The Rice A Roni Treat

Hello my Eastern and Central Time Zone family,

Well, day three is upon me is sunny San Francisco. I have been told by several locals (aka apparent experts) that the weather here is deceptionaly nice. This is upsetting because I started to become optimistic that all of the "bad weather" talk I heard prior to my move was a bunch of balogne. Either way, the weather is again in the 70s with no sign--from my amatuer meteorologist eyes--of changing.

I feel I may have converted to the West Coast persona. I find myself perched atop a porch with a distant view of the San Fran house-covered hill side eating a large bowl of Granola and Raisin cereal with Organic Soy milk (lesson I learned: such milk only needs to be refrigerated after opening). No worries, I have yet to passion for skinny jeans or $40 vintage tees--ironic because the people who wear them attempt to give the vibe of "I could care less" although their outfits probably cost double that of mine.

Geoff's apartment is pretty nice, maybe too nice as I assume my soon-to-be apartment awaiting my discovery will likely be $300 less expensive per person than this place (in other words, it will more than 30 percent as nice). The roommates are good people--we went to this burrito place last night (see photo) where I got a burrito that would humble even the most native Mexicano.

Well, I'll keep it short, but I certainly have more to write, so I will do so later today or tomorrow. Hope everybody is doing well.

Mom learning how to "blog" to the fam!

Hi guys! Yes, it's actually true! Steve taught me how to use the blog, most of the way at least, so now I am trying this out for my first time!! I just need to figure out how to add pictures! I hope all of you are doing great, and I can't wait until December 18 when we are all together again!


Love everyone tons!!!

Voicemail and Quote

Voice message from Mom and Dad to Steve:

Mom: Hey Steve it's Mom...
Dad: ... and Dad...
Mom: ... calling you...
Dad: ... from home...
Mom: ... while we're eating...
Dad: ... apples.

Mom: We love you...
Dad: ... a lot...
Together: bye (bye).


Quote of the year (from Dad):
Setting - when we pull up to the O.A.R. concert for his birthday in East Lansing.

"This could be the biggest surprise since each of you were born."

Moving on up

Hey guys! So I haven’t written in a while but I hope I’ve kept you pretty up to date on the phone. Lately, we’ve been really busy helping the upper class graduate and preparing to in-process the lower class (aka “LowBots”, since we’re in the BOT-basic officer training program). We’re excited to be the upper class because a lot of the attention (and yelling) will be on fixing all the lowbots and getting them in gear. As I mentioned, I’ll be interacting with them on sort of a different level because while I need to keep holding them to their training standards, I will also be responsible for being cognizant of their morale. I’ll work to help them be comfortable enough to come to me if they need a more sane upperclassmen to talk to in the first days and weeks here.

In honor of this new class, I found a picture that was taken of me on TD-0 shortly after I arrived. Posting on the wall with our Talon (the book) in our face and/or getting yelled at and reciting information from the Talon pretty clearly characterizes a lot of our first weeks here! The funny thing now is that on Wednesday we’ll be those people in the blues…7 weeks to get this far and about 6 more to go till we’re on our way out J Love you all and look forward to talking soon.

Jeff

Hello from the Big Easy

Hello all -

Well, I am 7.5 hours into a 9 hour trip that has somehow turned into a 12 hour journey from New Orleans to Dallas. With nearly 6 hours of driving under my belt, my job is done for the day, so I felt compelled to write to all of you, say hello, give you an update and most importantly, ask for updates from "y'all"!

This past week was incredible. New Orleans is crazy, insane, Vegas-like, food infested, alcohol filled, etc. Though the majority of my nights were spent on Bourbon Street (think pictures of Mardi Gras), I managed to come out alive with a week full of memories and thousand images I sadly will not get out of my head for some time.

Food = incredible, Beer = Abita, Weather = beautiful, Me = tired.

Also, I was outside the hotel the other night, a huge tour bus pulls up and off walks Gavin Degraw (Dad, youtube him). I chatted with him for a few minutes and was later overwhelmed with a jealous group of Kendyl and friends following our conversation.

I hope you're all doing great. I'll try to upload some video and pictures as soon as I can!

Mom and Dad from home...

How the heck do we use this blog? I think we entered a comment as "Steve."

I'm sure MOM will become an expert blogger in the next week or so.... It's Saturday at 12:30 and Mom and I are headed up to the cottage.

We'll make sure we take a few pics of the humongous fish we will be catching and will make sure to post it to our family blog. Gotta go for now.... Love Mom and Dad!

Gotta Love Eastern.. Yo

Hi everyone:)

I'm so glad to see that you got this up and running Steve! I kind of laughed after talking to Steve because I just was picturing mom, who breaks a sweat trying to just turn on the computer(!), but this really has turned out to be pretty cool!

So I guess this is little spot for me to say what's up in Amy-Land. Eastern is all as well.. well, as well as it can get (Ya gotta love being at one of the most dangerous campus's in Michigan!)

Classes have been going pretty good though. Sociology, my teacher is iiiinsane. I missed a good amount of his classes but still happened to get a B+ on the first test! The drama class is fun and reminds me of a class that I took in middle school, haa. My speech class is going great and got a 97% on my first speech! I am struggling with my American Government class (surprise, right??) but thankfully Kenneth Foisy is an expert so he's helping me out.

I have a really good group of close friends here. Of course Rhonda and Lauren and the two Kenny's but also two girls down the hall from me, Katie and Jenna and a few other boys named Trevor and Jarad, so that makes school nights more fun hangin with those kids.

My room has really become the hang out room.. that's probably due to the fact that I am room mate-less. So that's nice (at times) to have people around. And boys, you'll be excited to hear this, I got a George Foreman!!! I cooked everyone this great dinner on Thursday night. I cooked cheese burgers and burgers, chicken and we got salad, mashed potatoes and fries with our meal plans from down stairs. (Though I found out that you DON'T put the cheese on the patty until AFTER you take it off the George.. oops!)

I love being this close to home because I don't know what I would do if I couldn't see you rents every week! Though, I am looking at colleges for possibly transferring to next year or the following year. Along with looking at different colleges, I'm looking at different majors. I went in as a Criminology/Criminal Justice major with a sociology minor.. well I will definitely NOT be having that sociology minor.. haa. And I've really been interested maybe majoring in Social Work. But the four years are young:)

But I think this is enough of me for now. So happy birthday mom and I can't wait to see what's new with you boys!

Love you all