my dog!

I got my dog today! She is a beautiful yellow lab named Stockard. She was born on September 20, 2008, weighs 58 pounds and is 23.5 inches tall. She's the color of cinnamon and honey and is the sweetest dog on earth!!! I love her very much already. She's my baby girl! :) I'll post more later but for now, I love my Stockard baby!

Guide Dog school, day 1

I know a lot has happened sense I wrote last. The main thing is that I finished my first year at college, and I prepared for my trip to GDB. Today was the big day, May 23, I left for guide dog school today. I woke up at 6:00 to get to DFW Airport by 7:30. My flight was Alaskan Airlines operated by American and it was supposed to leave at 9:35 this morning. I checked in and everything went fine. My parents were thankfully able to go behind security with me and help me find my gate, 27C, and that was a blessing. I think my mom was extremely nervous this morning, it’s only natural that she should be nervous about her child going half way across the country alone for the first time. I really don’t blame her, I would probably have been nervous too. I wasn’t too nervous, I think I was just ready to get this show on the road so to speak. I got a Starbucks tea and relaxed while we waited for the flight. I finally boarded the plane around 9:00. I boarded first and had assistance getting on the plane which was nice. The American Airlines employees did a great job assisting me and I really appreciate it. My flight was a full flight today, not a seat left anywhere. We were delayed for about an hour and 15 minutes because one of the engines on the plane wouldn’t start up. We had to go to the garage of the airport and get the matenance guys look at it. We didn’t have to deplane thank God. They finally fixed the problem and we took off around 10:45 local time. The plane ride itself was pretty uneventful. I just listened to my iPod and slept for most of it. I was hungry once and wanted a snack but they wouldn’t take cash so I decided to just forget it. I figured I could sleep most of the 4 hours off and wait until lunch. I slept maybe half the flight away. I was incredibly hungry when we landed because even though it was only 12:15 Oregon time my body was saying that it was 2:15. A wonderful lady named Loraine (sorry if I’m misspelling that name) picked me up from the airport. The AA employee who assisted me from the plane to baggage clame was named Lillie and was from Ukraine! We spoke some Russian, more than a little bit it actual was a good amount of Russian, and it made my day!
The ride to campus took about 20 or so minutes. When I arrived some of my class mates were there and I got to meet them at lunch. We had sandwiches and tbrownies for dessert. They were wonderful! My class mates are interesting, I am the youngest in class by at least 20 years which I think is pretty neat. I can tell already this is going to be a good class. 
This afternoon I unpacked and got an hour nap. We ate spaghetti for dinner and again it was wonderful. After dinner I was issued my dog’s leash and food pouch and showed the different kinds of collars they have. I also was showed how to put a harness on a dog briefly. We’ll work on that more later. I will meat my dog tomorrow afternoon and I would be lying if I told you I wasn’t nervous and excited about it. I think I’m just nervous excited. I just want to know who my dog is and what he/she is like. 
I’m staying in a nice room, I have a privat room. It’s like a little apartment sort of. I have a nice bed, a great desk, my own bathroom and a patio area. It’s great!
I’m sorry this post is a little scatter brained, but I’m just thinking spontaneously now and have a lot on my mind.  I wrote this now as opposed to later because I wanted to capture the feelings and emotions I experienced today as fresh as possible. I guess I just want the memories to be fresh when I write. Anyway, I’m done for today but I’ll write another post for tomorrow. And again, I’m sorry for being a little scatter brained. 
Have a blessed day!

