20 seconds. So no need for any snow coat or gloves right??  That ends up being a terrible mistake....

So I get picked up and the five of us in the car decide we want to stop and get food before our meeting which was scheduled to start in about 30 minutes.  Keep in mind its windy, blowing snow, and super cold. We drive about 2 miles to a little sandwich place, and stopping us from getting into the parking lot was a huge pile of snow, probably about 2 feet high and 10 feet long.  Our wonderful driver (nothing against him :P) decides to try to truck it through this mound of snow with his little 2 door car (talk about crammed in the back seats). We get about halfway through and the car tires sink right into the snow, putting us up on a nice pedestal with the tires spinning. So now we're stuck in the middle of this big patch of snow, and I'm only wearing jeans and a light jacket, and Sperry's for shoes. We all hop out and start working away at getting free of this mess we have put us in.  Bare hands digging through snow, wind hitting my face, really not something ANYONE should be doing. 

We're outside for about 10 minutes and I give up and can't take it any longer...I run to the sandwich place to get some place warm. My hands are burning and my ears are frozen solid. Every part of my body aches of cold.  Long story short, we finally get the car out about an hour and a half later thanks to a truck that was driving by. We chained up with him and he pulled us out. So, except for that first 10 minutes I was outside, the remainder was spent in the sandwich place watching the other guys try to get the car out. They were properly dressed unlike myself so they could handle being outside. 

For the rest of that evening, my hands burned, and the pain never went away. I was starting to get worried :/ I know it takes awhile for them to warm back up but not 4 hours later. When I wake up the next morning, three of my fingers on my right hand are numb and tingly. There wasn't any purple or blue coloring...just numb as if you had bruised your finger nail. I went to the doctor  the next day (Wednesday) and he said that is wasn't very bad and gave it the name "Frost Nibble". I had just damaged the nerves in my fingers. 

Well I think that one story gives me enough to talk about this week without boring everyone :P  Of course the one week I manage not to fall on my butt I instead almost freeze my hands off.  Not sure which one I would rather have happen to me... embarrassing moment or lose a finger?

On a more positive note, yesterday I heard the first form of life other than us up here in ND!! Birds were chirping as I walked to class and it was the first noise other than cars and wind blowing I have heard since November!! Hopefully this is a sign that Spring is around the corner...no more of these - degree days. Time for warmer weather! (Can't believe I would ever have myself think that)

Please comment if you enjoyed this, I will take several pictures for next week! Don't forget you can also subscribe via email on the right side so that you know when I write a new post!

Pike house we stopped at on our way to Chicago!

Thanks for following and not making this a waste of my time. :)

Cameron

Did I forget to mention I walked into a Subway for the
first time??

Just a little banner I made...I will talk about it more next week.

Lake Michigan...kinda looks the ocean doesn't it?

Weeks of catching up plus Chicago!!

I was planning on writing a blog this last Sunday, after I got back from Chicago for the weekend. However, due to an unfortunate series of events, I was unable to get home until Monday afternoon because of a snow storm that rolled through all of ND and MN. We managed to make it all the way to Minneapolis but were forced to stop there because the highways were shut down. So I was actually able to stay in two places I have never visited this past weekend, both Chicago and Minneapolis!

To start with a little of last week, just another very fast four days of school. I'm loving how fast this semester is going because it means sooner to coming home! I also managed to have another pretty bad fall last week while walking to class. :/  Devin (my roommate) was walking in front of me, and for whatever reason, he missed the one patch of ice but, knowing me, I caught it perfectly. One of my legs slid out from under me, and the other followed. It then led to me continuously switching which leg was sliding out, looking like I was trying to skate. After about six or seven "slips" I finally went down...Devin turns around laughing out loud and I get up, only to slip one last time and hit the ground again. Something tells me that I wasn't meant to walk in the snow/ice.

Chicago Pizza!!!

Can't believe I snapped a picture as sweet as this

Now to talk about Chicago...what a fun weekend that was. The reason I traveled there in the first place was because of a leadership convention that was going on for my fraternity.  It was just like what I wrote about in my post awhile back about Kansas City. Same exact type of event. There were about 25 of us that went this time, way more than the Kansas City trip.  The drive there wasn't bad at all. We left at about 1 in the morning and drove through the day, getting to Chicago by about 3 in the afternoon. I slept through a lot of it which made the drive go by a lot faster. The first night we listened to speakers and then at about 9, went into downtown Chicago where we walked along the "Magnificent Mile" and went to many different stores and pizza places.  Saturday was pretty much laid out the same, only difference was we went downtown during the day to see the city instead of at night. But overall it was an amazing weekend and I enjoy having opportunities like these to travel to places I haven't been before! I will post more pictures on a separate blog post so this doesn't become ridiculously long.

Like I mentioned above, we left Sunday morning but were forced to stake out in Minneapolis for the night.  Luckily, Minneapolis is the home of the Mall of America so there was an endless amount of activities we could do. This mall was absolutely huge and it managed to have both an amusement park and an aquarium! This was one of the coolest things I have seen and I was able to walk into pretty much every store I could ever want to.  It was definitely an amazing experience and I will be back there sooner than later.


Well that is pretty much all I have to say about this past week. I had my first night flight last night and it was a lot different than flying at night back home. Every direction I flew was just pitch black (with exception of an occasional town) and the only way you can figure out where you are is by using the instruments and GPS. Thank god for technology.

Miss everyone from back home so much! Let me know what else you might want to hear about!

Cameron

The picture from above but during the day/

Navy Pier