So this has been quite a busy week here at Lock Haven. But I will start with talking about last weekend.

Last weekend we went on an overnight backpacking trip with the Outing Club. We went on Eagleton Mine Camp Trail (http://www.clintoncountyinfo.com/eagletontrail.pdf). We hiked in about 5 miles and then camped out for the night and hiked out in the morning. The hike in was kind of rough, not cause the trail was bad but because it poured the entire time. We had rain gear, but after a couple hours of hiking in the rain none of our rain jackets were doing us any good. We got to camp and set up out tents in the pouring rain. Around 5 pm it stopped raining and it became more fun. We made dinner and hung out and talked. The next morning we made breakfast and packed up camp and hiked out. It was beautiful with the sun out.

This week I had an exam in one of my classes. I started studying last week because I knew that over the weekend I would be busy with the backpacking trip. I also have been working on an outline for a paper for my art history class. It is on the triumph arch. I need to have the outline ready for Friday, but the paper is not due till the end of the semester.

Now I am going to get back to my homework. I want to get as much done as possible before the weekend so I can have a chance to take a break and have some fun. And tomorrow is Halloween so I want to have some free time then too!

Posted by Carolyn Braun at 9:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Well this past weekend we had a trip for kayaking with the outing club. I love kayaking, it is great to be out on the water. There was a good group of us that went, 20 in all. Our experience ranged from none what so ever to quite a bit. We went down Spring Creek in Belefonte. We only had a couple swimmers, which was good, since the water was really cold. A few people were even working on their rolls.

Once we completed the entire trip a few of us went back to where we started to work on some skills that are used when going through whitewater in the kayaks. I switched to a different kayak at this point, a creeker, which is used for more whitewater type areas. I am very interested in learning all about whitewater kayaking so I am lucky to have friends that love it and can teach me.

While we were playing and surfing in a wave, I dropped my edge. This is a bad thing which can cause you to flip. So I flipped in the kayak and I haven't learned how to roll yet, so that was a little scary for me. Luckily a friend was there to help me when he saw I was freaking out a little.

I have to say I can't wait to go out again and play in the river. Hopefully it will rain soon so that there will be a good amount of water to play in.

Posted by Carolyn Braun at 9:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So this has been a busy couple of weeks for me. Not only have I had a lot of club activities going on, I have had a lot of schoolwork to do too. This week is the midterm week so I had one midterm today, one tomorrow, and one on Monday.

The midterm that I had today was in my Economics class. Economics is a required course for many of the majors here at LHU. My other midterms are in Emotional Support (a special education course) and in Art History (one of my minor courses). The best way that I have found to study is to schedule my study time and then re-write my most of my notes. The scheduled time helps me to make sure that I study and the re-writing of the notes helps to have the material sink into my head.

For more fun things, last Thursday we did not have our normal Thursday night hike for outing club. Instead we had a night of climbing at the climbing wall here on campus. It was a lot of fun being that I was afraid to climb the wall previously (but not too scared to climb out in nature). I went right up the wall; it was a lot of fun. Although I am short and have problems reaching some of the holds I think I will keep up with the climbing.

After a couple hours of climbing we had a physics club event where we gave short, 5 minute, talks on different NASA missions. We ordered pizza and spent a while not only presenting on the missions, but talking about the different facts that made the missions we picked interesting. I picked the Aqua mission, which is a part of the earth observing system. It measures the evaporation form the oceans, water vapor in the atmosphere, clouds, precipitation, and so on. I found this particular mission interesting because of the global warming issues that can be measured with the information gathered from this satellite.

Tomorrow we are back to our usual Thursday night hike with outing club. I am looking forward to that and to Saturday, when we are going kayaking on Spring Creek. Also Sunday we may go out on a hike to Ricketts Glen State Park.

Posted by Carolyn Braun at 9:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So this past weekend we had a three-day weekend here at Lock Haven for fall break. I was very excited because I was going on a trip to West Virginia with the outing club to go white water rafting in the Upper Gauley. I had been rafting once before so I was very excited to go again. We had a 6-hour drive so we left around 5 on Friday. We were up crazy early on Saturday since we had to be ready to go at 6:30 am.
I have to say that it was an amazing day. There were multiple class 5 rapids and smaller ones too. We did dump out of the boat and flip the boat a couple times, but it is all in the fun of rafting. We jumped off a 15-foot cliff into the river too. The best was when we flipped at the rapid called “Fuzzy Box of Kittens�. We dubbed ourselves the Upper Gauley Swim Team for the day. I am already looking forward to our next trip in the spring.
On Sunday we went to Wilderness Adventure at Eagle Landing in Virginia where we did a 900-foot zip line (which was amazing) and other team building activities. There was one activity called “A walk in the Clouds� which was like a tightrope about a foot off the ground. We had to get everyone across the tightrope between the trees. Some had more balance than the others, but it was a lot of fun.
We got back to Lock Haven around 1 am Monday morning. We unpacked the cars and were able to get some sleep. I spent Monday, our day off, doing laundry and homework.
Now it’s back to class time for the week. It will be a busy week with projects due in two classes. Thankfully I was able to get the majority of the work done last week so I won’t feel overwhelmed this week.

Posted by Carolyn Braun at 9:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)