my trip to Colorado

Ok. I realize I am a little slow updating my blog. It's Wednesday and I've been back from Colorado for 5 days and I haven't written about it yet! Well, now I'm sitting down and writing about it.
The Friday before spring break I started to feel sick, you know, the coughing that happens when you are about to catch a cold. I took some medicine and kept getting ready for the trip. We left for Colorado on Saturday afternoon at about 1:30 or so. The trip was rather uneventful, I pretty much slept for the first several hours. After sleeping I played with my iTouch a little bit, thank God for iPods I don't know what I would do without one! After getting bored with that I got on my laptop and read a book. We stopped at about 9:00 in a town called Dumas, north of Amarillo in the Texas pan handle. Sunday morning I felt sicker than I had the day before, so I drank some hot tea and took medicine and we left Dumas. We drove up through eastern Colorado to Denver and then west through the mountains to where we were staying. Since we left at about 7:30 in the morning, I slept my way through Oklahoma and part of Colorado. We hit Denver at about 12:30 or so, keep in mind we gained an hour when we crossed into Colorado. We met up with some friends in Denver and continued west to the mountains! It began to snow in Denver and we continued to see snow for the rest of our journey. We went through the Eisenhower tunnel. It's this tunnel out west of Denver that is like a mile or more long. The tunnel literally goes through a mountain and on the top of the mountain there are ski runs! So we drive through the tunnel and over the top of us on the mountain people are skiing! I thought that was pretty neat. We arrived at our destination at about 2:30 in the afternoon.

We stayed in the house of a friend of a friend. This was the nicest house I have ever been in in my entire life! It was a 4 story house on a hill with 2 levels of a basement. You could practically have your own floor! It was definitely a multi-million dollar house. I mean, it was so nice that the floors were heated! We had a beautiful view of the mountain and the ski runs!

I didn't feel very good on Sunday, as I mentioned before, so I slept when we arrived. On monday my dad and brother John went skiing, I was supposed to go but I didn't go because I was sick. They had fun from what I hear. :) I finally felt better on Tuesday morning so my parents decided to go up to Vail which was about 20 minutes from where we were staying. For those of you who have never been to Vail or that area, Avon, where we were at, is about 9,000 feet high in elevation. Vail is about 11,000 feet high. When we went to Vail I got altitude sickness. We had to get off the mountain and drive back to Avon. I spent the rest of the day recovering from that. Let me tell you, there is nothing like being altitude sick! I have never felt so sick in my entire life! Not even the flu compares to what I felt like! I almost passed out. I finally got over it and Wednesday I felt good. I never did go skiing, I didn't want to go back up to the mountain after Tuesday. lol We left on Thursday and drove directly home because Dad wasn't feeling very well. We stopped in Denver on the way back and met Mom's best friend Amy and her family. It was great getting a chance to see them and spend some time with them. I love Amy she's awesome!

We arrived home at about 5:00 Friday morning. I slept until 3:30 that afternoon then watched the NCAA tournament. I basically spent the week end recovering, I was still sick with a nasty cold, and watching the tourney.

I love the NCAA basketball tournament, March madness and all that goes with it! I think it's greatness! My dad and I went to Buffalo Wild Wings on Saturday afternoon to watch basketball. We have to go at least once a year!

So there's my Colorado story. :)

Colorado

Today we are leaving to go on our skiing trip in Colorado. We will drive about 8 hours today and maybe another 6 tomorrow before we arrive, so it's going to be about a 14 hour drive I think. We will be there until Thursday! I am very excited! I don't know about you, but I enjoy long car rides. I like being in a car for a long time because that means that our destination is usually in a different state and the senery has changed. It also means a new place to explore and interesting things to do! For our long car ride I have downloaded several books from bookshare.org, I'm bringing a movie and I bought some new stuff from iTunes. What do you do to take up time on a long trip?
I've got to go for now and finish packing and getting ready. I will try to post sometime on our trip but I am not sure how much internet access I will have so I can't promise anything for sure. So have a blessed week!

my life - the last two weeks

I haven't been doing a very good job keeping up with this blog lately. I think I've just been busy with college and haven't necessarily had the time, and then when I have the time I don't know what all to write. :) I have time now and I'm going to try and bring you up to date on everything in my life since the last time I have posted.

