Jingle Bell Festival

Day 100------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


They call the week before we leave Hell Week. It got it's name because all week we have to clean everything. Under our beds, the walls, the corners of the ceiling, the cracks in the tile, etc, before we can leave for break. I heard that they've held the busses because a dorm couldn't pass inspection. I guess we're supposed to deep clean all week, but since our dorm passed the room inspections yesterday, our staff has been pretty lax. I'm glad, I've been packed since sunday, but this gives me time to repack a few times to make sure everything I need is in my suitcase. I'm bringing a lot of stuff home and leaving it becuase I want to bring a whole bunch of other things back. :-P

That reminds me, I really need to hit the stores. I haven't done any Christmas shopping, including the Secret Santa gifts our family give every year. Not only do I have absolutely no idea what to get, but I have a million people to get gifts for, and it's not like I can go to the store whenever I want. I've tried to make gifts, but that takes me so long because I'm a little OCD about projects. I hate last minute shopping, so I think I'm going to order a lot of things online.

Anyway to get on to the topic of my story, today, as break from Hell Week, we had a half day for trade today. Once we got released and at lunch, I came back to the dorm, showered, changed, and then Karlee and I went out to meet Kevin and Jamie. The four of us then walked down to the Jingle Bell Festival at Rec (even if we didn't want to go, we didn't have a choice). While standing outside in the cold wind for 15 min, we got tired of waiting for the staff to open the doors and let us all in, so our crew walked down to the HER building to BS with mine, and the boy's instructors a bit.

After having a few laughs (Karlee's pretty shy so she didn't say one word, but she was a good sport), we walked back up to Rec and all the students had already been ushered inside and we also rushed in to get out of the cold. There was a raffle that we all put our names in when we walked in the door. The inside of the building was very beautiful, they had set up an electric fireplace with painted bricks to make it look like a chimney. There were pictures with Santa (who was Steve Gardiner), and lots of mini games where you had a chance to win lots of prizes. I didn't win anything, I'm not very good with my hand eye coordination (unless it's darts). So I was getting a little discouraged... then I won an i-Pod! I'm going to go home and put audio books on it and save my purple one that I already have for music. :-)  It's a good day in the life of Eli.