Last night, the class of 2019 broke up into schools where each school had a different activity. The College of Fine Arts went to the Children's Museum. Another school toured Google. Tepper, the business college, got to tour downtown Pittsburgh!! The event started off with all 125 members of the school breaking up into small groups. I ended up in a smaller group than usual with only 9 people, led by a junior Tepper student. We took a bus 20 minutes away from campus to a little square in the downtown area with lots of food options. My group split 3 orders of fries from the Primanti Bros.. It was fun trying to figure out how to pay because we're all outgoing and were all trying to delegate, but we got along fantastically well and I'm pumped to know people who will be in my classes! We then took another bus farther downtown to Point State Park. This park is the intersection of the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers and had fantastic views of the bridges, city, and a really cool fountain. I went all touristy and took a ton of pictures, but I'll post the best. Across the river from the fountain, there is a very steep incline with a ski-lift sort of contraption that takes you up to a look out point over the city. My group took the downtown metro to the lift and then went up. The views were stunning.
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The day I've been waiting for has come and gone! Move-in day!! I'm sitting here writing this post in my dorm between activities; eeeek! The morning kicked off with a nice breakfast at the hotel before we packed up and drove to Carnegie. When we arrived, we barely had to wait in line and student helpers came up and unloaded all my stuff and carried it into my dorm! I'm living in Donner House, about a 2 minute walk from the pool and 1 minute from food. Super convenient. I'm also rooming with another swimmer, Torrey, and I'm in the same building as 7 other swimmers, so we'll be able to trek to early morning practices together. The moving in process itself went fairly smoothly. I picked up my 10 boxes of stuff from Target in the post office. I made my bed, organized my closet and assembled things on my desk. The only thing I did not do was put anything on the walls, so they're still very bland. Decorations will come when I have more than a half an hour between all the Orientation activities; I want to make sure I do it right! (also I have a limited number of Command strips so that needs to be thought through carefully.) I'll post more pictures soon! After moving all my stuff in, I went to a swim team meeting where I met the other new freshman and upperclassmen and chatted with the coach. All the upperclassmen seem really nice and answered my endless questions about textbooks and Target trips and anything in between. I'm so pumped to start swim season!! From there, we went to dinner at a restaurant called The Porch, right across from the Cathedral of Learning in Pittsburgh. This is a massive, 40 story, gothic cathedral in the middle of University of Pittsburgh's campus, about a 20 minute walk from CMU. If you walked in on the ground level, you would feel like you were about to eat at the dining hall in Hogwarts. My mom, dad and I took a very fast elevator up to the top, where we could see both the Pitt and Carnegie campus along with Schenley Park, the botanical gardens and the rivers. We headed back to campus to look around before goodbyes had to be said. I showed Mom the less known "Numbers Garden" (unofficial name) in a little nook of campus, the music hall and the Tepper School of Business building. She hadn't come with my dad and I when we visited for a recruiting trip back in April, so it was cool to show her the ropes I was coming to know. Goodbyes had to come at some point, and when our tour completed, that was the logical step. We took pictures, gave some XOXOs and my parents let me go. Only a couple tears were shed :'). The end of my first day finished up with meeting and doing icebreakers with the 30 girls on my floor and then hanging out with the swim team. It was a long, but fun (!!) first day on campus and I'm so glad I ended up at CMU. More posts to come!
Have a wonderful day! Ellie I am currently sitting in my hotel, 2 miles from campus, the night before I move in to Carnegie Mellon. I'm nervous, but also in that zone right before a race where you think, I'm ready for this. I had my last family dinner on Wednesday, with enchiladas and lemon cheesecake (I tried to get good pictures lol). I gave Marti her birthday present early and gave my goodbye presents as well. I had printed off pictures taken with each family member over the last year, and had framed my favorite one for each. Hopefully they wont forget me :'). Friday, my last day in Nebraska, was a pretty jam-packed day (ha, puns). I lunched and got pedicures with Mom, finished packing (sounds simple, was not) and hung out with friends and family. I said a sad goodbye to my siblings because they were shipped off to church camp for the weekend and I won't see them until I come back for Thanksgiving in November. In terms of packing, I managed to fit my stuff into 5 boxes. It was a lot of stuff. Very, very fortunately, all boxes made it safe to Pittsburgh via plane with only a little wear and tear. My mom, dad, and I flew out this morning at 11 and got into Pittsburgh at 4. The most stressful part was making sure all my boxes made it!! As they were being carted to the plane, we spotted them outside the window, with one teetering on the edge of the luggage cart. Mom said, "Wouldn't it be funny if it fell off?" to my protests of, "No!!!" The box then proceeded to fall on the tarmac. Have no fear, it was eventually picked back up, after I had a mini-heart attack. For the rest of the plane travel, Mom continued to give me mini-heart attacks by saying, "Hey! Isn't that Box #2 on the runway?!" Humph.