You have probably heard by now, but in case you haven't, the Dallas area got about a foot of snow a couple of weeks ago. The snow fall set a record for the Dallas-Fort Worth area, we have never had a foot of snow before. The only time I have ever seen that much snow was when I went to New Mexico several years ago for vacation. I got a day off of college and a long week end. It was very nice.
One thing that I have never quite thought about is how hard it can be to navigate the snow with a cain. It is pretty difficult, at least for me it was, because the snow sort of deadens the cain't sensativity. I needed assistance from my friends getting places, luckily it was only for a day until I could go home.

The next happy thing in my life is that I found out that my family and I are going to go to Colorado to skee over spring break. I absolutely can't wait!

The most important news of late is that I have officially been admitted to Guide Dogs for the Blind and I am scheduled to go to class in Oregon beginning on May 23!!!! :D I absolutely am thrilled! I will graduate with my guide dog 3 months from now!!! :D

Aside from all of that, I have basically just been doing the whole college thing. I wake up, go to class, take notes, go home and study, then hang out. I have just been kind of living the average college life I guess, but I can't complain too much about that, it's not too hard. :)

My Saints are Champions!

My beloved New Orleans Saints have won the Superbowl!!! It was a beautiful thing! I can't believe this. I have had the perfect football year! My Alabama Crimson Tide won the college championship and now my Saints won the pro championship! My friend Mark Brunell also has a Superbowl ring! That makes me really happy. :) I'm going to listen to the Superbowl parade in New Orleans in an hour. You can get it on wwl the big 870 A.M. in New Orleans. :)

I am also excited because it was the Colts who we beat. I have no love whatsoever for the colts. They are my division rivals, because I like the Jaguars. So I was very happy to watch them lose!

The feeling of victory is indescribable!

Ok, aside from the Superbowl it is another normal week here. It's pretty cold, but at least there's some sunshine! I thought ESL last night at Grace Community and that was fun. I enjoy teaching, and learning, language. It's one of my hobbies! I also talked to my good friend Katie who is living in Hungary as a missionarty for 6 months! She's having fun ovherthere and doing well which makes me happy. I am excited about her living over in Hungary, it's going to be interesting and fun to hear about! :)

Well I'm gonna go for now and do some other stuff on my to do list for the day. I hope you guys have an awesome day!
Blessings!

Tomorrow is the Superbowl!

Tomorrow is the Superbowl and I couldn't be more excited. My beloved Saints are playing the biggest game in Saints history! My friend Mark Brunell might get a Superbowl ring should we win! I'm praying we win. I am nervous and excited at the same time. We are the under dogs so we aren't supposed to win, but I think we have a chance. I think we will have to play a mistake free game, if we turn the ball over or mess up on big plays I think we might get ourselves beat. If we play a very tight, very good, mistake free game though we might be able to win! You better believe me when I say that if we win, I will ball my eyes out from pure joy, then I will celebrate like there's no tomorrow babay!!!
So, as the chant goes, who dat! who dat! who dat say they gonna beat them Saints! Who dat! Who dat! Who dat say they gonna beat them Saints!
Go Saints and lets hope they win so my friend can get a ring! :D

Looking Foward to the Superbowl!

I'm looking foward to the Superbowl! My beloved New Orleans Saints are playing, and hopefully they will win. :D

Today it's a cloudy and cold Monday here in Arlington Texas. It's not even 45 degrees outside! I usually hate cold cloudy days because they usually turn out to be dreary and boring. Have you ever noticed that? Normally, the most dreary, sleepy felling days are cloudy, and possibly cold. This is a happy day though. This evening I teach my first ESL (English as a Second Language) class at Grace Community church here in Arlington. If I haven't mentioned before, I'm a French/Russian major and I love languages! I really enjoy teaching English, or other languages for that matter! So tonight I try my hand at English teaching. I'm really excited! I will be teaching an English 2 class of about 6 or 7 people, so it's kind of nice. I don't have to worry about having a large class or anything. Most of the people I will be teaching are from Mexico or Vietnam! :)

Aside from teaching English today I'm also going to do a personal training fitness test at the MAC (Maverick Activity Center). It's a gym on campus for us UTA students, a place to work out and I am going to begin the process of getting a personal trainer! It's kind of exciting honestly. I could benefit from a personal traner, it's kind of hard to work out in a gym when you can't see any of the equipment or how it works. This could be quite helpful for me.

