Beating a Rival

A week ago my school, Purdue, played our arch nemesis IU in Football. That experience was quite a thrill. I had been told by my friends that I could not miss this game for anything. They told me how fights would break out everywhere from IU students sneaking into the Purdue student section. Unfortunately though, I did not see any fights. Although, there were a few IU students scattered all about and when one would cheer for their team, they would immediately be combated by shouts from Purdue fans kindly telling them that "IU Sucks".

To my surprise and that of those around me Purdue started the game off getting two touchdowns right off the bat. I went into the game expecting to lose, since that was what had been happening all season long and then they pull this little surprise out. It only got better from there! Purdue dominated over Indiana with a final score of 62-10. Such a difference in score that IU should be ashamed to call themselves Hoosiers.

Throughout the game, the Purdue student section has a tradition where each time we get a touchdown, we toss someone into the air once for every point we have at that moment. It's always been my dream to be the person in the air once in my lifetime and at this game that dream came true. When we scored 55 points, my poor friends picked me up and threw me in the air, yep you guessed it, 55 times! This was really exhilarating because the person at my head was taller than the others and towards the end he began to toss me higher and higher each time while the others stayed the same, causing my body to tip forward. I feared that one of the times he might go too far and I would fall to the bleachers below me.

At the end of the game, our school really came together and everyone yelled out chants, supporting our team. This was an amazing experience and even thrilling. I would give this a rank of 5 .

Dog Sled!

So immediately when you think of dog sledding, your mind goes to the picture above. I'm sure that's fun and exciting in itself, but I have yet to experience it. No, what I'm talking about is here in the United States, just taking your regular house dog and in the winter time, having them pull you down a good sledding hill.

Last winter my friends and I gave this a try with their pit bull, Nela. We sat at the top of a huge hill, holding on to Nela's leash with both hands. We shoved off and the momentum pulled us down. At first it worked as planned. The sled rushing down the hill scared her, and she ran forward pulling us behind, trying to escape it. Then she got smart and stepped to the side trying to get away. This pulled the sled sideways, almost tipping us. Towards the end, Nela began to get angry and started to try and attack the sled, which only caused to jerk us around in small circles. Needless to say, our idea did not work very well.


Our next idea was to just hold her on the sled with us, so she could come along for the ride. While it did work, we received many scratches and cuts from our efforts and I don't believe that she enjoyed it very much. The one good thing we discovered though was that she loved running up the snow-covered hill. Because of this, she came in handy pulling us back up and helping us to save some of our energy. So our experiments weren't a total waste of time.

I would give our experience of dog sledding a 4.

Apartment Shopping

The suspense of finding a place to live can often be as thrilling and as nauseating as finals week. As we entered the apartment market, our inexperience drove us to some lackluster places.

The first apartment complex we investigated was but two blocks away from campus. However, on our walk-through, things began to get awry. As we were shown the apartment, obviously occupied by men, we saw on bedroom doors signs warning us of the mono-infested environment. The guide then slipped up and told us how the entire apartment complex was currently suffering from a mono outbreak. I covered my nose and proceeded through the front door. I tried to finish with the tour as fast as possible so I could step off the nasty green carpet, avoiding the walls, which seemed as if they housed a thriving culture of mold. Needless to say, we quickly crossed this place off our list.


Our next apartment escapade took us to a grand complex. Sadly, it was too far away. Meanwhile, other houses located directly on campus, were taken up by other students in this race to find an apartment. Just when things were looking bleak, and chances of us having to live in the dorms again grew, we were referred to another apartment complex. Not only was it cheaper than the amazing apartment we had fallen in love with, but also it was 10 minutes closer to campus. The layout of the rooms was just as nice if not better than the others. With cathedral ceilings and skylights, it had a laundry room all to ourselves. For fear of losing our dream place, we ran around frantically, working to fulfill all the requirements of the leasing process and just about when we had completed this, one of our roommates was having doubts. For fear of not getting everything done in time, we decided to simply go with 3 roommates instead of 4. Finally, after signing a MILLION papers, or what seemed like it, we now own our own apartment!

I never knew what all you had to go through just to get an apartment. It was an experience well worth going through. I would have to give it a rank 6.

Go to a New Country

If you're looking for a real exciting thing to do, try living in a foreign country a few weeks. Preferable one where they don't speak English. It will be an unforgettable memory!

Four years ago, I went to Monterrey, Mexico for a Mission trip. To me, it is the most exciting and amazing experience I have had in my entire life. I took Spanish in High School and believed that I would be able to make do and understand about half of what was said to me. Ha ha, that was a joke.

We stayed at a church and they had graciously allowed our group of 30 to sleep there while services were not in session. A shock right off was that the boys simply slept on the rooftop while the rest of us pushed pews together and used it as our beds. I loved it! The driving on the other hand needs a lot of improvement. At one point our van filled with kids was wedged between two huge buses trying to pass us at the same time. One of the buses was even in the opposite lane! The drivers side mirror was shattered to pieces, but other than that everyone was ok. The buses just kept on driving as if nothing happened.

We taught a vacation bible school class and that was were my Spanish really came into play. The one words I made sure I could convey to them were bano=bathroom and hola! They spoke so fast that even though they were saying words that I had learned in class, I was unable to follow them. The little children would laugh at me when I tried to converse with them. In the end it simply turned into a game of charades.

When driving out of Mexico headed for home, we were stopped by some of their police. They all carried ENORMOUS shotguns clearly visible in their hands and were shouting at us to all get out of the vans. They searched through the vehicle and then motioned us that we could get back in and go. Our guide told us that it was just a routine inspection looking for any illegal items.

Needless to say, I had an amazing time there with getting to know the children and falling in love with them. I hope to someday go back there. I would give this a 10.

Ghost Hunting in Mulberry Part 2

So this Halloween we returned to Mulberry to see if we would have better luck this year. We started out as normal, driving down the old country road. After passing the three, one-lane bridges we stopped and flashed our lights three times on the last one. Nothing happened at all and we turned around and parked by the graveyard. One of the guys and myself got out of the car prepared to walk around. The rest of our crew was too spooked to join us. We carefully crept through the place keeping our eyes out. After about five minutes, the horrible feeling that someone was watching us, grew too strong and we had to turn back.


Not wanting to leave just yet without seeing a thing, we drove deeper into the cemetery. The road loops around the graveyard and we decided to drive around the circle taking us deeper into the dark. The bad feeling in our stomachs grew and grew. We rolled down the windows and took a ton of pictures. In almost all of the pictures taken from the graveyard, there are these green, orb-like objects in them. One picture we got, the one shown above, there can be seen a mist like object that appears to be a skull. It's really hard to see in the picture on here, but we can definitely make out the skull when we zoom in on the camera.

After leaving the graveyard, we pulled back out on the road and noticed a car behind us. We quickly kept driving straight thinking. It took longer than it should have for the cars headlights to round the bend and from the across the field that separated us, we could see a search light scanning across the top of the corn stalks. We realized at that moment that the car must have been a cop and that one of the neighbors had been bothered by us flashing our lights and called the police. We drove around for awhile trying to waste some time, and once we realized that no one was following us anymore, we headed back the way we came, the only route back. We drove past the third bridge and were coming up on the cemetery, when we saw the cop car parked in the entrance. Trying not to freak out, we casually drove past him, fearing the whole time that we would see flashing lights in the rearview mirror. Through some stroke of luck he didn't pull us over and we made it back home. That was the scariest part of the trip, not all the ghosts and pictures we got.

I would give this trip a 9 for scaring me to death.