I LOVE HGTV. Any show, any time. Decorating and design are my cups of tea. SO! When my youngest sister Marti decided that she wanted to redo her room for her birthday coming up, I wanted in on it. I won't be there to help celebrate, so this was a way for her to get a new vibe in her living quarters and for me to contribute to her birthday. I convinced my lovely mother that we could do it all in one day. Marti has school from 8am-3pm and she was going to swim with me right after school (club swimming is on break right now so we just popped on over to the YMCA), making the final project's deadline 4:30pm. At exactly 7:35, as soon as Marti had walked out the door for school, the preparations began! She originally had a very pink, Parisian themed room. What she wanted was a less pink, Aztec themed room that was a little more mature and a little less bubble-gum colored. I sewed her pillows on Tuesday and we snuck out to buy all the accessories before the painting and assembly happened on Thursday. We assembled and organized new bookshelves for her expanding library, shown above. Her reaction..... .....to this!! It turned out looking awesome and we got it done in perfect timing! Marti absolutely loves it! What a great way to spend my last week in Nebraska.
Have a nice evening! Ellie Nothing worth blogging about has happened until this past weekend, hence the lack of posts in the last 10 days. My life is currently packing, figuring out school stuff like address, schedule, and medical plans (yuck), and swimming. The exception to my statement above happened this last weekend. My youngest sister Marti had a regional swim meet in Minneapolis, MN. My parents figured the whole fam going would be a good end of summer, last big shebang kind of thing before I left and everything picked back up again. That being said, we drove up there, about a 6.5-7 hour drive depending on the number of stops, on Friday. Saturday morning we watched Marti swim and then went touring during the afternoon before she swam again at finals in the evening. After watching Marti crush it in the pool, my dad and other sister went out to see the city. Dad did his graduate studies at University of Minnesota, so he knows the city pretty well and his grandmother lived there so he had some childhood memories from when he'd visited. We drove around the old neighborhoods of Minneapolis where the wealthy had originally built houses back in the 1800s. The houses were grand and beautiful and a nicer, older version of the Sheridan neighborhood in Lincoln. Stunning; I regret not taking pictures. We then headed to Lake Nokomis, a lake my dad had swam in as a kid when he visited his grandmother. I unfortunately forgot my swim suit so no dips in the lake for me, but we got ice cream to cheer us up. :) With a newfound energy (sugar), we headed to the Minneapolis Institute of the Arts and wandered around the endless rooms of treasured art. The two most known paintings that we saw were a Rembrandt and a Picasso. Modern art has always confused me. I'm constantly thinking, "I could do that myself," but nonetheless, the contrast of contemporary art to the Renaissance paintings we had just seen was refreshing. Standing puzzled in front of splatter paintings and twisted metal is good for the soul. After getting lost in the museum, we headed out to the garden before more sightseeing. The last major place we went to was Saint Anthony Falls, a lock and dam along the Mississippi. It had once been a major passageway for boats, but it is used less now because of technology. A bridge had been built across the Mississippi river originally as a railroad crossing. It's since been altered for walkers and bikers, so we walked all the way across and back. Our visit to the falls completed our touring for Saturday. Sunday kicked off a whole new day of adventures! We had originally planned on visiting the zoo and sculpture garden, but our parade was literally rained on. Marti finished swimming in the morning and we headed to The Mall of America!!! (Yay for indoor activities.) You can't visit Minneapolis without going to the shopping center of our country. We shopped for four hours, hitting stores like Forever 21, the Nordstrom Rack, and Loft. I picked up some new clothes for school :))))). Marti begged and begged to go on rollercoasters and eventually we relented and let her fly around in a rickety little cart. We also walked through Legoland, which had characters from movies made entirely out of Legos! Where can I sign up for that job?! The Mall basically concluded our little vacation. Any opportunities for travel I will take, so I thoroughly enjoyed exploring a new city, taking the metro around and eating at four Italian places. Below are a couple other random pictures I took throughout the weekend. That's it for this post! I have 10 days left until I leave, so the countdown has begun! Expect a couple more posts before I leave NE.
