Mainly self explanatory pictures. Hehe.

If you thought cookbooks were heavy, you have not yet met recipe TEXTbooks.

Yes...in college coffee cups run in a ratio of 5/1 vs. water bottles.

Nosy neighbors! =)

Deck off of the library/climbing wall/obvious photo opportunity. When you have too much homework to go climb a mountain, one must be creative. Hehe.

Rocking the chef's pants!

Breathe mom, breathe. At least I waited for the right end of the porch to jump.

Seward has a fetish for murals. Yes...that is a dumpster...

The side of the awesome dumpster =)

The water! Isn't it amazing? Had to be out on this beautiful day. Note to self: sunshine does not equal warmth. This counts for like 14 blog posts mom so don't yell at me for a while. Hehe.

Advice from a college kid.

Believe me, not all knowledge comes from textbooks.
And knowledge of the stupid things generally doesn't come from adults.
So out of the mouth of the college kid...

1. Don't go puddle jumping in fleece lined crocs. The puddle will adhere to them for at least three days.

2. Do not, even under the direst of energy depleted circumstances, drink redbull before breakfast. No matter how early your day is starting and no matter how much you have to get done, as much as being tired is distracting, a tummy ache at 6am is infinitely worse.

3. Treat cafeteria food with extreme caution. If you don't know what it is, best leave it off your bright blue plastic tray.

4. Don't go rabbit catching with dip nets in the rain. And if someone covered in grass stains, mud and bruises tells you that, don't ask why.

5. Don't walk under objects where lots of pigeons sit. Nuff said.

6. It is not neccesary for your rain boots and umbrella to match, but if your umbrella has stripes and your boots have polka dots, your coat should not be plaid.

7. Don't lock your keys in the bathroom. Especially your bathroom key.

8. Don't try to run between the bathroom and your room in a towel, even if your door is 8 feet from the bathroom door, and its an ungodly hour, there will undoubtedly be someone in the hall.

9. Don't get addicted to facebook. And if you don't want everyone on FB to know all the stupid things you do at college, don't make friends with FB addics either.

10. Be a nerd, sleep and study! No matter how much fun midnight puddle jumping, or ultimate dodgeball, or rabbit hunting, or umbrella wars are, you'll look a lot better in the morning, and you won't have to wonder if you failed your quiz on salad dressings if you just assume nerd status and read the text book that weighs more than you and go to bed.

Cloudy with a chance of Seward

Well, there's no kind of motivation for keeping up a blog like a mother who emails you to post something new. I'm definitely encouraging her into being far too techonologically advanced. I thought she had just mastered the radio. Anyways, as I was scrambling for a subject after being notified that my life should be interesting enough to be blogged about, it came to me that the only interesting thing I'd done in the last few days I had forgoten to bring my camera along for.

In seward it rains so much that the general weather term is "cloudy with a chance of seward". It's been a challanging switch from accesorizing winter gear to accesorizing my rain gear. Forget collecting purses and shoes, I'm now currently collecting..haha...umbrellas. Heres the latest addition.

Also, it should be noted that if you go puddle jumping in fleece lined crocs, said puddle will remain in those crocs for longer than it will remain on the ground. Even in Seward.

Dorm Pictures

My cell. Sadly bare of pictures/posters/anything interesting due to a small car that I fit my whole life into when I moved.

July..August..September...December!

It did strike me today that it is a mere four months till Christmas! This struck me as I was looking at something I really wanted (see picture) and trying to figure if it would take less time to actually earn the money to buy it myself, or wait out the next gift-giving holiday.


Sooo...mom. -------------------------------------->
You can put this at the top of the list and I'll send updates as the holiday approaches. If anyone else decides they would like to bless me with this shirt, please notify my mom, I can only wear one shirt at a time && theres plenty of other things I want. Hehe.

College so far..

Come to think of it, I did start this blog so I could keep updates on college..or prove to mom that I really am learning, whatever. (Haha, and I prove that by procrastinating on homework && working on my blog??) College so far has been pretty peachy, the school year will be divided up into lots of little segments like Prep Cook, A la Carte, Menu Planning etc..I just finished the Survsafe section, which is basically all about kitchen safety, how to not food poison people etc...

