Wow! For the first time in the two and a half weeks I’ve been at Embry Riddle, I have time to get in my jammies and write a blog! YAY DOWN TIME!!
Since I arrived August 2nd, life has literally been going two hundred miles an hour and I’m just now starting to catch up and breathe again. Volleyball is CRAZY during preseason, what with multiple practices a day plus hydrotherapy and hiking up mountains at the speed of light. (My coaches have super long legs. Which is kind of a disadvantage for us little 5’4″ people, especially in trying to catch up to them.) I can’t complain though…I have to say with full confidence that I am in the best shape of my life! It only gets better from here!
When I first arrived, I was scared to death. I am so thankful for Facebook, because I was at least able to talk to a couple girls on my team before I actually met them. It was easier to get to know them when they had already given me advice on what to expect from both school and the upcoming season. I wasn’t as homesick as I would’ve been had I been completely alone. Of course, it does help when I have one of my friends from high school come with me to be on the same team! That was definitely a plus. I soon got to know everyone on the team, and now I know that I shouldn’t have been intimidated at all! What with six freshman and four returners, I know that we are all pretty much in the same boat with everything. As for homesickness? I most certainly still have it. Even with friends and teammates to help, it still hits pretty hard. I haven’t ever been away from my family for so long, so I really miss hanging out with them. My siblings and I are especially close, so it’s hard to be away from them for so long. They just started their first day of school and I missed it, so I had to talk on the phone for hours to catch up with the latest elementary school, junior high, and high school drama! That phone bill will be rackin’ up pretty soon…
However, there are plus sides. During the span of my stay so far, I’ve definitely made a few personal records:
1) I have hiked (more or less sprinted) Thumb Butte, Granite Mountain, and a biking trail which name I can’t recall. One was super steep, as in forty-five degrees uphill, one was ten miles round-trip, and the last one was all of the above. Growing up in the White Mountains of Arizona, I knew of all the hiking trails and biking trails and outdoorsy stuff within a twenty-five mile radius, but I never wanted to do any of it. I consider myself a pretty experienced hiker now. Not that that means I’m going to go home and hike for FUN, I just sort of know the ropes. I even have my own camelback and everything. 🙂
These are some of my teammates right after the last hike of preseason!
2) I learned how to swim! When I was little, I took swimming lessons. I never actually paid attention because I was too busy pretending I was Ariel from the Little Mermaid, but I took them anyhow. My parents tried to save my life, but it was pretty fruitless as far as me saving myself from drowning goes. HowEVER, for hydrotherapy my team has to swim back and forth across the pool using strokes that I had never executed (or paid any attention to) in my LIFE. So while everyone was doing the breast stroke, side stroke, back stroke and freestyle swimming, I was trying not to swallow all the water in the pool. Or drown. Both pretty much unsuccessfully. Now, thanks to much concentration and a wonderful teammate who was on her high school swim team, (I love you Cassie!), I can not only save myself from going to the bottom of the pool like a boulder, I can actually (sorta) keep up with the team! THAT is a feat that I doubted I would ever accomplish!
3) I cleaned my room. Enough said.
Cute huh? Mine is the bunk bed, and my roommate Teri’s is the bottom one. 🙂
So this whole college experience thing is working out just peachy so far. School starts on Monday, right after my team gets back from Texas (which we have to miss orientation and all the fun stuff for). There’s something good to be said about having classes only on Tuesdays and Thursdays, so Monday will be a recovery day for me. I am so excited for my classes though! Which I have to miss the second day of, because we’re going to San Diego on Thursday of next week… but hey! College is about spontaneity, right? Get ready, because here comes life!