Have a beautiful day! Ellie When I was chatting with my dad about blogging about our second day trip that you'll read about below, he used the word addendum. This is a fabulous, new word to me with the definition: "an item of additional material, typically omissions, added at the end of a book or other publication," provided by the Oxford Dictionary. Speaking of my dad, it might be relevant to mention that he was a history teacher at one time. This explains why every vacation we take involves a visit to a museum or monument and the fact that we always watch the videos at the national parks. There have been times where I was dragged into the museums, but now the importance of history and knowledge has been burned into me. So, again, when my dad suggested another day trip to visit the National Homestead Monument in Beatrice, Nebraska, I said, "Let's do it." It was a very interactive museum, as you can see my sister pushing some buttons, with lots of pictures and equipment that turned a dry topic into something interesting and relatable. My favorite poster read, "How Do You Clean a House Made of Dirt?" An interesting thing to think about. Some of the things I learned: 1. Homesteading was a way for women to gain land and security in a time when they otherwise would not have. Women were homesteaders over 30 years before they were allowed to vote in 1920. 2. Chickens and hogs were used for food and additional income. 3. The dwellings created, such as log houses, dugouts and shacks, were often very small because they were just built to meet the dwelling requirement for the government. Many 5+ person families shared one room and chairs were set outside during the day when more space was needed in the house. 4. Many families tried to uphold social norms of the cities they came from, even in the harsh conditions. In pictures, they often posed with their greatest posessions, like a piano, so they would look proper and wore fancy hats and fashionable dresses. We also visited the log house outside of the museum. It was fully furnished and probably a 10x12 space if I had to guess. It's hard to try and imagine living in such a small space with the everyday difficulties of obtaining food and water. This concludes my homestead history lesson. It's certainly something I've never thought of much beyond the Nebraska History unit in 4th grade and I hope you got something out of it too. :)
Have a relaxing Sunday! Ellie I recently read the article, "The 26 Things No One Told You About Leaving Nebraska" (http://www.movoto.com/blog/opinions/leaving-nebraska/) that gave me all sorts of feels. My friend said to me the other day, "You only leave home for the first time once." It will be fantastic to get out and see the world, but I hope to remember Lincoln and Nebraska and the 18 years of experiences I've had here as clearly as possible. So, when my dad suggested a day trip to find my great-grandfather's homestead that would involve driving through some little towns and getting to experience beautiful Nebraska, I was all for it. We kicked off our journey by heading west towards Red Cloud, about 2.5 hours away from Lincoln and picnicked for lunch there. Right next to the park was Willa Cather's childhood home. Although we didn't go in, we stopped for a picture and saw two of the churches mentioned in her book, My Antonia. After stopping for directions to the homestead, we took to the dirt roads with my great-grandfather's journals containing the coordinates of the land plots and hand drawn maps guiding our route. Everything was similar to a treasure map, in that we weren't really sure where we were going, but had enthusiasm that could have fooled you. The first place we stopped was the pioneer cemetery, containing graves of my ancestors dating back to 1872. The Norwegian Zion Lutheran Church burned down after a lightning strike in 1876 and instead of rebuilding it, they established a trust fund to keep up the cemetery. The members were buried in it when the time came. You might be slightly disappointed because the homesteads my great-grandfather and his grandfather lived on are now just cornfields. The dugouts might not be there anymore, but we were able to see the same views of the surrounding area and travel down the same roads as our ancestors did, and that was pretty cool.
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AuthorHi! I'm Ellie from Nebraska, sharing news of my life through things I think are cool. Archives
February 2016
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