A side note, in about 3 weeks somebody from the guide dog school will be in TX, I might do my home interview thingy then, I don't know for sure, but I'm excited about the prospect of that! :)

my lunch minute

So even though I'm posting this at like 2:00 in the afternoon, this is the blog I wrote at lunch today, I will try and blog everyday while eating lunch.
So here goes. :)

Do you have any idea how much I absolutely hate the cafe? I hate it!!! It's horrible. The food is ok, I eat by myself, and it's hard to get somebody to help me navigate the mess that we fondly call the cafe. Sometimes it's embarrassing, but whatever.

I was watchin tv the other day and they were talking about the Haitian orphans. I love Haiti, I wanna be a missionary and work there someday among other things. It was really sad because the tv said that there are 400000 Hatian orphans and that was before the earthquake. Now there might be 100000 jor more orphans in Haiti bringing the total to past half a million. That's enormous! They especially talked about orphans with disabilities, specifically a blind girl. She wasn't being adopted like a lot of other kids in her orphanage because nobody wants her, people don't know what to do with a blind person I guess and I really don't blame them. It can be kind of confusing, what to do, if you don't know. She isn't going anywhere, this blind girl, she doesn't have a future in Haiti and her only chance for a good life is to go to America. The only way she can go to America is if somebody wants to adopt, or help, her. You know, I wish I could do something to help. Even though I am not qualified to help the Haitian orphans, I'm not a home builder, I don't have the connections necessary to help immediately, I can do something. Most people can do something. Think about it, we in America have food, water, medical care and more money than most Haitians will ever see in a life time. Just because of that, we have more resources available to us than most Haitians will ever have, and we can use them to help somehow. Now I just have to figure out how I can help. :)

On another note, I'm watching tornado chasing and it's quite interesting. I think tornadoes are fascinating and if I could I would go tornado chasing. That's just a random thought from me, or as my blog says, a piece of my mind.

Have a nice day, I might post later, but if I don't then see you later.
Blessings! :D

Today in my life

Ok. So my day started at 7:38 this morning. My alarm was supposed to go off at 7:20, bc that's what my dad set it as on my clock radio which I can't manage bc it can't talk but whatever, it went off at 7:35. I hardly had time for a shower so I did my best to take like a 5 minute shower. Then I got ready and went in search of my first class of the day, French at 9:00. It ewasn't where they told me it would be so I kinda panicked. I was like "what the heck am I sposed to do now?" I found out that my section didn't make and so they are either gonna move a few ppl to the 9:00 section from the 10:00 one or they are gonna move us to 10:00 sections. So it's all good. :) After that I tried to kill an hour and a half with my iPod. Thank God for iPods, I think I'd die without mine. lol :) Then I had history at 11:00. I was supposed to meet up with a friend who had my class but I never saw her, so I went on to class and my prof's real cool. Then I went to the cafe to eat and wrote my blog, then I took a nap and haven't gooten on my computer to post it til now. I think I'll do some knitting this evening, kinda bored. llol at least knitting I can make stuff. :)
See y'all later, blessings!

introducing myself. :)

Hi. My name is Laurel. I'm a college student in the second semester of my freshmen year. I'm visually impaired and living in the dorms. College can be quite an adventure so that's why I decided to start this blog. I'll write about my life, my thoughts and observations I make. I'll post at least once a day, at lunch.
College is pretty cool. I'm a French and Russian major, I love languages! I want to be a translator and interpreter someday and work as a missionary. I have a love for languages and other cultures and people groups. Other things I enjoy include football, music, spending time with my friends, watching TV, reading, watching movies, history and spending time with my family.
That's it for now, feel free to comment anytime, and I'll keep up the posts. :)