Cold. And St. George!

So not much is going on. I had the amazing opportunity to go down to St. George last week with my Biology Professor and 12 other students from the class. Now the class is 120 kids, and only 13 of us got to go. How you might ask? Well the trip was opened up to my lab section, and so my first thought was, well, I've never been to St. George, so I'll go. Most kids didn't want to go because we were going to miss 3 days of school, but since it was a Tues-Thr, it wasn't a big deal for me because I don't have classes on Tuesday or Thursday. So we left last Tuesday to drive down to St. George. Oh. The purpose of the trip was a service trip. We have to do 8 hours of service for Biology, and so we went down to help out with the Senior World Games. We helped them do the health screenings...I'll get to that in a minute. So we left last Tuesday. I knew it would be a great trip because I love my bio professor and I was excited that we were going to get to do medical things. So I was in the van with my professor, and he just talked and told stories and gave us Book of Mormon quizzes the whole way down (not only has he been a bio professor for the last 35 years, he has also taught Book of Mormon since then and is a Branch President at the MTC for a non-native English missionaries). So he has so many neat stories and is incredibly knowledgable about the Book of Mormon. So that was fun in and of itself. The whole trip was funded by the Freshman Academy office (since we were all freshmen academy students). So we got to stay in a hotel and get free meals for 3 days. It was wonderful! So we go eat buffet that night and just hang out. We had a "little" devotional (turned into 1 1/2 hours) after dinner where our professor told more stories! He really is an incredible man. I would take biology forever if I could have him as my professor. I'm actually thinking of being his TA so that a) I can take his class again and b) go to st. george again...thats how great it was. Anyway. Wednesday started our tour of service. We were at the Convention Center at 7 AM. There are about 15-20 health stations for the health screenings, and we helped with about 5 or so of them. The different stations that we helped with were: balance test, osteoperosis testing, blood sugar testing, BMI test, blood sugar and vision tests and I think that was it. I mostly stuck with blood pressure and pulse because a lot of the other kids were afraid they wouldn't be able to do it, becuase we were taking it manually...meaning a manual blood pressure cuff and a stethescope. It was a lot of fun. I also did do some blood sugar testing and helped a little with the vision tests. So we did that for Wednesday and Thursday morning, then left on Thursday afternoon. Turns out Thursday was our professor's birthday, but he didn't tell anyone, till we were halfway home. He said "So today is my 68th birthday and I didn't recieve a single gift". And were like, well, you didn't tell us!!! So at the next rest stop people went and bought him tons of stuff! It was so funny! And he ate most of it too!! A few weeks ago we learned how to calculate the percent of fat and carbohydrates in foods, so we were doing that for all of our food we were eating. Oh and on Wednesday night we go to go to the St. George temple since about half of the group had never been! That was really neat too. It is very visible since it is quite a bit higher then the surrounding buildings, so it was neat to go see it up close. It was about 7 when we got there, and the Joseph Smith movie was starting at 7:30, so we stayed to see that too! It was such an amazing movie. I had never seen it, so it was really great to see. I highly recommend it if you have never seen it. The ending was so hard to watch. They have scenes playing of the Prophet being taken to the jail and it is playing to Praise to the Man. So sad.

Anyway! Needless to say, this was an amazing trip! And it's made me want to change my major to nursing. I've always wanted to be a nurse or doctor, but wasn't sure I was capable of all the schooling, but I think I might try it now if I can get into the program. They are having a major fair at school tomorrow that I am going to go to to look more at the nursing and photography program. So yeah!

I think that's pretty much all that's happened.

Except for this! It is definitely getting to be closer to winter! It "snowed" this weekend! It didn't stick, but it came down a little on Saturday and Sunday! This past week was homecoming so they had the homecoming parade on Saturday morning. I went so that I could take some pictures and it started snowing about 2/3 of the way throught! I was excited, and not at the same time (I mean, come on, snow and expensive cameras don't mix!) So that was neat. Its perfect weather outside right now. Probably low 60s. And there is snow on the mountains, but it is definitely melting. But there will be snow on the ground soon enough!!!!

Ok! I should probably go and do homework. I have several writing assignments!!!!!

Love you all!
Andrea