Exam at 8:00 this morning, then no class the rest of the day. What a lovely feeling. Generally I have Survsafe (or whatever comes next) from 8:00 till 10:00, Culinary math from 10:15 till 11:30, lunch from 11:30 till 12:30, and Culinary lab (where they actually set us loose in the kitchen) from after lunch till my instructor gets tired of talking or running around correcting our meager freshman water boiling skills.

There's lots of interesting people around here, small school so finding a niche and friends wasn't too hard. Lots of rednec...er...kids from small towns here. And...at least one pirate. We're all about diversity here at AVTEC.

Ford Escort vs. Moose..there are no winners...

If I didn't have an adventure last weekend, it was only because fate was busy taking a deep breath to throw something at me in the middle of the week. Little did I know that it would be a moose. Here is what I've learned:

1. Seatbelts are important, when you hit something solid they give you bruises, but you don't die.

2. Moose are not very bright, except in your headlights.

3. Windshields were not made to withstand collisions with moose rear ends.

4. I scream a lot louder than I thought.

I'm sure I learned a few other things, but now that I'm thinking about it I can't remember what they were. I'll hopefully have some pictures soon, depending on whether I really want to see the damage.

Go figure I'm the only person in my family to get a moose this season...

AK State Fair 09

I hadn't anticipated how nice it would be to live only an hour and a half..(er..depends how fast you drive, for mom's sake I'll say I live two hours away) from Anchorage. More specifically, from the fair. =) This is actually my adventure from last weekend, but I haven't had an adventure this weekend as of yet so a good memory is not a fault..

I drove -slowly and cautiously, of course- to Anchorage last Saturday morning. I got an early start because the bum thing about getting up at 6:45am all week is that you can never manage to sleep in past 8:00 on the weekends. I met up with Talia and Gabi Sonnenberg at their house, and we spent the day at the fair. Six hours, 15 miles of wandering, and wayyyyy too much kettle corn later...we were some very tired girls headed out of the purple gate.

We left the fairgrounds about 7:00...at 7:30 we finally found our car..and by 8:00 we had actually navigated our way through the masses and were headed home. We would have made better time rollerblading across the grass.

Catching up with Ryan

Running into an old friend you haven't seen in almost 10 years is a lot like de ja vu. The last time I saw Ryan Hester I had a nine year old's perspective on life, and he had cooties. We get along a little more civily now. I no longer resent that he is both older and taller than me.

Anyways, for the first two weeks I was at AVTEC I had no idea that anyone here knew me, but apparently I still somewhat resemble the dorky little tomboy that I was in the fourth grade because Ryan -who I knew back in the day when I lived in Naknek- recognized me in the cafeteria and said "Brenna??", in a tone that made me comprehend that I was supposed to know who was talking to me. A very long, blank look later I did.

Ryan and I went out for coffee today to catch up the last 10 years or so. In some ways I didn't want to remember Naknek/King Salmon as any different than how I had left it, but of course I was far too curious to let my fuzzy memories be. All in all it was a lovely conversation, a beautiful afternoon and a superb latte. I also saw an old lady on a skateboard and a sign that made me laugh.

Seward Summary

Well, to start a blog I guess I should start somewhere...I'm mainly blogging because I recently moved nine hours from my hometown to go to school, and my parents are constantly wondering what I'm doing. (And neither of them Facebook). Must drive them crazy since I grew up in Tok (where they knew about 1,450 of the 1,500 residents) and they ALWAYS knew what I was doing.

But anyways, I moved to Seward to go to school for culinary arts, which is pretty much a fancy way to say I'm paying a lot of money so I can not burn down future kitchens. This was my first big move away from home. I moved out of my parents house last spring, but moving across the street was just a little different..I won't lie, at first I was terrified. But I've been here three weeks now as of tomorrow and there have been no major disasters. I generally call home to mom when I see one coming and it gets averted.

I'm living on campus in the dorms, have a roommate/cellmate and we get along pretty well. I'm a health nut, she's not, so we leave each others food alone; She likes pink, I don't, so we leave each others clothes alone && girls don't fight over much else so we're pretty chill.

In future blogs I'll describe different aspects of AVTEC and the town of Seward and my adventures here, just thought I should get a post up before I lose motivation. I'll also try to remember to post pictures occasionally. Yes mom, that's in writing. You may print it out and send it to me if you think I'm forgetting, along with the rest of my clothes please?