Jan. 21st was my birthday and lets just say that it was way different from last year’s experience. Last year it snowed and we actually had a snow day off from school so we made a nature/adventure video and then went to dinner. It is interesting to think that a whole year has gone by because I distinctly remember losing my pair of cheap gloves at the restaurant. Now this year it wasn’t as extravagant but was still nice, I had a boring day of school but then got to hang out with some of my friends at one of their houses and just celebrated quietly. It was a lot of fun and I hope that next years is even better because it will be my 21st on Jan. 21st!

So lately Prescott has been experiencing some MAJOR cold weather although there is no snow yet so nobody could tell that we are freezing to death up here!  The wind chill itself has to be in the negatives, and this morning for PT I thought we were going to freeze solid while running. We’ve dealt with colder PT days before but this was just ridiculous! The wind is so bitter and just numbs out faces and our fingers, you know that feeling when your hands are so cold you can’t fasten a button or text on your phone, it was 10x times worse than that!  While carrying the heavy water jugs during our squad runs today we discovered that the jugs were leaking. The water got all over those holding the jugs and froze on them within seconds! There was ice coming off our uniforms and we’ve never seen that before. It makes me wonder if the other ROTC companies all over the States are having to do PT same as us. I can tell that the whole country is facing this cold crisis because of how Facebook is blowing up with statuses reflecting the cold weather. At least our cars aren’t stranded and our pipes frozen, I guess those folks in the Midwest have it far worse, but the wind itself is too much for Arizona!

I am taking my first night class here at ERAU and it actually is not that bad despite the long hours and cold outside coupled with the deserted dark campus. It is SIS320, or Topics in Global Politics, History and Culture with my favorite Dr. Stephanie Trombley. The topic this semester is: GENOCIDE, so although the class might be depressing because it is both a night class and 2 and a half hours long and about genocide, I like it. Today we talked about the Armenian Genocide that occurred in the 1910′s and discussed the fates of the government and collapse of the Ottoman Empire. To me the class went by really quickly and during the break that we had in between the class my friend Lauren and I ran and got some coffee from Outtakes. I don’t know what coffee I got because I’m not really into caffeine, but now I’m wired and my roommate Josh is tired, plus we have PT tomorrow so this isn’t a good mix. Anyway, tomorrow is my birthday and at least I don’t have to take the pt test, or APFT, tomorrow morning because that would be a bad start to the day. I took it on Wednesday with the rest of my platoon and got a score of 292 or something. Considering the unholy amounts of goldfish and Oreos that I consumed over break and the fact that I did not run once during my free time, it is pretty good. My run time was awful for me but at least it was in the maxing category. For the rest of the day today I ran around doing errands and talking to professors and then went to my MSL class. Joe and I fooled around and make a duck with the bills of our hats and later I was talking to one of my friends back home via text. We still have a good work ethic even though it sounds like we were goofing off, even if it was only for a little bit. I’ll put a picture of them up here again just for kicks because it is a good photo too.

sorry its sideways, our duck

I came back on our road trip on Saturday the 8th a few hours before the shooting happened. We drove through the same intersection that Gabrielle Giffords would later be meeting with people but crashed into three separate comas once we got home. When we finally woke up, I checked my phone and saw that I had gotten a text from my friend Becca saying “CNN reports: Giffords confirmed dead.” Right away, I went into the family room and saw my parents watching the news breaking story. Sure enough, the media distorted and tainted the news with false facts and infuriated the whole city. As developments finally came through the biased and inaccurate reports of the media, we learned the identity of the killer and it shamed the whole city that one of our own would do something so horrible. To aggregate the matter, an NBC reporter claimed that “Tucson doesn’t really have a sense of community, so the mourning shouldn’t be that difficult on the city”. I won’t even get into what the Tucson residents did after this was announced, but rest assured, city limits are still in use and yes, some people are not allowed inside them.

It was hard coming back here to Embry-Riddle because I know how my city is suffering and I wish I could have gone to the memorial services and prayer sessions that were going on when I was gone. I talked to some of the others from Tucson who have to be here and we all agreed that we’d rather be in Tucson to hear the President’s memorial speech and with our families during these tough times. I looked through some of the back pictures that my friends took during break and realized that we have to move on with these people in our hearts and minds so that we can prevent another tragedy. I had some fun times during break and that happened on that Saturday was not the best way to finish off the break. Despite this, I had some great times with my friends, including going to Winterhaven, the hilarious road trip, and New Years! I’ll put some pictures up so that we can look at something besides that creepy mug shot of the killer that’s been posted all over the news.

This creepy skull that Kara and I found

Our group!