Prescott Student Blog: Chelsea

I just got home yesterday from a trip to Seattle, Washington. I had a blast!
I flew out on the thirteenth, right after everyone was finished with finals. My mom picked me up from the airport and we went straight to our old hotel in the middle of downtown Seattle. While it wasn’t the fanciest hotel, it was very “interesting” and I really believe we were the only people staying in the entire building!
Seattle is a beautiful city. While I was there the weather was wonderful until my last two days, at which point it got extremely cold, and extremely snowy (which is very rare for the area). There are a lot of interesting places to see there, including Pike’s Place, Fremont, and the entire downtown area.
I went to the original Starbuck’s, saw the people who throw the fish around in Pike’s Place, and did way too much shopping. There are tons of coffee shops in Seattle, one on every corner (my caffeine buzz was never ending). My mom’s friend Laurie took us to a place called Fremont a few minutes away from downtown, and it was cute. We shopped around at a street fair, went into a few little novelty shops and visited the “troll” under the bridge. It is a giant sculpture of a troll (it had a Santa hat on for the holidays) and it holds a VW bug in one hand. The troll is large enough to crawl around on, and we made sure to take a lot of pictures.

But, my favorite part of the trip was definitely the ballet. My mom took me to see the Nutcracker, a holiday classic. It was beautiful, and the best way to describe it is eye candy. We had amazing seats and could see everything perfectly. The little girls who had gone to see the show all came in as normal little bratty girls and left as ballerinas, dancing gracefully from the hall. Afterwards my mom and I got some very American sushi and headed back to our hotel.
I had a fun trip, but I only get to be home for a few days Before I head to New York for Christmas and New Years. (I am almost excited for school to start again, I miss my roommates already!)

Posted by Chelsea at 2:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I’m so thankful finals are over! They weren’t as stressful as I was expecting, but I definitely did my fair share of studying.
Everywhere on campus students were stressing out about their Semester finals. The library was packed as people finished up papers, projects, presentation and last minute studying.
My COM 219 Speech final was a persuasion speech and a small analysis of the speech attached. I don’t know why, but I panicked when I had to give my speech and was very nervous. My speech was about the over medication of today’s youth. I had worked so hard on this speech, I literally did hours of research and felt confident about the subject, but when I stood in front of the class, I got so nervous I read my speech right of the paper and spoke so fast my speech was over in only about 3 minutes. I sat down feeling terrible about it, and stressed about it until I got my grade. But, it turns out the speech wasn’t as terrible as I had anticipated. Even though I was nervous, and did read too fast, I still got an A. I am so proud of myself; I am a much better speaker now than I was before, and feel much more confident in my abilities.
The BA201, Principles of Management final wasn’t much different than the normal exams, but it was a comprehensive final with extra short answer questions. I found the study guide extremely helpful, and I found myself constantly reading it. When it came time to take the test, I really was confident this time. It didn’t take me long, and I only faltered on one or two questions. At the end of the day, I aced that test also.
As always, I stressed out a lot over my PSY101 Intro to Psych final. The exams in that class, while difficult, helped me learn the material. It was one of my favorite classes and subjects, making the final less painful. It took a long time, and my hand cramped more than once, but I did well and was able to remember all of the material I had learned. Because I enjoyed that class so much, I am taking Social Pysch this Spring Semester, and I am really looking forward to it.
But, the final that stressed me out most was definitely my IT109 final. I am relatively skilled with computers, so I figured I could take the Intro to Computers class online. While the lessons were easy to learn, the assignments step by step and straightforward, and the professor more than willing to help, I struggled in that class, mostly due to laziness. (DON’T BE LAZY!!! I LEARNED THE HARD WAY!!) So when it came to the final, I knew I had to do well or it would be impossible to do better than a “C.” I spent the most time studying for the final that should have been the easiest for me. But, my final studying paid off and I finished the final confident I had gotten an A. Seriously, I wish I wouldn’t have forgotten all the work or set it aside, it would have made my last few weeks of this class much less stressful for me. Learn from my mistake!
So now that finals are over, everyone is packing and making arrangements to go home for the holidays. It’s going to be sad when everyone leaves, but it is only a month so it shouldn’t be all that bad. We have very specific rules to follow when we leave the residence halls for the break, so we are dividing the tasks and deep cleaning our dorm before we leave. I hope we don’t forget to do anything.

I’m excited about all the traveling I will be able to do this break, and I will make sure to blog about it when I get home and have a steady internet connection again!

Posted by Chelsea at 2:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I just got done with our Thanksgiving break, and I have to say, I had an aboslutely amazing weekend, one I will never forget.
My dad and I had alot of people over to eat, we ended up roasting two turkeys and deep frying another (if you have never had a deep fried turkey, they are absolutely amazing!) We made five POUNDS of mashed potatoes and about another five pounds of stuffing. We had twelve people, mostly ERAU students who weren't going home, over to eat, and almost everybody brought desert, and sadly, we were much too full to eat most of it.

Two of the students brought their guitars with them and played music after dinner. The whole day was just so relaxing.

Friday morning after dinner my dad and I drove up to Chinle, Arizona. It's a small town on the Navajo Reservation. Our close family friend and ERAU Alumnus Arlando invited is to go to his family reunion there.
It was a very long drive, but as soon as we got there we knew it was worth it. We drove through pieces of Monument Valley and went by Meteor Crater.
The family reunion was so nice, even though we aren't related we felt completely welcome by the time we left.

Right outside of Chinle is Canyon De Chelly. The canyon is one of the most beautful places I have ever seen. It was breathtaking! You are only allowed into the bottom of the canyon if you have a Navajo guide with you, and Arlando was more than happy to show us around.
He drove us into the canyon and showed us his land and his family's land. Right next to his mother's land is a place called newspaper rock. It is a cliff face COVERED in pertoglyphs. It is something most people will never see, and I could have reached out to touch it.

Canyon de Chelly has been home to the Anasazi and Navajo for hundreds, even thousands of years. Ruins lined the canyon, some of them were up to three stories tall even after they had started to fall apart.

Some of the views seemed designed for pictures.

I still can't get over how beautiful it was!

The drive out was hard. There was alot of quicksand, water and mud. At times we thought we weren't going to get back without help, but the truck made it through. It looked pretty cool in the process too!

There were wild painted ponies around every turn, and they weren't afraid of the truck when it got close, so we were able to get some amazing pictures.

Later that night, we were honored with a special Blessing Way ceremony done by a medicine man. The entire family sang and prayed for us. Even though it was in another language, the pure emotion could be easily understood. They sang songs of protection, focus, healing and other things.
When the ceremony was over we went to something called a Yebiche dance. I believe it's an ancient healing dance. The dancers wore traditional costumes with masks, fur, branches and ribbons hanging from their arms. There were singers in the Hogan singing all night. The entire ceremony was hypnotic.
It will always be one of my favorite memories, something I will never forget. I got to experience things most people will only read about.

At night the temperature dropped drastically, and the heater in our camper was broken! We were sleeping in a 35 degree trailer, which isn't that bad, but definitely not comfortable. I had to used three sleeping bags and I layered alot. The mornings were even worse though.

On the way back to Prescott we stopped at the Little Painted Desert, which was beautiful as well.

So I'm finally home, and I have to get ready for my finals. It seems like everyone came home from break with some sort of sickness, and I am not the exception. It's going to be hard to get back into focus, but not impossible. Wish me luck!

Posted by Chelsea at 9:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)