The Move Out (and Subsequent Activity) - Part I

Welcome back, dear readers. The tale I have for you today is not for the faint of heart. It is a chilling tale of horror, woe and grim fate. It is the tale ... of DRIVING THROUGH THE MIDWEST!

Okay, so maybe it wasn't quite that bad, but wide expanses of flatness do get monotonous.

Before I get to that, though, I'd like to apologize for taking so long to put this up. School has been keeping me busy up until this point; I've actually been meaning to post this since last week but, you know, life. And I'd also like to apologize for not responding to some of your emails specifically. People have usually just been asking how the move was, and I thought it would save some time to just tell it all at once. So here you are.

Monday the 26th we packed our moving truck completely, and stayed in someone else's house that night. Tuesday morning we left. It took us about five minutes to get to Pennsylvania, and we drove eleven or twelve hours and also visited Kirtland, Ohio, which is a historic site for my church. We stayed at my aunt's in Indiana that night.

We drove an average of 9 hours per day the rest of the trip. We saw Carthage and Nauvoo in Illinois on Wednesday, for the same reason as we did Kirtland (though unfortunately, none of these visits lasted very long) and another history site on Thursday. We stayed in a hotel and later a little camping cabin. Friday, the last day, we arrived in Utah and stayed at the house of another of my aunts. Saturday morning (so that's October 1st) we finally got to our new house here.

We spent most of Saturday and Sunday with a bunch of my mom's family. (Side note: I have awesome relatives.) Monday we unloaded our van. Our grandpa had moved out here to live near us, so that's cool. On Thursday the 6th we started school, and yesterday, the 11th, we finally got internet at our house after trying three different companies who didn't work out. That's why it's taken so long to get to all of this.

One of the first things I noticed about Utah was that the view is broken by mountains, not trees, and you can see for ages before that happens. There's also not a lot of green, mostly yellow-gray scrub. The school is way bigger, and quite different from Charter. At the risk of sounding like a humongous nerd (which of course I am) it's almost too easy. You're allowed to take Calc BC without taking Calc AB (and this is the AP), so the entire first semester is AB, review for me, in order to make up for those guys. In fact, APs here don't give extra GPA. They're about at the level of phase 5 back home, and the curricula don't line up, so I'm rather ahead in most areas (except history, and seminary and band which don't really count.) I'm ahead of my programming class, my Calc class, and my French class (see below).

I'm having a devil of a time working out my schedule. I've already met with my counselor twice to work it out and it's still not all free of kinks (although it's already the end of the first marking period). For instance, despite the fact that I wasn't ready for AP French at Charter, my new school's AP French class is still learning stuff I already know. So I'll probably be changing classes.

And as for the other aspects of school: First, it's about as big as the entire Charter/Cab building (including the middle school) plus a few classrooms, roughly. Also, there's no dress code like there was at my old school. In fact, in some ways they're just less paranoid in general. We can wear hats (unlike back home, where I think they were a security threat or some such thing) and the doors are unlocked while school is open (again, unlike the annoying DE get-the-office's-attention-so-they-can-expressly-let-you-in system). There's no activity period in the middle of the day, nor general study halls, but lunch is 45 minutes long and you can do whatever you want during it, including leave the building. They don't even keep track. It ends a little earlier than Charter did. Mondays, classes are shorter and the last 45 minutes are free, theoretically to use talking to your teachers and doing homework and stuff like that. I spent Monday afternoon convincing my APUSH teacher that she should give me credit for the first marking period. I'm not yet sure whether or not it worked.

And, the biggest immediately relevant difference: There's a fall break! As in, we get time off at Thanksgiving, but also RIGHT NOW. I don't have school again until Tuesday. So I might be able to chat you guys sometime or something.

That's more than likely enough information for one post. See me again in a week (or earlier, if I have the time) when I discuss Utahn culture - and especially Utah Mormon culture.

Feel free to comment or email me with any questions (and I'm sure there will be many)!