Adventures with Friends

I've been having a marvelous week. Lots of fun with my roommates and a few new friends.

It all started with Aretha. Aretha and I have a class together, and one day in class last week, she asked if she could sit by me. We got talking and she told me she came from India and the stuff we were learning (American history) was all new to her, so I offered to study with her some time and we exchanged numbers. The next class we sat together again, then afterwards we and my roommate Stephanie ate lunch together. A few days later at our first ward FHE we went bowling and surprise! She was part of our ward! So Aretha, Stephanie and I played miniature golf and pool (we taught Aretha how to play both, she'd never played them before -- it was fun).

Since then we've all been good buddies. I told Aretha that I needed to get interviews for a news article I needed to do and she told me I should just come over and talk to her and her roommates so a few days ago I convinced my roommates to go with me and we all showed up at their dorm and played games while I asked them questions. Then on Friday, Aretha texted to see if we wanted to go ice skating with her and her roommates. We had gone shopping, but were able to get home in time to go with them (mostly due to the two good samaritans, fellow-students-but-with-a-car, who gave us a ride back).

Leaving to go skating.

On the way to the skating rink, we passed through the I-center. As we were walking, we became aware that a part of our group had fallen back. We all hid in anticipation of them rounding the corner, so we could jump out and surprise them, but then only one of them came. She told us that one of the party (one of Aretha's roommates' shy cousin who'd been talked into coming) had felt weird, coming along with a bunch of strangers, so they were taking her back to her dorm.

While we were waiting for them to take her home and come back, we decided to play a nice game of squash. I was chosen to hide and took off down a corridor. Not very long afterward, Lindsey, one of my roommates, and Kaleigh, one of Aretha's roommates, found me. We decided where we were currently hiding wouldn't hide a bunch of people well and so we moved about ten feet away, through a set of doors and onto the landing on a set of stairs. While we were standing there, hiding, Lindsey... kind of dropped her phone into the small space between the wall and the glass divider next to it (to keep people from getting onto the window sill, I guess).

Lindsey, trying to get her phone.

Kaleigh 'kicking' the phone toward Lindsey's hand with her boot.

A moment later, Jessy found us. For the next few minutes, we tried to stifle our laughter as Lindsey entertained us by trying to scare the people outside, slapping the window and staring at them.

Lindsey was having a hard time remaining serious while I videoed her doing it.

Lindsey Pose!

Kaleigh Pose!

"Be quiet, you guys, they'll find us!"

Kaleigh, the look out.

For some reason, her position in this picture amuses me greatly.

She reminds me of a penguin.

As the time wore on without Aretha and Stephanie (the only others playing) finding us, Lindsey started calling and texting Stephanie and leaving odd messages for her. "How much wood would a wood chuck chuck if a wood chuck would chuck wood?" being one of them. So when, a few minutes later, Stephanie texted me asking if I had anyone with me, I replied, "A wood chuck."

For the next half hour or so, we waited, Stephanie and I exchanging tree and wood chuck related hints to where we were hiding and laughing at Lindsey's creeper act.

Eventually, Stephanie and Aretha saw us through the window. They'd gone, via the sky bridge, to the building across the way, which was technically against the rules (or so we decided, anyway) and so we changed hiding places. Stephanie and Aretha saw us running, though, so they gave up and told us to come find them so we could go ice skating for real. The other roommates were apparently not returning. But Lindsey needed to get back to the dorm, so in the end, we all decided ice skating would have to wait for some other time and came back to our dorm, where we had hot chocolate.

Then we went over to Aretha & co's dorm to watch a couple movies. Afterwards, I finished my newspaper article, which took til 4 am. D:

The next morning I had a date, which was fun. We got hot chocolate and explored Rexburg for an hour.

After that, Jessy and I had planned to go to the temple. Somehow, though, it got later and later, and began to involve more and more people until we had Jessy, me, Aretha (who had never been to the temple before, though she has a recommend, because there isn't one in India), Stephanie, Lindsey and Kaleigh.

We crammed ourselves into Kaleigh's car, rode up the hill to the temple and... were told that they had stopped taking walk-in's because it was really busy. We got to go in and sit for a while and watch baptisms, though. That was nice. I love the peace of the temple, even if I'm not doing any work.

A nice little old man took this picture of all us of together.

That night, Aretha invited us over to have Indian food and watch a Bollywood movie. We had a lot of fun.

Nothing left. We ate it ALL.

Then we had the cake that Jessy made from the cake mix we bought earlier that day (and which I accidentally carried in my purse, to the temple) and Sprite. It was crazy, but the Sprite made up for all the other things you usually combine with cake mix, like oil and water and egg. It was delicious.